Events
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All of HBI’s events are free and open to the public. HBI is pleased to participate in the Mass Cultural Council’s Card to Culture Program.
Upcoming Events
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
12:15-5:15 pm (EDT) | Hybrid | In person at HBI, Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall and Online
Dedicated in memory of Sarah Silberstein Swartz, z”l
This event for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, will examine the framework we use for understanding resistance and challenge how we think of resistance in the Holocaust to include women and a feminist perspective.
We will have a panel with speakers presenting on different aspects of resistance followed by a discussion. Speakers include 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 a presenter speaking on behalf of Sarah Silberstein Swartz, z”l, a writer and memoirist who recently passed away.
After a short break, we will screen Resistance - They Fought Back and follow with a talkback with Paula S. Apsell, Resistance co-director, facilitated by and in discussion with Karen Frostig, Professor of Art at Lesley University and Affiliated Scholar at the Women Studies Research Center.
Register to join at HBI.
Register to join online.
Book jacket art: Israeli artist Andi Arnovitz's "Coat of the Agunot" (2010), a composition of hundreds of shredded marriage certificates. Image: Dr. Noa Shashar
May 14, 2025
12:30 pm EDT | Online
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.
Dr. 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.
