Professor Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University, will discuss his new book, "Homes of the Past: A Lost Jewish Museum," which tells the powerful story of how immigrant Jewish scholars in 1940s New York sought to build a museum to commemorate the Jewish cultures of Eastern Europe destroyed during the Holocaust. Newly arrived in the United States, this small group of Polish Jews had devoted their professional lives to the study of Europe's Yiddish-speaking Jews at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Faced with the devastating knowledge that returning to their former homes and resuming their scholarly work there was no longer viable, they sought to address their profound sense of loss by continuing their work, under radically different circumstances, to document the European Jewish lives, places, and ways of living that were being destroyed. Though the largely unknown project was never realized, it marked a critical inflection point in the dynamic interrelations between Jews in America and Eastern Europe. This online talk is free and open to the public. For details and registration, visit the Bildner Center's website.