The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute is committed to providing public programming and community events to those interested in Jewish and gender studies. HBI events are an opportunity to partner with diverse organizations and bridge scholarship, the arts, and the public. We welcome everyone to attend our range of programs.

Justice Tucked within the Folds of the Flesh:
An examination of source texts behind the
Occupy Sanhedrin exhibit

Date: Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Time: 3:30PM-5PM
Location: Kniznick Gallery, WSRC, Epstein Building, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (click here for map)

Sarah Zell Young’s Occupy Sanhedrin is a visual and experiential midrash (commentary) on the religious and secular roles of the female body and the foundational structures of justice from  the Second Temple to the present. Come sit in Young’s reimagined Sanhedrin (rabbinic court) and grapple with texts that relate directly to the formation of the exhibition.  

Young believes that decoding these texts creates new meanings, as the permeable boundaries of the past collapse.  She asserts: “Through our own agency, we can look to and through the text and claim it for ourselves, confronting our history and our inheritance of an embodied present.”

Brandeis Hillel Rabbi Elyse Winick and artist Sarah Zell Young will facilitate a study of the traditional texts, both in the original and in translation, designed for readers and learners at all levels.  Bring your curiosity and participatory spirit. Copies of the texts will be provided.

EXHIBIT INFORMATION
Dates on display: Thursday, March 29th - Friday, May 18th, 2012
Time: Gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9AM-5PM
Location: Kniznick Gallery, WSRC, Epstein Building, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (click here for map)

The HBI welcomes the fourth annual HBI (Hadassah-Brandeis Institute) Artist-in-Residence, Sarah Zell Young. Her exhibition for the WSRC/HBI, Occupy Sanhedrin, will examine roles—both religious and secular—for Jewish women from the Second Temple to the present and will explore how bodies can become hazarded in the pursuit of justice. In addition to photographs, the exhibition will feature a large, site-specific installation—an interactive and participatory rendition of a Sanhedrin (rabbinic court). By granting access to an historical space of justice—making it physical—Young invites viewers to engage with traditional ideas and received wisdom of judicatory in a new way and to achieve personal agency over their own relationship to history. Sarah Young received her BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and is studying toward her MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College, New York.

For more information on the Artist-in-Residence program, click here.