Who would have thought that a scholar trained in medieval religious law would become an expert on Maine’s Jewish history? Well, stranger things have happened. It turns out that Maine has a rich Jewish history ripe for exploration. Colby’s Maine Jewish History Project, which I direct, fosters research on Jewish life in Maine, sharing the results of this research with current and former Mainers and also with students and scholars of American Jewish history. The project website presents work by Colby students and other historians, focusing particular attention on Jewish life in the Kennebec Valley and at Colby College. My own work on the subject includes a survey article on the state’s Jewish history and, forthcoming, a more detailed study of college attendance among Maine’s Jews during the interwar years.
Related Essays
“Making It in Maine: Stories of Jewish Life in Small-Town America,” Maine History 49.1 (2015): 5–38 — winner of the James Phinney Baxter Award from the Maine Historical Society
“The Jews of Maine,” Maine Memory Network (Maine Historical Society)
“A Tale of Two Colleges: Jews and Maine’s Baptist Institutions during the Interwar Years” (co-authored with Desiree Shayer ’12), presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies, Dec. 21, 2010
