At this special Amram Scholar Series event, we will honor Leslie Maitland for her 23 years of service as coordinator for the Amram Scholar Series.

For those planning to attend the lecture via livestream, please select only the “lecture” ticket option. The livestream link and password will be provided to you in your registration confirmation.

RSVP HERE

*Please note: at this time, the brunch taking place following the lecture is sold out. We invite you to join us for the lecture at 10:30 am at Temple or via livestream.

About the Book

In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Author James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in his eloquent new book, The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France. At the first annual Leslie Maitland Amram Scholar Series lecture, he will tell the story of Jewish art collectors who were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural patrimony. The important collections these families left behind—many ultimately donated to the French state—reflected not only their obsession with beautiful things, but also a tragic aim to reaffirm their national identity in the face of surging antisemitism. “Their embrace of art and beauty,” McAuley says, “was met with hatred and destruction.”

About the Author

James McAuley is a Paris correspondent for The Washington Post and a contributor to the New York Review of Books. He holds a doctorate in modern European history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. 

Click here to purchase this book through WHC’s Mitzvah Mall

This lecture is presented in partnership with the Jewish Book Council.