Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

Current Authors

On the left, an image of the book cover: a small boy in a brown cap, holding onto his parent, as seen from behind; on the right, an image of author Jennifer Rosner, a woman with short brown hair wearing a scarf Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series Featuring Jennifer Rosner, author of Once We Were Home

September 2023 

watch here

Author Jennifer Rosner joins HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe in conversation about Rosner's beautifully evocative and tender novel, Once We Were Home, which reveals the little-known post-War history of Jewish children who were hidden during the Holocaust. Based on true stories, this heart-wrenching novel raises questions of complicity and responsibility, belonging and identity, good intentions and unforeseen consequences, as it confronts what it really means to find home.

In addition to Once We Were Home, Jennifer Rosner is the author of The Yellow Bird Sings, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award; the memoir If A Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard, an inclusion in the Reuben/Rifkin Jewish Women Writers Series, a former joint project of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and The Feminist Press; and a children's book, The Mitten String, which is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable.

HBI is a network member of the Jewish Book Council.

Once We Were Home is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.

Left: book cover of "The Weavers" with a gray and black woven image and the title, and photo of Janine Holc; on the right: Book cover of "Jewish Families" showing an image of a family walking away, with a photo of Joanna Michlic Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series: "Jewish Girls and Women in Forced Labor in the Holocaust" Featuring Author Janine Holc in Conversation with Joanna Michlic

October 2023

watch here

An in depth conversation between noted scholars Janine Holc, author of The Weavers of Trautenau: Female Jewish Forced Labor in the Holocaust (2023) and Joanna Michlic, HBI Research Associate and Editor, Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present: History, Representation, and Memory (2017), about the impact of World War II and the Holocaust on Jewish families and communities, especially the lives of women and girls. Both works are publications in the HBI Series on Jewish Women. 

The Weavers of Trautenau is available at Brandeis University Press, Amazon, and your local bookseller.

Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present is available at Brandeis University Press, Amazon, and your local bookseller.

Logo with circular image which states "Celebrating Brandeis at 75"

On the left: an image of the book cover which is blue with white and blue beads in a wave pattern; on the right: the author is a woman with long black hair, wearing a red beret and a black top.Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series Featuring Lea Taragin-Zeller, author of The State of Desire: Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land 

November 2023

watch here

Anthropologist Lea Taragin-Zeller joins HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe in conversation about Taragin-Zeller's work, The State of Desire: Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land. In this groundbreaking anthropological approach to the study of religion and reproduction, Taragin-Zeller investigates the impact of recent Israeli state policies attempting to dissuade Orthodox Jews from creating large families. Utilizing interviews to provide an intimate account of the delicate balance between personal desires and those of the state, Taragin-Zeller takes the reader beyond Orthodox taboos, capturing how cracks in religious convictions engender a painful process of re-orientating desires to reproduce amidst shrinking public support, feminism, and new ideals of romance, intimacy and parenting. 

Lea Taragin-Zeller (she/her) is a cultural anthropologist with expertise in religion, medicine, gender, and reproductive politics. She is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Public Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the HBI Academic Advisory Committee.

The State of Desire is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.

Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI A photo of Julia Watts Belser, a white Jewish woman wearing a red blazer and crocheted kippah, sitting in her wheelchair and an image of the book cover for Loving Our Own Bones, a golden yellow cover with tree branches and leaves. Conversations Series Featuring Julia Watts Belser, Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole   

January 24, 2024 / 7:00 pm ET (online); ASL Interpreted / Zoom Captioned

Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser joins HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe in conversation about Watts Belser’s Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. In Loving Our Own Bones, Watts Belser paints a luminous portrait of what it means to be disabled and one of God's beloved, delving deeply into sacred literature and braiding the insights of disabled, feminist, Black, and queer thinkers with her own experiences as a queer disabled Jewish feminist. What unfolds is a profound gift of disability wisdom, a radical act of spiritual imagination that can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with each other and with our bodies.

Julia Watts Belser (she/her) is a professor of Jewish Studies at Georgetown University, core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies program, and a member of the HBI Academic Advisory Committee whose research centers on gender, sexuality, and disability in rabbinic literature.

Loving Our Own Bones is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.

Register Here to Join

Additional Authors Forthcoming