Dec

7 2020

The Last Kings of Shanghai with author Jonathan Kaufman

12:00PM - 1:00PM  

VIRTUAL

Contact Patty Shelanski
pshelanski@ujft.org

Virtual Event via Zoom. Presented by the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and Simon Family JCC’s Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival. As part of the Simon Family JCC’s Book Club Series.

In the 1930’s two powerful Jewish families, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, rival one another in wealth and influence. Both originally from Baghdad, these families stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than 175 years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and losing nearly everything as the Communists swept into power. At the height of World War II, these two families joined together to rescue and protect eighteen thousand Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism. Though their stay in China started out as a business opportunity, the country became a home they were reluctant to leave, even on the eve of revolution.

 

Jonathan Kaufman is Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, editor and author, and also served as the Wall Street Journal's China Bureau Chief, based in Beijing.  As a reporter, Mr. Kaufman covered race and class issues in the workplace and on college campuses and wrote about race and women's issues in the extraordinary 2008 presidential campaign.  Mr. Kaufman has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.

 

FREE

Find more information or register for this event by visiting https://ujft.salsalabs.org/thelastkingsofshanghai