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Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series

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Want to explore Jewish women's lives through new and thought-provoking literary fiction, memoir and more? Want to connect first hand with those who create it? The Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series, dedicated in honor of our beloved Conversations friend, Sandy Silberman, z"l, brings us together to share stories that explore the diversity of Jewish women's experiences across the world from yesterday and today.

"When I first read your book, I was inspired by your story and your writing. Listening to you describe some of your experiences personally yesterday was a treat, and added even more depth to your story for me." — Rabbi Beth Naditch, sharing her thoughts with a HBI Conversations author

We encourage you to purchase the books, read in advance, and bring your thoughts and questions to discuss with our authors.

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What types of books are selected?

We select both literary fiction and nonfiction, including memoirs, biographies and scholarly essays. These include research supported by HBI, whether written by HBI Scholars-in-Residence or recipients of HBI research awards, and books published in the HBI Series on Jewish Women. All of our books will focus on themes related to Jews and gender.

See a partial list of authors who have participated in the HBI Conversations Program.

Which authors are joining the Sandra Seltzer Silberman Conversations Series this year? When are the events?

This year's Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series is now concluded.

Thank you for joining the Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series this year. We hope you found these discussions thought-provokving and meaningful. Missed any programs? View all of our recorded HBI Converations Series events in the tab below (Where can I watch recordings of past events?).

We look forward to sharing next year's schedule with you soon!

2024-2025 Authors

Noa Shashar

The Marital Knot, Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850

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May 2025

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.

The Marital Knot is available from the Brandeis University Press, Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.

Melissa R. Klapper with Dianne Ashton, z"l

The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai

In partnership with The Jewish Library of Baltimore

April 2025

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.

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.

Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and the Coordinator of the Women's & 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 mentored Klapper long before they ended up at the same university. When Ashton passed away during the writing of this book in 2022, Klapper, as a friend, colleague and historian, completed and published the work so that this important diary entered the historical record. Read 'The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai': Rowan historian completes late colleague’s book focusing on Jewish life in the South (Dec. 2024).

Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks

Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel

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March 2025

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.

Tova Mirvis

We Would Never

February 2025

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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.

Kerry Wallach

Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit

January 2025

HBI is honored to have supported Kerry Wallach’s research 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 and, the “Szalit recovery team,” her colleagues and institutions in seven countries around the world, give us a powerfully moving account of a feminist Jewish artist, illustrator, painter, and writer who had fallen through the cracks of historic memory. This biography recovers Szalit’s life and presents a stunning collection of her art.

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, and your local bookseller.

Jay Prosser

Loving Strangers: A Camphorwood Chest, A Legacy, A Son Returns

December 2024

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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. Professor 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).

Loving Strangers is available at Amazon, Blackwell's (with free shipping to the US), Bookshop, and your local bookseller.

Ayelet Tsabari

Songs for the Brokenhearted

*National Jewish Book Award Winner for Fiction and Association of Jewish Libraries Jewish Fiction Award*

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.

Francine Klagsbrun

Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream

September 2024

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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.