Mandell JCC hosts John Davis, University of Connecticut Professor and Author

The Mandell JCC, in partnership with the University of Connecticut Alumni Association, will host author and University of Connecticut professor, John Davis on Wednesday, April 27, 2011, at 7:00 p.m., at the Mandell JCC, Zachs Campus, 335 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford CT. Mr. Davis will be discussing his new book The Jews of San Nicandro (Yale University Press, 2010). Admission is free and open to the public at this “Authors on the Road” program.

Mr. Davis’s new book explores the captivating story of a group of poor agricultural workers in Italy who spontaneously converted from Catholicism to Judaism in the 1930’s, and later immigrated to Israel in 1949. The book follows their intriguing story as it investigates their choice to convert during one of the most dangerous decades to be a Jew in European history.

Thirty years, and a half dozen books later, Mr. Davis’s The Jews of San Nicandro, sheds some light on this historical phenomenon. “According to Davis, the Jews of San Nicandro represent ‘the only case of collective conversion to Judaism in Europe in modern times’.” commented Adam Kirsch, review in The New Republic.

Mr. Davis is the Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History at the University of Connecticut, and a leading authority on the history of modern Italy. For more information visit www.mandelljcc.org or to register call: 860-236-4571.

The Mandell Jewish Community Center, open to everyone, is supported by funds raised by the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford, a recipient of funding from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford, a beneficiary agency of the United Way and a member of the JCC Association of North America.