2025 Events
December 8, 2025
HBI Seminar Series
Dotan Brom, PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University's School of Historical Studies, HBI Scholar in Residence
This talk will explore the formative years of lesbian-feminist activism in Israel, tracing the influence of American and other English-speaking feminists on the creation of the country's first lesbian organizations and spaces. At the center of the story is Marcia Freedman, an American Jewish feminist who immigrated to Israel and became a pivotal figure in both the Women's Liberation Movement and in establishing lesbian-feminist institutions such as ALEPH and Kol HaIsha.
Drawing on archival sources - including Freedman's papers held at Brandeis University's Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, as well as personal testimonies, the presentation will highlight how immigrant women, particularly from the United States, helped shape Israeli feminist and lesbian politics, and how transnational networks of knowledge transmission and activism connected local struggles with broader global feminist movements.
Photo Credit: Anna Roberts
November 18, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
As the daughter of a rabbi raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, Yehudis Fletcher struggled to conform to the strict expectations placed upon her and her siblings. As she grew older, these restrictions intensified and her questions for G-d hung heavier than ever. Repeatedly let down by those who were supposed to protect her and pushed on to a path that seemed to take her further away from who she really was, she began to yearn for a life where she could embrace all facets of herself. When Fletcher’s sexuality came in conflict with the expectations of her family and community, she was confronted with either losing the faith she loved or losing herself. Fletcher made a daring decision: she decided to stay.
Yehudis Fletcher is the co-founder of Nahamu, a think tank that counters extremism in the Jewish community. She is an author, scholar and activist within her Charedi community. She has written for The Times, Haaretz, The Forward, the Jewish News and the Jewish Chronicle. She has just finished a masters degree in religion and theology at the University of Manchester and is beginning a PhD in the same at the University of Durham. She lives and loves in the heart of Manchester's Charedi community.
Chutzpah! A Memoir of Faith, Sexuality and Daring to Stay is available at Penguin, Blackwell's, Amazon (UK), and other booksellers.
November 11, 2025
HBI Seminar Series
During the hideous terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists abducted 253 people, including women civilians of various ages. Cases of captive women civilians, especially older women and young mothers, are rare in modern history. Accordingly, understanding of their experiences in captivity is minimal, yet crucial for developing interventions to assist them in adapting to routine life after release. Spector-Mersel will present findings from her analysis with military health expert Dr. Leah Shelef of Hebrew University that can inform the rehabilitation process of released captives, especially civilian women.
Gabriela Spector-Mersel, MSW, PhD, is an Associate Professor and the chairperson of the aging branch in the Sadot Resilience and Growth Center at the School of Social Work at Sapir College, Israel. She also serves as the chairperson of the interest groups in Qualitative Research and advisor of the Narrative Research interest group at Mofet Institute. Her research interests include aging and trauma, with a focus on aging under terror threats, gender in later life, and narrative theory, methodology and pedagogy. She has published papers, chapters and books in these fields.
November 6, 2025
Since October 7, Israeli women have faced challenges that extend far beyond the horrific sexual violence of Hamas. Women serving as reservists confront gaps in basic rights such as maternity benefits, while reservists’ wives and ex-wives shoulder childcare and financial burdens alone. Across the country, women are grappling with job loss, and deepening economic insecurity. Violence is also escalating with 31 women murdered by intimate partners in 2025 alone. The Israel Women’s Network is on the frontlines of advocacy, offering direct support to ensure women’s rights and leadership remain central to Israel’s democracy.
Tal Hochman is Executive Director of the Israel Women's Network (IWN), Israel’s oldest women’s rights organization founded in 1984 to promote women’s equality and create the social, physical, economic and judicial conditions for their prosperity. Prior to becoming the Executive Director of IWN, Hochman headed its Government Relations department. Hochman holds a Master’s Degree in International Social and Public Policy from London School of Economics (LSE) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work.
October 30, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
A Tale of Two Surrogates: A Graphic Narrative on Assisted Reproduction is a rich and illuminating exploration of the complicated emotional, medical, legal, and ethical issues surrounding assisted reproduction. Based on more than a decade of research conducted by Elly Teman, PhD, and Zsuzsa Berend, PhD, this book presents, in an accessible and entertaining graphic novel format, the intertwined stories of two fictional women who decide to become gestational surrogates. The experiences of the two characters, Jenn, from California, and Dana, from Tel Aviv, highlight various paths, interpretations, and experiences that are common in surrogacy.
