HBI Director's End of Year Message
By Lisa Fishbayn Joffe
In the last few weeks, we said goodbye to our 2025-26 visiting fellows and celebrated our graduating seniors. Next week, we will welcome our Gilda Slifka summer interns for a vibrant summer of learning and growth. In this brief pause, I want to reflect on some of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute’s accomplishments this year and give a glimpse of our future plans.
HBI hosted four visitors, (Scholars in Residence and Post-Docs), and 21 Research Associates, all engaging in cutting edge research on a wide range of topics, including Jews and reproduction, women’s and girls’ experiences of the Holocaust, and witnessing and recovery after October 7. Our study groups and seminars allowed them to develop and share their work.
Our annual art exhibit, Who Will Draw Our History? Women’s Graphic Narratives of the Holocaust, 1944-1949, drew upon research conducted at HBI. Guest curator and research associate Dr. Rachel Perry produced a compelling and powerful exploration of how women artists used the graphic narrative form to tell the story of the Holocaust during and after the events.
HBI presented 30 public programs that showcased new books emerging from HBI-sponsored research and important new research in the field of Jewish women’s and gender studies. Many recordings can be found here.
In the fall, with our partners at Bar Ilan University, the HBI Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law and the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies will co-convene a conference on Conflict Related Sexual Violence and the Legacy of October 7. Our spring art exhibition, (Un)safe Space, co-sponsored with the Jerusalem Biennale, will feature works by American and Israeli artists exploring the impact of shifting dynamics and tensions in politics, academia, and the art world.
As always, we deeply appreciate your past support of HBI programs. Your gifts enable us to offer such a high quality roster of programs and help fund the research that underpins them. We hope you will be able to make a gift to help us close our fiscal year.
Sincerely,
Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, SJD
Shulamit Reinharz Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute