Jews of the Americas Spring 2024 Events
JOTA Director Dalia Wassner with CMJS Director Leonard Saxe, Jessica Liebowitz, Brandeis University President Ronald Liebowitz, and Florida spring 2024 alumni event co-host Alex Heckler ’98.
Photo Credit: The Louis Collection
April 8, 2024
6:00 - 7:30 pm
Mandel Center Atrium
Brandeis University
Join us as 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.
April 13, 2024
April 13-19, JOTA will accompany Brandeis Travel on a trip to Cuba, where the Initiative’s expertise will contribute a specialized lens to the educational experience.
May 7, 2024
7:00-8:00 pm, Mandel Center Auditorium
8 pm Dessert reception Mandel Center Atrium
JOTA will welcome scholars from across the Americas and around the world to Brandeis as we convene for an academic workshop titled “Jewish Immigrants, Local Communities, and International Jewish Organizations in Twentieth Century Latin America and the Caribbean: A Triangular Relationship.” Keynote address by Sergio Widder, Latin America Director of the JDC. The keynote address is our featured public talk held during 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).
Meet the Director, Jews of the Americas
Dalia Wassner, PhD, is the director of Jews of the Americas, an initiative of Brandeis University at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. Dr. Wassner is a historian whose research and teaching is dedicated to providing more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches to the Jewish Diaspora and broadening the academic fields of Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies and Diaspora Studies.
Dr. Wassner is the author of Harbinger of Modernity: Marcos Aguinis and the Democratization of Argentina (Boston: Brill, 2014), which illuminates the intersecting roles of Jews and public intellectuals in bringing democracy to post-dictatorship Argentina. She is guest-editor of the launching issue of the journal Latin American Jewish Studies (Spring 2022), and her scholarship has been published in numerous academic journals, including Latin American Research Review, Iberian and Latin American Studies, Contemporary Jewry, and Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. Dr. Wassner serves on the Latin American Jewish Studies Association Board of Directors, the Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia Editorial Board in the field of Latin America, and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry Board of Directors.