Jews of the Americas Academic Conferences and Events
Photo Credit: Lior Neiger
The Jews of the Americas Initiative at Brandeis University hosts regular events that bring together scholars and policymakers to examine and discuss new approaches to the study of Latin America and Latin American Jewish religious and cultural identity.
Recent Events
June 4, 2025
Professor Judit Bokser Liwerant
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Lown 315, Brandeis Unversity
Event with book signing
Professor Liwerant's scholarship sheds light on Latin American Jewry's shared and unique challenges and transformations by addressing the intersecting national, transnational, and diasporic conditions and identities. Her book traces the trajectory of Jewish modernity and the migratory processes that have shaped, and continue to redefine, Latin American Jewry's communal profile and dilemmas, oscillating between acceptance and exclusion.
Issues of belonging and otherness are critically examined through the evolving national representations and the ideologies embraced by Latin American Jews, with a particular emphasis on Zionism. The book highlights the creativity and vitality of their transnational existence, especially as it unfolds across national and regional borders, with an insightful focus on the United States.
March 18, 2025
Professor Raanan Rein and Professor Federico Finchelstein7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Mandel Center Forum, Brandeis University
Event with book signing
Professor Federico Finchelstein of the New School in New York joined JOTA Visiting Professor Raanan Rein to discuss Argentine President Javier Milei’s unique and notable public attitude to Judaism and the State of Israel and current right-wing populist movements in the Americas and Europe.
Their latest books, Las Fuerzas del Cielo: Argentina, Milei y los Judíos and The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy, were available for sale during a dessert reception and book signing.
February 24, 2025
Professor Raanan Rein12:30 PM ET
Mandel Center for the Humanities, 3rd Floor, Room 328
Professor Rein discussed the participation of Jews from the Yishuv who fought on the side of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War.
This event was cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Jews of the Americas (JOTA) initiative of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University.
Saturday, Sept 28th 4-5:30 pm
Speakers: Rosa Lowinger (Brandeis '78) and David Fixler
In memory of Professor Gerald Bernstein, Tribute by Carol Davis (Brandeis '80)
This conversation, in memory of beloved Professor Gerald Bernstein, showcased Brandeis University's participation in the world of mid-century modernist art and architecture—movements intimately connected with Jewish diaspora and the promise of the future that coincided with the founding of our university by the US Jewish community in 1948.
Art and architecture conservator and author Rosa Lowinger and architect and scholar David Fixler explored together their responsibilities to the material world as it intersects with the dynamic forces of time and memory.
The event included a book signing for Rosa Lowinger's latest book Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair (Row House, 2023).
Co-sponsored by the Rose Museum, Brandeis Alumni Association, Brandeis Department of Fine Arts, New England Conservation Association, and JFS Metrowest.
May 7, 2024
JOTA welcomes scholars from across the Americas and around the world to Brandeis for a collaborative academic workshop hosted by the Brandeis Initiative of the Jews of the Americas and co-sponsored by JDC Archives, the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA), and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ). The keynote address by Sergio Widder, Latin America Director of the JDC, is titled “Jewish Immigrants, Local Communities, and International Jewish Organizations in Twentieth Century Latin America and the Caribbean: A Triangular Relationship.”
Adrián Krupnik discusses his latest book, Between Two Homelands: Argentine Migration to and from Israel (Alabama University Press, 2023). Dr. Krupnik will speak to the experience of “return migration” among Argentines who have migrated to Israel and then left, undergoing at times multiple migrations. Aliya will be discussed as part of diaspora processes; a dialectical activity that is not a singular step or uni-directional.
Professor Jonathan Sarna, a leading scholar in US history who helped pioneer the concept of “return migration,” will introduce the event. Professor Raanan Rein of Tel Aviv University, a leading scholar of Argentine Jewish history, will serve as the respondent.
July 9-11, 2023
Hosted by the Brandeis Initiative on the Jews of the Americas, the LAJSA International Research Conference brought together scholars from multiple disciplines and geographical regions whose work focuses on the lives, languages, experiences, cultural production, and representations of and by Jews in and from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The conference featured academic presentations and roundtables as well as two evening events open to the public:
July 9, keynote address (English) Professor Claudio Lomnitz
Columbia University anthropologist, Professor Claudio Lomnitz discusses "On the Integration of Jewish History into Latin American History (And Vice Versa)— A Personal Perspective"
July 10, presentation (Spanish) Dr. Daniel Abouganem
Author of Historia de los judíos en Colón: Una gran familia, Dr. Abouganem rescues the history of Jewish settlement in a city located at the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal and tells the story of three communities established before and after the construction of the crossroads of the Americas.
April 16, 2023
The Launch Event of the Brandeis Initiative on the Jews of the Americas (JOTA) brought together extraordinary Latin American trailblazers in conversation, in order to promote new ways of thinking about global Jewish peoplehood, immigrant and diaspora life, and the larger lessons that can be learned by the Jewish experience when understood as part of the Americas writ large. Our speakers included leading figures in fields of journalism, literature, art, architecture, human rights, entrepreneurship, the museum world, communal organizations and political figures, and they represented a host of countries including Mexico, Argentina, Panama, Venezuela and Chile.