How Jewish Immigrants Reshaped American Immigration

Dr. Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia)

While many are familiar with the names of famous early-twentieth century German Jewish immigrant bankers such Jacob Schiff, Felix Warburg or the Lehman Brothers, far fewer have ever heard of men like Sender and Meyer Jarmulowsky, Joseph Marcus, or Saul Singer, Eastern European Jewish immigrant bankers who helped the millions of poor immigrants in New York City with a few dollars and a dream save money, borrow money and send small sums overseas. Indeed, the millions of immigrants who came to America saw their financial lives shaped by these men whose stories are now in the dustbin of history.  This lecture shares their stories and how they shaped not only banking in the Jewish community, but the larger world of American finance as well as the businesses of migration and real estate in America itself.  

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Full Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she was also the co-director of Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. She was also a member of Columbia’s Antisemitism Task Force. She has taught at Yale University, Harvard University and Brooklyn College. Kobrin works in the fields of American Jewish history, immigration studies, business history, and urban studies, specializing in modern Jewish migration.

Her current book, Credit to the Nation: East European Immigrant Bankers and American Finance, 1870-1930 (Harvard University Press, 2026), looks at the lost world of immigrant banking. She is working on a book about Columbia University’s Seth Low Junior College as a means of exploring institutional antisemitism and American higher education. She is also one of the lead investigators of the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, which visualizes the demographic and spatial changes transforming New York City between 1850 and 1940. She lectures widely on topics related to American Jewish history, East European Jewish migration and US immigration history. Her writing has also appeared in popular newspapers such as The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, and The Jerusalem Post.

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