2026 Margolis Lecture: Prof. Rebecca Kobrin "Credit to the Nation: East European Jewish Immigrants and American Banking, 1873-1930"

What if the story of Jews and American banking wasn’t about Wall Street titans—but about immigrant families who built commercial banking businesses that helped others thrive? Indeed, many are familiar with the names of famous early-twentieth-century German Jewish bankers such as Jacob Schiff, far fewer have ever heard of men like Sender Jarmulowsky, Max Kobre, or Saul Singer. These East European Jewish immigrants helped millions of migrants with a few dollars and a dream buy ship tickets, save money, borrow money, and send small sums overseas. Millions saw their financial lives shaped by these men whose stories are now in the dustbin of history. Based on her just-published book from Harvard University Press, A Credit to their Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873-1930, Kobrin's talk shares their stories and how they reshaped American banking as well as the businesses of mass migration and real estate development.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, Columbia University. She works in the fields of immigration history, urban studies, business history, East European history and American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. Her book, Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2010), was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize (2012). She is the editor of Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), Salo Baron: Using the Past to Shape the Future of Jewish Studies in America (Columbia University Press, 2022) and is co-editor with Adam Teller of Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). In 2015, she was awarded Columbia University’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her outstanding teaching and graduate student mentoring. She is one of the principal investigators leading the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, an award-winning map that visualizes the demographic and spatial changes wrought in New York City between 1850 and 1940.

Book signing and reception to follow. Free and open to the general public.
The talk is sponsored by the Margolis Family Lecture Fund and the Judaic Studies Department at Binghamton University and is co-sponsored by Binghamton’s College of Jewish Studies.

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