The Jew Who Passed: Laura Z. Hobson and the American Bargain of Belonging
- When
- Thursday, November 12, 20267:30 PM – 9:00 PM CSTAdd to calendarGoogle Calendar
- Where
- Minnesota JCC Sabes Center MinneapolisOpen in Maps
- Hosted by
- Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies
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About
Presentation by Rachel Gordan Thursday, Nov 12, 2026, 7:30pm Minnesota JCC Sabes Center Minneapolis, 4330 Cedar Lake Road South, Minneapolis, MN 55416 Free and open to the public (registration required)
Before Gentleman's Agreement became the Academy Award-winning postwar film starring Gregory Peck, it was the bestselling novel of Laura Z. Hobson, a Jewish American woman whose life was shaped by the very questions of antisemitism, assimilation, and conditional belonging that made her novel-turned-film famous. Born Laura Zametkin, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrant radicals, Hobson transformed herself into Laura Z. Hobson: Cornell graduate, Madison Avenue copywriter, Time Inc. editor, Upper East Side wife, divorced single mother, celebrity novelist, and one of the most widely read interpreters of American antisemitism. This talk tells the story of Hobson's life as a biography of passing, not as simple denial but as a practice of social translation through names, manners, marriage, work, motherhood, and literary ambition. Her life reveals the "other Jew" as the one who seems to have crossed the boundary into belonging, until antisemitism exposes how conditional that belonging remains. Click here for more information and to register.
Rachel Gordan is the Samuel Shorstein Professor of American Jewish Culture & Society at the University of Florida. Her book, Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American (Oxford, 2024), was a finalist for the 2025 Jordan Schnitzer Award in Modern Jewish History & Culture. In addition to her scholarly publications, Gordan's writing has appeared in LitHub, Slate, Tablet, Moment Magazine, and the New York Times website.
Organized and Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, and cosponsored by Department of Anthropology, Department of Communication Studies, Department of English, Department of History, Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication, and the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the University of St. Thomas.