HBI is delighted to have supported Teman's and Berend's work with a Research Award in 2022 and that Teman continued her research and writing while an HBI Research Associate. After receiving the award, Teman and Berend shared with HBI how their work came together.
Elly Teman is an associate professor of medical anthropology in the Dept. of Behavioral Sciences at Ruppin Academic Center, Israel. Zsuzsa Berend teaches courses on economic sociology and the sociology departmental honors thesis seminar at the University of California, Los Angeles.
A Tale of Two Surrogates: A Graphic Narrative on Assisted Reproduction is available at Penn State University Press and Amazon.
October 26, 2025
Join Brandeis Hillel for an intimate conversation with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City and the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi or a cantor in the U.S. Rabbi Buchdahl will be discussing her memoir, Heart of the Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging, and signed copies of the book will be for sale after the event.
This event is open to the public and is co-sponsored by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, the Department of East Asian Studies, the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, and Brandeis University Alumni, Friends, and Families.
Photo Credit: Anat Geva-Sharon
October 23, 2025
Sponsored by the HBI Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law, cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.
The October 7 attack epitomizes the difficulties of prosecuting conflict related sexual violence (CRSV), considering the lack of survivors who are able to provide testimony, and the lack of primary physical forensic evidence. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an expert on family law and international women's rights, will present The Dinah Project's book, A Quest for Justice - October 7 and Beyond, which provides a comprehensive assessment of sexual violence during the October 7 attack and in captivity, develops a pioneering structured evidentiary framework, and creates a legal framework for joint criminal responsibility in mass atrocities.
Prof. Halperin-Kaddari is the Founding Director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University Law Faculty in Israel, where she serves as a full Professor, and Dinah Project founding member. In December 2018 she completed three terms on the UN Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), on which she served twice as Vice-Chair of the Committee and as the first Chair of the Working Group on Inquiries. A graduate of Yale Law School (LLM.; JSD), she is a renowned speaker in academic as well as professional forums and has published extensively.
Becky Behar, "L'Dor V'Dor, (From Generation to Generation)", Archival pigment print
September 18, 2025
Presented by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women's Studies Research Center at the Kniznick Gallery, enjoy a live performance of Sephardic music by Brooklyn based guitarist, composer, and educator Ira Klein, and a final experience with Becky Behar’s Tu Ke Bivas.
"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." - Becky Behar
September 18, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
Cosponsored by the Brandeis University Alumni Association
Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp 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, 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. 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.
September 10, 2025
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.
September 10, 2025
Sponsored by the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis Hillel, Brandeis Orthodox Organization, Masorti Social Group, and the Jewish Feminist Association of Brandeis, with support of the Ratner Fund.
Join the Tauber Institute for another installment of its Author Conversations, this time featuring Noa Shashar, author of The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850, in conversation with ChaeRan Freeze, Brandeis University. Noa Shashar's The Marital Knot was published by the Brandeis University Press in the Tauber Institute Series and the HBI Series in Gender, Culture, Religion and Law.
September 8, 2025
Open House
We invite everyone to join us for an Open House, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm, to share a bite to eat, meet the HBI community and hear about our plans for the year. Dietary laws will be observed.
"Jewish College Students Reflect on Israel-Gaza and Campus Polarization", a conversation with Jonathan Krasner, PhD, and Cheryl Weiner, PhD
Directly following the Open House, join HBI for a conversation with Jonathan Krasner and Cheryl Weiner. They will present insights from their research, Between Home and Homeland: Jewish College Students Confront the Israel-Gaza Conflict and Campus Divides, which explores how Jewish American college students responded to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the Israel-Gaza war, and the evolving climate on U.S. campuses through the lenses of race, class and gender.
Jonathan Krasner is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Chair of Jewish Education Research at Brandeis University. Cheryl Weiner, PhD, is the Engagement Specialist at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.
