Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

Events

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All of HBI’s events are free and open to the public. HBI is pleased to participate in the Mass Cultural Council’s Card to Culture Program.

Upcoming Events

Tu Ke Bivas, "May you live, grow, and thrive like a little fish in freshwater", an immersive experience at the Kniznick Gallery by photo-based artist Becky Behar

September 4, 2025

A woman wearing a flowing gown sitting and holding a photo of a black and white photo of another woman directly in front of her faceSeptember 4 to September 18, 2025 | Kniznick Gallery

The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women's Studies Research Center are pleased to present photographer Becky Behar's Tu Ke Bivas in the Kniznick Gallery, an immersive presentation in which Behar traces Sephardic traditions enacted by her mother and daughter. 

"Tu Ke Bivas is part of a Sephardic blessing my parents often invoked: ‘May you live, grow, and thrive like a little fish in freshwater.’ I am a Sephardic Jew, part of the diasporic population expelled from Spain during the Inquisition in the late 15th century. My family’s migrations have taken us from Turkey to Colombia to the United States. Throughout, we have maintained our Ladino language, Jewish religion, and Sephardic customs. 

My photographs explore how my mother and daughter continue to enact these traditions and rituals today. As I contemplate their different ways of preserving and celebrating our history, I consider my own relationship to this heritage and what interpretations my daughter will carry forward." - Becky Behar

Image caption: Becky Behar, L'Dor V'Dor, (From Generation to Generation), Archival pigment print.

Text Hiding in Holland A Resistance Memoir Brandeis Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Women's Studies Research Center, Shulamit Reinharz, National Jewish Book Award Finalist with book cover showing a man milking a cow and a photo of Shulamit Reinharz
Hiding in Holland, An Afternoon of Remembrance with Shulamit Reinharz

September 10, 2025

4-5:30 pm EDT 

Hybrid: In-Person at HBI/WSRC | Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall and Online

Join the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University to welcome back Shulamit Reinharz, founding director of both, for an event celebrating her latest book, Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. 

Hiding in Holland is a memoir detailing her father, Max Rothschild’s experiences in the Holocaust as a Jewish man who saved his life repeatedly during the Holocaust, eventually being hidden by Dutch Righteous Gentiles for three years. Reinharz introduces historical contexts that challenge the exaggerated stereotypes of the valorous Dutch. Together, this inner and outer perspective helps explain why the Netherlands had the worst record of Jewish annihilation of all Western European countries. Only now are Dutch government leaders acknowledging the truth.

Reinharz will be in conversation with Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, the Shulamit Reinharz Director of HBI. 

Cosponsored by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

Register to join in person.

Register to join online. Logos Brandeis, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Brandeis, Women's Studies Research Center

Left, book cover showing 3 people, a mother, father, and young child, standing in front of a barrack apartment, with text: Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp, Tracy Slater, overlaid by an American flag. Right, Tracy Slater

Photo Credit: (Tracy Slater) Patricia Shinkoda

Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series Featuring Tracy Slater, author of "Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp"

September 18, 2025

12:30 pm EDT | Online

Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series

Cosponsored by the Brandeis University Alumni Association

Together in Manzanar brings into focus the dark episode in American history, set in motion by the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the US government imprisoned in detention camps tens of thou­sands of Japan­ese Amer­i­cans due to the unfounded fear of anyone in America with even “one drop” of Japanese blood. Among the incar­cer­at­ed were over 2,000 mem­bers of mixed-race fam­i­lies — includ­ing Elaine Buchman Yoneda, a Jew­ish American woman, Karl Yoneda, her Japan­ese Amer­i­can husband, and their three-year-old son, Tommy. Slater’s intimate account explores painful choices and conflicting loyalties, including Elaine’s leaving behind her White daugh­ter from a pre­vi­ous marriage, the upheaval and violence that followed, and the Yonedas’ quest to survive with their children’s lives intact and their family safe and whole.

Tracy Slater is an American writer from Boston living temporarily in Toronto, although usually based in Japan, her husband's country. Her essays and articles have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Best Women's Travel Writing, The Boston Globe, and Literary Hub, among other places. Slater’s first book, The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self and Home on the Far Side of the World, was published in 2015. Slater received her doctorate in English and American Literature from Brandeis University and taught for ten years at various Boston-area universities as well as in men's and women's prisons throughout Massachusetts.

Together in Manzanar is available at Chicago Review Press, Amazon, and your local bookseller.

Register to join.