About Geraldine Gudefin

Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

Geraldine's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Geraldine:

Michael Willrich, "American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century" (Basic Books, 2023)

July 16, 2024

American Anarchy

Michael Willrich

In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or pri…

Rachel Blumenthal, "Right to Reparations: The Claims Conference and Holocaust Survivors, 1951–1964" (Lexington, 2021)

March 18, 2024

Right to Reparations

Rachel Blumenthal

Right to Reparations: The Claims Conference and Holocaust Survivors, 1951–1964 (Lexington, 2021) examines the early years of the Claims Conference, th…

Sarah A. Cramsey, "Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the Ethnic Revolution in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946" (Indiana UP, 2023)

March 9, 2024

Uprooting the Diaspora

Sarah A. Cramsey

In Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the Ethnic Revolution in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936-1946 (Indiana UP, 2023), Sarah Cramsey explor…

Joseph Sassoon, "The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire" (Pantheon, 2022)

July 12, 2023

The Sassoons

Joseph Sassoon

Today I talked to Joseph Sassoon about his book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022) They were one o…

Jessica M. Marglin, "The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship Across the Modern Mediterranean" (Princeton UP, 2022)

May 27, 2023

The Shamama Case

Jessica M. Marglin

In the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. His passing initiated a fierce laws…

Laura Hobson Faure, "A 'Jewish Marshall Plan': The American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France" (Indiana UP, 2022)

April 10, 2023

A 'Jewish Marshall Plan'

Laura Hobson Faure

While the role the United States played in France’s liberation from Nazi Germany is widely celebrated, it is less well known that American Jewish indi…