Becky Behar, "L'Dor V'Dor, (From Generation to Generation)", Archival pigment print
September 4, 2025
Presentation Dates: September 4 to September 18, 2025 | Kniznick Gallery
Join HBI and the Women's Studies Research Center for the opening reception of photographer Becky Behar's Tu Ke Bivas, 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." - Becky Behar
Hannah Altman, Yad (You), 2023, Archival pigment print, 25 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the artist
June 8, 2025
Kniznick Gallery, 515 South Street, Waltham, MA
Join Hannah Altman for a celebratory closing of As It Were, Suspended in Midair. Meet the artist, visit with friends, and tour the exhibition before it closes on Thursday, June 12.
June 8, 2025
In partnership with JCC Greater Boston and Hadassah Boston
This compilation of captivating stories from Jewish brides in 83 countries and 6 continents will introduce you to far-flung places, rituals and traditions that may be completely unknown to you. Written by brides, their relatives, clergy and others, their stories reveal the commonalities and differences across the Jewish diaspora, from courtship and betrothal to pre-wedding customs, the wedding ceremony and beyond. Barbara Vinick, Ph.D., a past HBI Research Associate and co-editor together with HBI founding director Shulamit Reinharz, Ph.D., will share stories from the book accompanied by a slide show of evocative and moving photos.
Barbara Vinick is a sociologist, author and editor of several anthologies on aspects of Jewish life around the world. She is secretary of Kulanu, an organization that supports isolated and emerging Jewish communities around the world. Kulanu has allowed Vinick access to Jewish communities worldwide, many remote and little-known.
Book cover art: Israeli artist Andi Arnovitz's "Coat of the Agunot" (2010), a composition of hundreds of shredded marriage certificates. Image: Noa Shashar, Ph.D.
May 14, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
Cosponsored by The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis University
The Marital Knot, Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850 tells the family stories of men and women who lived hundreds of years ago. Focusing on agunot, literally “chained women”, who were often considered a marginal group, it sheds light on Jewish family life in the early modern era and on the activity of poskim, rabbis who gave Jewish legal rulings related to agunot.
Noa Shashar earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in Jewish and Gender Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Shashar is a lecturer at the Sapir Academic College and the author of several volumes including Not on Bread Alone: The Krell Murachovski Family Histories.
The Marital Knot is a Brandeis University Press publication in the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion, and Law, created under the auspices of HBI in conjunction with its Project on Gender, Culture, Religion, and the Law, and The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry.
Images of nine resisters from the book, “Heroines, Rescuers, Rabbis, Spies: Unsung Women of the Holocaust”, by Sarah Silberstein Swartz, z”l. Design by Karin Rosenthal.
April 24, 2025
Dedicated in memory of Sarah Silberstein Swartz, z”l
This event for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, examined the framework we use for understanding resistance and challenged how we think of resistance in the Holocaust to include women and a feminist perspective. A panel with speakers presented on different aspects of resistance followed by a discussion. Speakers included four members of the HBI Holocaust Research Study Group: Karen Frostig, a public memory artist, Debra Kaufman, a sociologist, Ornit Barkai, a documentary filmmaker, and Ellie Kellman, who presented on behalf of her late wife, Sarah Silberstein Swartz, z”l, a writer and memoirist who recently passed away.
After a short break, we screened the powerful documentary, Resistance - They Fought Back, and followed with a talkback with Paula S. Apsell, Resistance co-director.
The recording below is an excerpt of the program in which Sarah Silberstein Swartz's presentation is read by Ellie Kellman, Sarah's wife and Brandeis University Associate Professor of Yiddish.
April 3, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series in partnership with The Jewish Library of Baltimore
The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai, written from 1864-1865 in the antebellum South, charts Mordecai’s daily life and her evolving perspective on Confederate nationalism and Southern identity, Jewishness, women’s roles in wartime, gendered domestic roles in slave-owning households, and more. While never losing sight of the racist social and political structures that shaped Emma Mordecai’s world, The Civil War Diary provides a vivid look at the wartime experiences of a Jewish woman in the Confederate South.
Dr. Dianne Ashton was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and World Religions at Rowan University. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including Hanukkah in America: A History and Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America.
Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and the Coordinator of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Rowan University. She is the author of five books, including Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940, which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies. Klapper is a past HBI Scholar in Residence (2007, 2023) and the recipient of two HBI Research Awards. She completed this book during her residency in 2023.
Colleagues at Rowan, Ashton was a mentor to Klapper long before they ended up at the same university. When Ashton passed away during the writing of this book in 2022, Klapper decided to finish the project. Read 'The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai': Rowan historian completes late colleague’s book focusing on Jewish life in the South (Dec. 2024).
