Staff


Shulamit Reinharz
Co-Director
reinharz@brandeis.edu

Shulamit Reinharz was born in Amsterdam, grew up in New Jersey, received her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Brandeis University. She was on the psychology faculty of the University of Michigan for 10 years, and then returned to Brandeis as a professor of sociology.

In the 1990s  Reinharz directed the Women's Studies Program at Brandeis University. Among many other innovations, she created its multi-faceted graduate program, including the first graduate program in Jewish Women's Studies in the world. She also initiated the Student-Scholar Partnership Program and the course on the Prevention of Violence against Women and Children, and created the National Board for Women's Studies.

Reinharz chaired Hadassah's National Commission on American Jewish Women in 1993. Subsequently, in 1997, she established the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, which she heads to this day.

The holder of the Jacob Potofsky Chair of Sociology, Reinharz is the author or co-author of 10 books including: "The JGirls' Guide" ( a finalist for the Koret Prize), the highly praised "American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise", "Observing the Observer: Understanding Our Selves in Field Research" and most recent titles "Today I am a Woman: Stories of Bat Mitzvah around the World" (edited with Barbara Vinick, Indiana University Press) and "One Hundred Years of Kibbutz Life: A Century of Crises and Reinvention" (edited with Michal Palgi, Transaction Books), among others. Shulamit Reinharz is the mother of two daughters and is married to Jehuda Reinharz, former president of Brandeis University.

Sylvia Barack Fishman
Co-Director
fishman@brandeis.edu

Sylvia Barack Fishman is a professor of Contemporary Jewish Life in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis University, and also co-director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Both of her books, "The Way Into the Varieties of Jewishness" (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006) and "Double Or Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage" (Brandeis University Press, 2004), have been the subject of lively discussion by scholars and Jewish communal professionals. Fishman is the author of numerous articles on Jewish education, the American Jewish family, changing roles of Jewish women, and American Jewish literature, film and popular culture, as well as three previous books: "Follow My Footprints: Changing images of Women in American Jewish Fiction"; "A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community"; and "Jewish Life and American Culture." Fishman received her B.A. from Stern College at Yeshiva University, which awarded the Samuel Belkin Prize for Distinguished Professional Achievement, and her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, which awarded her a Danforth Graduate Fellowship. 

Debby Olins
Program Manager
dolins@brandeis.edu

Debby Olins joined the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute in 2000.  She holds a bachelor's degree from Connecticut College and a master's degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Debby oversees all the HBI's academic programs including: the HBI Research Awards, the Scholar-in-Residence Program, HBI Internship Program, the HBI Artist-in-Residence Program and the HBI Translation Competition.

Nancy Leonard
Office Coordinator
nleonard@brandeis.edu

Bio forthcoming.

Communications Specialist
Vacant


Communications Coordinator
Vacant


Melissa Wolfish
Media Relations Specialist
mwolfish@brandeis.edu

Melissa Wolfish is thrilled to join the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute as the media relations specialist. She is completing her Ed.M. at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied arts education. She holds a B.A. from Oberlin College in creative writing. She recently served as an AmeriCorps fellow with KOREH L.A., the literacy project of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Prior to her term of service, she served as an intern with the communications teams at several performing arts organizations, including the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, and TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, Calif. 

Melissa Grossman
National Director of HBI Conversations
gmelissa@brandeis.edu

Melissa Grossman is the national director of the HBI Conversations Program. She joined HBI in 2011 and is a graduate of Brandeis University where she received her B.A. in English Literature in 1991. She also received her M.S.W. from the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. Prior to coming to HBI, she worked at UJA-Federation in New York, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Combined Jewish Philanthropies. 

Michelle Cove
Editor-in-Chief
614: THE HBI EZINE
mcove@brandeis.edu

Michelle Cove has been writing and editing for national magazines and websites for over 15 years, including as editor-in-chief of JVibe (the national magazine for Jewish teens), senior editor for Girls' Life, and senior editor of Mother Earth News. In 2006, she started a blog for Jewish Women's Archive called Jewesses with Attitude, geared to 20- and 30-something Jewish women. In 1999, Cove co-authored the national bestseller "I'm Not Mad, I Just Hate You!: A new understanding of mother-daughter conflict," published by Viking. Cove has freelance written articles for numerous publications including Family Fun, Psychology Today, Success and Body & Soul.

Lisa Fishbayn Joffe
Director
Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law
fishbayn@brandeis.edu

Lisa Fishbayn Joffe is director of the Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute of Brandeis University. She writes on issues of gender, multiculturalism and colonialism in Jewish family law and African customary law. Her publications include Gender, Religion and Family Law: Theorizing Conflicts Between Women’s Rights and Cultural Traditions (with Sylvia Neil, Brandeis University Press, 2012). She holds law degrees from Osgoode Hall Law School and Harvard Law School, and has been a visiting scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand and Harvard Law School. She was a lecturer in law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and a member of the Pan Commonwealth Expert Group on Gender and Human Rights. She is co-editor of the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law.

Joanna Michlic
Director
HBI Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust
jmichlic@brandeis.edu

Joanna Beata Michlic is the director of HBI Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust at Brandeis University. She received her doctorate and her master's degree in modern European and Jewish history from University of London, and her bachelor's degree in Slavonic studies at Lódz University, Poland. Between 2000 and 2003, she was a Lady Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. Until December 2008 she was an associate professor of history and chair of the Holocaust and Ethical Values at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa. She is an affiliated fellow at the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies and the Center for Ukrainian Studies at Harvard University. Her major publications include "Neighbors Respond: The Controversy about Jedwabne" (2004; co-edited with Antony Polonsky) and "Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present" (hardback 2006, paperback edition 2008)(Polish and Hebrew translations in preparation). She is currently working on two monographs, "The Social History of Jewish Children in Poland: Survival and Identity, 1945-1949" and "Bringing the Dark to Light: The Memory of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe," co-edited with John-Paul Himka.