Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries

Join the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience for an author talk and book signing with Nicholas Lemann. Lemann, a veteran New Yorker correspondent, grew up in New Orleans, the son of German Jews in a world of gilded privilege. Yet in contrast to his parents’ generation, which always sought to downplay their religious background, Lemann was intrigued by his roots. In Returning, Lemann delves deeply into the family story―from their arrival in the 1830s as peddlers from Germany, to their becoming plantation owners and department store owners after the Civil War, to their emergence as aspirants in the aristocratic world of New Orleans, where they could never quite belong. Keenly aware of these contradictions, Lemann ultimately rejects this cossetted, assimilated society, embraces religion, and chooses, along with his wife, to raise his children in a Jewish world. Registration details upcoming at msje.org.