March 31, 2025
Moderated by Maia Lefferman, Brandeis ‘25
In the spirit of Passover and the contemporary retelling of Jewish stories, photographer Hannah Altman joined online storytelling sensation Miriam Anzovin in conversation to share their processes of harnessing the power of narrative using their unique voices. Anzovin used Altman's photographs as Jewish “text” to encounter and guided us on a tour of some images in HBI's current exhibit, Hannah Altman, As It Were, Suspended in Midair, highlighting lesser known female stories she found within.
Cosponsored by Brandeis Hillel, JFAB: Jewish Feminist Association of Brandeis, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the Jewish Arts Collaborative.
March 31, 2025
HBI Seminar Series
Dr. Adrienne Krone, Allegheny College, HBI Scholar in Residence
In this talk, Dr. Krone examined the Toronto-based Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs “Community Supported Beekeeping" initiative to demonstrate the innovative blending of Jewish ethical teachings and sustainable practices that the women-led Shoresh staff use to address the challenge of an environmental crisis. She also analyzed this Jewish pollinator repopulation program as an example of the tendency of women-led Jewish community farming organizations to prioritize sustainability and community engagement in their Jewish environmental work.
Dr. Adrienne Krone is Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability and Religious Studies at Allegheny College. She has a Ph.D. in American religion from Duke University, and her research focuses on religious food justice movements in North America.
March 24, 2025
HBI Seminar Series
Dr. Nehama HaCohen, Achva Academic College, HBI Helen Gartner Hammer Scholar in Residence
Nehama HaCohen's talk explored the intersection of language, cultural norms, and psychological frameworks within Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and addressed the unique challenges in identifying and addressing cases of sexual abuse, where the language of ḥeseḏ (kindness) and the language of passion are often conflated. Through her research, HaCohen examines how this misidentification can hinder appropriate responses and explore culturally sensitive approaches to therapy and intervention.
Dr. HaCohen is a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of sexual trauma and culturally sensitive psychotherapy. She is a faculty member at Achva Academic College in Israel where she leads a research lab focused on multicultural identities. HaCohen also lectures in the psychology program at Bar-Ilan University.
March 20, 2025
This artist talk and book launch celebrated Hannah Altman's solo exhibition in the Kniznick Gallery, As It Were, Suspended in Midair, and the March 2025 release of her book, We Will Return to You (Saint Lucy Books). Altman was joined in conversation by photographer and scholar Mark Alice Durant, publisher and editor of Saint Lucy Books.
March 17, 2025
Last year, Hebrew Union College provided new diplomas of ordination and graduation because the ones originally issued were now considered seriously problematic either because they had been signed by abusive faculty members or were written in gendered language. The college provided ceremonies and created liturgies for the decommissioning of the old document and receiving the new one. Inspired by this recent practice, and in light of accumulated Jewish feminist wisdom, how might couples address the traditional (and often beautiful) ketubot signed at the time of their weddings if these documents are now considered (from any number of perspectives) problematic?
Rabbi Vanessa Ochs, Ph.D., an ethnographer of Jewish practice and material culture, is Professor Emeritus in the UVA Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program. In '23-'24, she was the Rabbi Sally Priesand Visiting Professor at the HUC/JIR Rabbinical Schools. Her recent books include The Passover Haggadah: A Biography, Inventing Jewish Ritual (winner of a National Jewish Book Award) and Sarah Laughed.
March 16, 2025
A JCC Greater Boston program in partnership with Lev Women’s Leadership Circle, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Hadassah Boston, Jewish Women's Archive, and Keshet
Moderated by HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe
A special screening of A Feminist Lens: The Art and Activism of Photographer Joan Roth. The film is an intimate portrait of internationally acclaimed photographer and photojournalist Joan Roth, whose work has spanned over five decades. From Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug in the 70s to the Women’s March in 2017, from the plight of homeless women to the Jews of Ethiopia and the diverse lives of Jewish women globally, Roth uses her lens to affect change for women who wouldn’t otherwise be seen. An insightful panel discussion featuring Joan along with the filmmakers followed the screening.
