Current Authors
Francine Klagsbrun, Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream
September 2024
Award-winning author Francine Klagsbrun reveals the complex life and work of Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah and a Zionist trailblazer. In her work with Hadassah, Szold used a combined ethical and pragmatic approach aimed at improving the lives of both Jews and Arabs. She later moved to Mandate Palestine to help shape education, health, and social services there. The pinnacle of her career came in her 70s, when she took on the task of directing the Youth Aliyah program, which rescued thousands of young people from the Nazis and resettled them in Palestine.
Using Szold’s copious letters, diaries, essays, and more, Klagsbrun traces Szold’s life and legacy with an eye to uncovering the person behind the Zionist icon. She reveals Szold as a complex human being who had to cope with controversy and criticism, a workaholic with an outsized sense of duty, and an idealist who fought for her beliefs even as she questioned her own abilities.
Francine Klagsbrun is the author of numerous books, including the award-winning Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel.
Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.
Ayelet Tsabari, Songs for the Brokenhearted
November 2024
Award-winning Israeli author Ayelet Tsabari joins HBI to discuss her debut novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted, which explores the experience of contemporary Yemeni Israeli women, the art of Yemeni women’s music, and the terrible legacy of the Yemenite babies’ affair. Tsabari is the author of the memoir The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, the story collection The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction.
Songs for the Brokenhearted is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.
This event was recorded and shared with registrants. It is not be available to view on the HBI website.
Jay Prosser, Loving Strangers: A Camphorwood Chest, A Legacy, A Son Returns
December 11, 2024
12:30 pm EST | Online
Loving Strangers is Jay Prosser’s search for belonging and identity through a unique family and historical archive. In this memoir of his mother and grandmother, Prosser explores the rich history and complex understanding of intermarriage in the Singaporean Jewish community, exploring his family’s roots in China and amongst Baghdadi Jews from India. Jay Prosser teaches and researches at the Centre for Jewish Studies and the School of English at the University of Leeds. Loving Strangers was winner of the Hazel Rowley Prize (US, 2020) and shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize (UK, 2019).
Prosser’s “...odyssey to reclaim his Jewish identity through the memorabilia of his mother’s complex family history is both moving and compelling. A shimmering memoir of love’s work, healing for our fractured times.” — Nancy K. Miller, Author of What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past
Loving Strangers is available at Amazon, Bookshop, Blackwell's (with free shipping to the US), and your local bookseller.
This event will be recorded and shared with registrants.
Kerry Wallach, Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit
January 22, 2025
7 pm EST | Online
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.
Kerry Wallach is Professor and Chair of German Studies and an affiliate of the Jewish Studies Program at Gettysburg College.
Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit is available at Amazon, Bookshop, Penn State University Press (30% off with code NR24), and your local bookseller.
This event will be recorded and shared with registrants.
Tova Mirvis, We Would Never
February 26, 2025
4 pm EST Hybrid: In-Person at HBI/Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall and Online
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.
“We Would Never is utterly spellbinding. Mirvis has written a knockout exploration of the ways people shape and misshape their lives through anger, and the lines people never believe they'll cross until they do.”—Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink
Tova Mirvis, a former HBI Scholar in Residence, 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 now for pre-order. For those attending at HBI, books will be available for purchase and signing at the event or pre-order now and bring it to the event for signing.
This event will be recorded and shared with registrants.