Events
View our past events page to watch recorded 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
Susan Chen, Free Tampax, 2023, Ceramics Installation, Tampax Box: 6” W x 7” D x 7.5” H Free Sign: 3” W x 3” D x 2.25” H
Art Exhibition
November 2 to December 14, 2023
Kniznick Gallery, Epstein Building, 515 South Street, Waltham
An ambitious, multidisciplinary exhibition that looks at abortion and reproductive justice through the lens of faith, bringing Jewish feminist artists into dialogue with artists from other faith communities and backgrounds. Curated by Caron Tabb, Deeply Rooted brings together 21 national and international artists working in sculpture, photography, painting, fiber, and video.
View the Deeply Rooted exhibition catalog online.
Gallery Hours: Monday-Wednesday: 10 am-4 pm, Thursday: 10 am-8 pm, Friday: 10 am-1 pm, Sunday: 11 am-3 pm. To arrange a private tour or for more information, please contact Amy Powell, HBI Assistant Director.
Supported by grants from Combined Jewish Philanthropies/CJP and the Mass Cultural Council.
December 7, 2023
12:30-1:30 pm ET / Online
Jewish women and Jewish clergy have played an important role in the struggle for reproductive rights, both before and after Roe and Dobbs. Moderated by HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe and joined by Becca Rausch, Massachusetts State Senator, Melissa Klapper, historian and current HBI Scholar in Residence, Daphne Lazar Price, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) Executive Director, and Lara Crawford, National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) MA, we will explore the history of Jewish women's activism for reproductive rights and the various forms advocacy is taking in the present moment with a look at the recent and devastating rupture in coalition-building caused by the failure of many sister feminist groups and national and global women’s and children’s advocacy groups to condemn Hamas' massacre of Israeli men, women, children and babies in Southern Israel on October 7th.
JOFA's Daphne Lazar Price recently wrote about this: I believed diverse coalitions would benefit Jewish women. Now I fear we were all alone, JTA, 11/27/23.
Supported by grants from Combined Jewish Philanthropies/CJP and the Mass Cultural Council.
Left: Roya Amigh, A Line of Speed and Fire [Khatti ze Sor'at va Atash, 1980], 2022, paper, thread, lace, and pieces of cloth and mirror, 34 x 31 x 6 in. Photo by Elizabeth Ellenwood. Right: Dell M. Hamilton, Deeply Rooted After Dobbs, 2023, Tulle, thread, finger cots, acrylic paint, anatomical pelvis, synthetic hair, Dimensions variable. Photo by Elizabeth Ellenwood.
December 11, 2023
12 pm - 1:15 pm ET / Hybrid
In-Person at the Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall, Kniznick Gallery and online.
Deeply Rooted: Faith in Reproductive Justice artists Dell Marie Hamilton and Roya Amigh share their practices and join Guest Curator Caron Tabb in conversation.
Artist, writer and curator, Dell Marie Hamilton makes work that examines the diasporic, fragmented, and syncretic nature of the human condition at the intersection of race, gender, power, language, memory, and identity. She has performed extensively throughout the Boston and New England area including at the MFA/Boston, the Clark Art Institute, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2019, she was a participating artist in the Havana Biennial and is a recipient of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize. Her interdisciplinary practice encompasses live performance, painting, drawing, installation, video, and photography. Her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Art in America and NKA: Contemporary Journal of African Art. She also works on a variety of research, editorial and curatorial projects at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Using fragmentation to encourage viewers to reflect on the body and its most intimate parts, Iranian artist Roya Amigh raises questions about identity and social history through the lens of gender and sexuality. Amigh earned her MFA in painting from Boston University in 2012. Amigh has shown in academic and public venues from Korea to Greece to the U.S., including Brooklyn; Boston; Lincoln, Nebraska; New York City; Providence; and Wellesley, Mass. She has had residencies at MacDowell, Art Omi, MASS MoCA, and The Millay Colony for the Arts, among other places. She was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Drawing and Printmaking in 2020 and a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2022.
Supported by grants from Combined Jewish Philanthropies/CJP and the Mass Cultural Council.
Register here to join in person.
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.