The National Desertion Bureau | Eddy Portnoy
About this episode
Eddy Portnoy returns to discuss the National Desertion Bureau and its impact on Jewish families during the early 20th century.
Video link to this episode: https://youtu.be/ixZOxV5BuCI Eddy Portnoy is back by popular demand, after our wonderful discussion on the history of Yiddish language. Eddy is the exhibit curator at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and does amazing Yiddish/Jewish curations. Today’s subject is juicy but educational, eye-opening, and enlightening. We are diving into the shocking and largely forgotten story of the National Desertion Bureau, a real organization founded in New York in 1911 to track down runaway Jewish husbands who abandoned their wives and children during the great wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to North America. For more on this below. Here are some links: -My previous interview with Eddy: https://youtu.be/tq8y3KkAWTk?si=-KdfW3UJBkiMdrh_ -The Yivo Exhibit: https://www.yivo.org/National-Desertion-Bureau -📘 THE BOOK ON THIS: Wives without Husbands: Marriage, Desertion, and Welfare in New York, 1900–1935 by Anna R. Igra https://amzn.to/4tGvhbZ Popular stereotypes about Jewish husbands tend to be flattering: loyal, hardworking, stable, family-oriented. Which is exactly why so many people have never heard of this dark social crisis that unfolded inside…
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