Josh is a doctoral candidate in Jewish History at Stanford University and member of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. His research focuses broadly on Jews in the Soviet Union and the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora, the politics of transnational Jewish activism, especially during the Cold War, and twentieth-century Jewish migrations. His dissertation examines the emergence of a new Soviet Jewish culture and politics at the twilight of the USSR and the construction of post-Soviet Jewish community.
Josh is also the organizer of Toronto Jewry and the Coronavirus Pandemic: An Oral History Project, in partnership with the Ontario Jewish Archives. The project, which began in April 2020, is a collection of in-depth interviews with spiritual and community leaders about Toronto Jewish communal life and the social and cultural disruptions caused by the spread of COVID-19. Its mission is to record and preserve personal and institutional narratives about the pandemic that illuminate the lived experience of this unprecedented moment in twenty-first century Jewish life. Learn more about the project in a recent webinar hosted by the Ontario Jewish Archives and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.
