Jews of the South During the Civil War: a special Yiddish Alive! webinar

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SPECIAL EVENT

Monday, March 3, 2025 | 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific

“Jews of the South During the Civil War”
presented by Dr. Gary Phillip Zola

DR. GARY PHILLIP ZOLA
Gary Phillip Zola served as the executive director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA) from 1998 through June of 2023.  Currently, Dr. Zola maintains his faculty status as the Edward M. Ackerman Family Distinguished Professor of the American Jewish Experience & Reform Jewish History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR).

Professor Zola is also known as a historian of American Jewry who specializes in 19th-century American Judaism and the history of American Reform Judaism. Since 1998, Zola has been the editor of The Marcus Center’s award-winning biannual publication, The American Jewish Archives Journal.

His book-length volumes include:

• An Equal Share of Freedom: American Jews, Zionism, and World War I
  (co-edited with Mark A. Raider and Zohar Segev)
• New Perspectives in American Jewish History (co-edited with Mark A. Raider)
• We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry
• American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader (co-edited by Marc Dollinger)
• The Americanization of the Jewish Prayer Book and The Liturgical Development of Congregation Ahawath Chesed, New York City
• A Place of Our Own: The Rise of Reform Jewish Camping in America
  (co-edited with Michael M. Lorge)
• The Dynamics of American Jewish History: Jacob Rader Marcus’s Essays on American Jewry
• Women Rabbis: Exploration and Celebration
• Isaac Harby of Charleston, a major biographical study on the life of one of the founders of the first organized effort to reform Judaism in the United States

Dr. Zola has been honored with national appointments, including being selected by President Biden in 2023 as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Notably, in April 2011, President Obama appointed Dr. Zola to the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, marking a historic moment as the first faculty member of Hebrew Union College to receive such recognition from a U.S. president. Further, in 2006, Dr. Zola achieved groundbreaking milestones by becoming the inaugural American Jewish historian and the first American rabbi appointed to the Academic Advisory Council of the congressionally recognized Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.