A Message from the Director
By Lisa Fishbayn Joffe
As director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, I take very seriously our mission to support scholars in the field of Jewish women’s and gender studies at every stage of their career. We offer classes and internships for undergraduates, doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships, research awards to junior and senior scholars and visiting positions for established faculty and artists. This past December, I spent the first few days of Hanukkah at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies in Washington, D.C. As I moved amongst the 1,000 plus attendees, it was a real delight to see so many people whose research and career 
had been supported in some way by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Alumni of our Gilda Slifka summer internship program were giving papers based on their doctoral research or in their capacity as professors of religion, history and literature. HBI research associates presented new work nurtured by the intellectual community at HBI and recipients of HBI Research Awards shared work made possible by grants that allowed them to visit archives, conduct interviews, or secure child care to allow them to write. Over breakfast with the AJS Women’s Caucus, Melissa Klapper shared a screenshot of the cover art for her forthcoming book, Jewish Women At Home in the World. Klapper worked on the book during her HBI residency in 2023.
Many new publications written by former scholars in residence were on display in the press room, including Miriam Udel’s new book, “Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish 
Children's Literature.” I look forward to hosting Miriam in Baltimore as part of the Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations program on March 26. While in residence, Miriam shared an office with Ayelet Brinn and we all celebrated her resulting book, A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press as it was honored with the Jordan Schnitzer Jewish Book Prize in the field of Jewish history and culture.
This term, we will also be welcoming two new scholars in residence; Adriana Brodsky will be working on her book on Jewish youth in Argentina during the second World War and post-war period while Tamar Aizenberg completes her doctoral dissertation on how the grandchildren of survivors and perpetrators negotiate Holocaust memory.
Much of our public programming this term will explore themes raised by Who Will Draw Our History? Women’s Graphic Narratives of the Holocaust, 1944-1949. Curated by Dr. Rachel Perry and based in part on research supported by HBI, the exhibition opens on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27, 2026 and runs through April 30.
The exhibition will feature original work and facsimiles of 10 artists never seen together in the U.S., on loan from The Ghetto Fighter’s House, Yad Vashem, the Ravensbrück Museum as well as other museums in Eastern Europe and private collections. Lacking photographs, these artists turned to visual storytelling to counter the perpetrator and liberator sources to to represent the Jewish tragedy as it affected women.
We will be hosting many book talks online and in person. I hope you will join us on campus as Pamela Nadell delivers the annual Diane Markowicz Memorial Lecture on Gender and Human Rights, based on her new book, Antisemitism, An American Tradition. The lecture will have a particular focus on women's experience of antisemitism.
Join us as well on March 18 for the book launch of HBI Research Associate Anita Robboy’s new biography of her mother, A Force for Good: Gisela Warburg Wyzanski. Robboy will be in conversation with Professor Emeritus Jonathan Sarna.
All this work is made possible by the generous support of the HBI Board of Advisors and the many folks who make gifts to support HBI.