March 12, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
Cosponsored by Jofa, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
Winner of the 74th National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies (Barbara Dobkin Award)
Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel tells the story of the impact of orthodox feminism in modern day Israel and offers incisive analysis of the possibilities for change in the future. It is a ray of hope as Israel faces a new and complex set of challenges. Holy Rebellion is a Brandeis University Press publication in the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion, and Law created under the auspices of HBI.
Dr. Ronit Irshai is Associate Professor and the head of the gender studies department at Bar Ilan University, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a member in the board of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, and a member of “Kolech” – a religious feminist forum.
Dr. Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Assistant Professor at the Seymour Fox School of Education at Hebrew University, is a gender scholar, feminist activist and mother of four. Zion-Waldoks is fascinated by the intersection of religion, gender, and politics, with a focus on education and social change. Her current research explores feminist activism and women’s political subjectivities in religious communities or traditional contexts in Israel, examined through qualitative studies with a comparative lens.
March 9, 2025
In observance of International Women's Day, HBI was honored to host Samira K. Mehta, Ph.D. as the 2025 Diane Markowicz Memorial Lecture on Gender and Human Rights guest speaker. Dr. Mehta is Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she currently serves as the Director of Jewish Studies. Read more about Samira K. Mehta.
In the middle of the 20th century, Protestants, Jews, and even some Catholics were in an alliance to expand birth control access to American women. Religious leaders joined medical authorities to make birth control respectable. Yet these efforts to expand access sometimes found these same leaders distancing themselves from the birth control movement’s feminist underpinnings. In this talk, Professor Mehta showed how the mainstreaming of birth control in the middle of the 20th century has more in common than one might expect with the family values rhetoric that would limit reproductive rights in the late 20th and early 21st century.
The Diane Markowicz Memorial Lecture Series was created by Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law founder Sylvia Neil and her husband Dan Fischel in memory of Sylvia’s late sister, Diane Markowicz, to honor her commitment to gender equality and social justice.
March 6, 2025
This was an inspiring afternoon of art and exploration across Brandeis University! We began our journey at the Kniznick Gallery with an artist-guided tour of Hannah Altman’s As It Were, Suspended in Midair. Drawing from Yiddish literature and Jewish mystical texts, Altman situates her female protagonists in lush landscapes and fraught interiors where sunlit gestures and ritual objects foreshadow abundance and danger. Her evocative photographs recast and transform Jewish folklore toward the world ahead.
From there, we walked together to the Rose Art Museum to experience the complex and visionary work of Leonora Carrington (1917–2011). Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver, the artist’s first-ever museum exhibition in New England, brings together over 30 works of art, some rarely seen, that span over six decades of Carrington’s prolific art-making career. Carrington’s compositions and imagery—inspired by biography, folklore, mysticism, religions, myths, and the occult—take us on multidimensional journeys that seek to unravel the world’s most profound mysteries.
March 4, 2025
HBI Seminar Series
Dr. Jordan Katz, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, HBI Scholar in Residence
Jordan Katz’s current project examines the delivery records kept by Jewish midwives in eighteenth-century Europe. In this lecture, Katz explored the paths that midwives took to pursue training and licensure, the populations they served, and the larger urban contexts in which they worked. By keeping records and engaging in municipal business, Jewish midwives became part of larger recordkeeping efforts as well. Katz's work reflects on what we can learn from these records about the diverse Jewish communities that populated 18th-century Europe.
Katz is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Katz has received fellowships from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine; the Center for Jewish History, and the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her work has been published in JJewish Quarterly Review, Jewish Social Studies, and in Be Fruitful! The Etrog in Jewish Art, Culture, and History. As a scholar in residence at HBI, Katz is completing her current book project, Delivering Knowledge: Jewish Midwives and Hidden Healing in Early Modern Europe.
March 3, 2025
Winner of the 74th National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies (Barbara Dobkin Award)
Co-sponsored by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, this event celebrated the launch of Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel with a panel about feminisms across Abrahamic traditions. Panelists: Alex Kaye, Celene Ibrahim, and Rev. Laura Everett in conversation with Holy Rebellion authors Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks. Moderator: Lisa Fishbayn Joffe.
Holy Rebellion is a Brandeis University Press publication in the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion, and Law. Created under the auspices of HBI in conjunction with its Project on Gender, Culture, Religion, and the Law, this series emphasizes cross-cultural and interdisciplinary scholarship concerning Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and other religious traditions.
