Margalit Fox And Jamie Bernstein Coming To The Center For Jewish History

Margalit Fox wrote more than 1,400 obituaries during her career at The New York Times, gaining a legion of fans with her exquisite prose and eye for quirky detail. Now she applies her meticulous research and superb storytelling to a long-forgotten 20th-century murder case-and to Oscar Slater, the Jewish immigrant who was framed for the crime. The sensational case both captivated the public and captured the attention of Arthur Conan Doyle, celebrity author of the wildly popular Sherlock Holmes detective novels. One century later, Ms. Fox shines a bright light on a cold case, revealing the twists and turns of Conan Doyle's real life murder investigation and uncovering question we still grapple with today. "Why isn't the Oscar Slater case better known?" Fox muses, "It's about racism, antisemitism, xenophobia. Not relevant to today? Think again."

Kicking off the new season of First Person programs at the Center for Jewish History, Margalit Fox speaks with author Ruth Franklin on October 15th at 6:30 pm about her fascinating career, her favorite obits, and how she discovered the story behind Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer. A book signing will follow the program.

On October 28th at 2:00 pm, Jamie Bernstein, author of Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein, provides a rare and intimate look at her fabled father and shares her fascinating First Person story with Broadway and Fiddler on the Roof star, Alexandra Silber (Tseitel). Growing up in mid century New York in a luxurious, celebrity filled household, Ms. Bernstein writes, "Only much later did I realize how extraordinary it was to be surrounded on a regular basis by (let the name-dropping begin) Dick Avedon, Mike Nichols, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Lillian Hellman, Steve Sondheim, Jerry Robbins, Sidney Lumet, Betty (Lauren) Bacall, Isaac Stern." But Jamie also grappled with her father's complicated personality, his talent and his fame. Intermingling conversation with music, the program includes a performance by Ms. Silber of the Maestro's most famous songs and concludes with a book signing and reception.

A retired senior writer at The New York Times, Margalit Fox is considered one the foremost explanatory writers and literary stylists in American journalism. As a longtime member of the newspaper's celebrated Obituary News Department, she has written the front-page public sendoffs of some of the leading cultural figures of our age. (Conan Doyle for the Defense is in many ways a fond belated obituary-for the long-overlooked Oscar Slater, an immigrant Everyman treated inexcusably by history.) Fox's previous book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth, won the William Saroyan Prize for International Writing. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, the writer and critic George Robinson.

Ruth Franklin is a book critic, a biographer, and a former editor at The New Republic. Her work appears in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in biography, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Leon Levy Fellowship in biography, and the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism. Her first book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2011), was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Her biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2016) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016, a Time magazine top nonfiction book of 2016, and a "best book of 2016" by The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, and others. Jamie Bernstein is a writer, broadcaster, filmmaker and concert narrator. In addition to writing her many articles and concert narrations, Jamie travels extensively, speaking about music as well as about her father, Leonard Bernstein. Jamie's film documentary, Crescendo: The Power of Music has won numerous prizes and is now available on Netflix. Jamie's memoir, Famous Father Girl, was published by HarperCollins in June of 2018.

Grammy nominated artist, Alexandra Silber recently completed a run on Broadway as Tzeitel in the Tony-nominated revival of Fiddler on the Roof. She made her professional acting debut in London's West End at age 21, and her Broadway debut in 2011, playing opposite Tony-Award winner Tyne Daly in Terrence McNally's Master Class. Alexandra has performed in Carnegie Hall, across the country and around the globe and is the author of the novel, After Anatevka, and her memoir, White Hot Grief Parade.

About the Center for Jewish History

Illuminating history, culture, and heritage, the Center for Jewish History in New York City provides a collaborative home for five partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The partners' archives comprise the world's largest and most comprehensive archive of the modern Jewish experience outside of Israel. The collections span a thousand years, with more than 5 miles of archival documents (in dozens of languages and alphabet systems), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings, films, and photographs. The Center for Jewish History is also home to the Lillian Goldman Reading Room, Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute, the David Berg Rare Book Room and the Collection Management & Conservation Wing. Our public programs create opportunities for diverse audiences to explore the rich historical and cultural material that lives within the Center's walls. The Center is a Smithsonian Affiliate, and is a partner of the Google Cultural Institute.

About the American Jewish Historical Society

The American Jewish Historical Society is the oldest ethnic, cultural archive in the United States. AJHS provides access to more than 30 million documents and 50,000 books, photographs, art and artifacts that reflect the history of the Jewish presence in the United States from 1654 to the present.

About the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

YIVO preserves, studies, shares, and perpetuates knowledge of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. YIVO's archives and library represent the single largest and most comprehensive collection of materials on East European Jewish civilization in the world.

About the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

A non-profit organization dedicated to sustaining the financial future of the world class Israel Philharmonic, AFIPO seeks to broaden the reach of the orchestra and bring its message through music throughout the world.