February 26, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
Inspired by a true story, We Would Never is a gripping mystery, an intimate family drama, and a provocative exploration of loyalty, betrayal, and the blurred line between protecting and forsaking the ones we love most.
Tova Mirvis, a former HBI Scholar in Residence and Research Award recipient, is the author of the memoir The Book of Separation as well as three novels, Visible City, The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller.
We Would Never is available widely.
February 24, 2025
Dr. Noa Lea Cohn, Efrata College, HBI Scholar in Residence
HBI Seminar Series
Dr. Noa Lea Cohn explores how Orthodox Jewish women in Israel represent and perceive themselves through contemporary art. These works navigate the boundaries of tradition and modernity, reflecting personal and communal identities and contributing to the broader field of Jewish art. From visual arts, video art to comics, these artists employ cultural critique, visual storytelling, and humor to challenge convention.
Dr. Cohn specializes in creative education for women at Efrata College in Jerusalem and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mofet Institute. She currently serves as the manager of ArtShelterGallery, the first gallery established in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. At HBI, Cohn is investigating the cultural and religious tensions among Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox women comic artists. This pioneering work addresses an understudied area in the art world, contributing new scholarship in this burgeoning field.
Hannah Altman, "Plagues", 2024, Archival pigment print, 24 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
February 13, 2025
Exhibition Dates: February 13 - June 12 | Kniznick Gallery, Brandeis University
February 13 opening reception cosponsored by Jewish Women's Archive.
In As It Were, Suspended in Midair, Hannah Altman’s photographs examine how Jewish myths are shared, inherited, and reshaped across the diaspora. Altman draws from Yiddish literature and Jewish mystical texts as she situates her female protagonists in lush landscapes and fraught interiors. Animated by sunlight, their postures, gestures, environments, and ritual objects foreshadow abundance and danger. Their mere presence threatens dominant narratives grounded in patriarchal tradition. Layering symbols and allusions, Altman builds a world that recasts and transforms Jewish ritual and folklore toward the world ahead.
Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey and based in Boston. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her photographs portray lineage, folklore, memory, and narrative. Her work has been exhibited at major museums and galleries. Her first photobook Kavana (2020, Kris Graves Projects) is housed in permanent collections including the MoMa Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J Watson Library. Her new monograph, We Will Return to You (2025) is published by Saint Lucy Books.
Visit HBI Arts Programs for more information and additional exhibition events.
February 10, 2025
HBI Seminar Series
Dr. Rachel Perry, University of Haifa, HBI Scholar in Residence
Rachel Perry’s current project examines graphic albums and artwork created by Jewish women survivors of the Holocaust. She is particularly interested in the perspective of gender and how it impacted and shaped early Holocaust research institutions and artistic initiatives. At HBI, Perry is working on her manuscript which will consist of six chapters, one on each survivor artists: Ágnes Lukács, Edith Bán Kiss, Elżbieta Nadel, Regina Lichter-Liron, Zofia Rosenstrauch, and Luba Krugman Gurdus.
Perry teaches in the Weiss-Livnat Graduate Program for Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa. Her research straddles the fields of art history, visual culture, and Holocaust studies, focusing on the representation and memory of the Holocaust in the immediate postwar period and questions of ethics, exhibition design, and cultural diplomacy. She is the recipient of fellowships from EHRI, the Getty, the Center for Advanced Studies in Visual Arts, Yad Vashem, the Dedalus Foundation, and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.
January 22, 2025
Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
HBI is honored to have supported Kerry Wallach’s research on this with a 2019 HBI Research Award.
Graphic artist, illustrator, painter, and cartoonist Rahel Szalit (1888–1942) was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. Highly regarded by art historians and critics of her day, she made a name for herself with soulful, sometimes humorous illustrations of Jewish and world literature by Sholem Aleichem, Heinrich Heine, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, and others. After she was arrested by the French police and then murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz, she was all but lost to history, and most of her paintings have been destroyed or gone missing.
Wallach used primary and secondary sources, including the “Szalit recovery team,” her colleagues and institutions in seven countries around the world, to give us a powerfully moving account of a feminist Jewish artist, illustrator, painter, and writer who had fallen through the cracks of historic memory. Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit recovers Szalit’s life and presents a stunning collection of her art.