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
September 19, 2024
HBI Seminar Series with Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar
4-5 pm / In-Person at HBI | Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall
Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar, Sapir Academic College, Sderot, Israel, HBI Research Associate, HBI Scholar in Residence (2011-12), HBI Research Award recipient (2013, 2020)
The Pennsylvanian Old Order Amish and Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities have typically been associated with strict religious observance, a renunciation of worldly things, and an obedience of women to men. Women’s relationship to media in these communities, however, betrays a more nuanced picture. In Strictly Observant, Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar finds that that these Amish and ultra-Orthodox women regularly establish valuable social, cultural, and religious capital through the countless decisions for use and nonuse of media that they make in their daily lives, and in doing so, challenge the gender hierarchies of each community.
Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar is currently a Ruth Melzer Fellow at Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an HBI Research Associate. In Israel, she is a scholar at the Israel Democracy Institute and a senior lecturer at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, where she teaches courses on research methods, communication, religion, and gender. Strictly Observant: Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women Negotiating Media is available at Rutgers University Press (book purchase 30% OFF + free shipping Code: RUSA30), Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller. Books will also be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Co-sponsored by the Brandeis Seminar on Contemporary Jewish Life.
Please stay on after the talk for HBI’s Fall Open House, from 5 pm to 6:30 pm, to share a bite to eat, meet the HBI community and hear about our plans for the year.
September 19, 2024
5-6:30 pm / In-Person at HBI
We invite everyone to join us for an Open House, from 5 pm to 6:30 pm, to share a bite to eat, meet the HBI community and hear about our plans for the year. Dietary laws will be observed.
Questions? Contact Amy Powell, Senior Assistant Director of HBI.
September 27, 2024
11 am-12 pm EDT / In person and online
Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall, Epstein Building, 515 South Street, Waltham, MA on the Brandeis Campus
Featuring a panel discussion on "Jewish Feminism in Scholarship, Theology and Practice," with Prof. Lori Lefkovitz '77, Susan Weidman Schneider '65, and Betsy Platkin Teutsch '74. Each of these women did pioneering work in the foregrounding of women in Jewish ritual and scholarship. This event will also include a small display from the Jewish Feminism collections in the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections.
Read more about our panelists.
Cosponsors: Brandeis University Alumni Weekend, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections
Photo Credit: Francine Klagsbrun photo by Joan Roth
September 30, 2024
12:30 pm EDT | Online
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, and 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. She has been a columnist for Jewish Week and Moment, is a contributing editor to Lilith, and is on the editorial board of Hadassah Magazine. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, Ms. magazine, and other national publications.
Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream is available at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.
This event will be recorded and shared with registrants. It will also be available to view on HBI’s website.
October 22, 2024
7-8:30 pm | In-Person, International Lounge, Usdan Student Center, Brandeis University
Rabbi Vanessa Ochs
Immediately after October 7th, new and complex Jewish ritual responses emerged worldwide. Among the best known are the posting of images of the hostages, the installation of Empty Shabbat Tables, and the establishment of Hostage Square as a gathering space outside of the Tel Aviv Museum. Ethnographer Vanessa Ochs reflects on these and other new practices with attention to spontaneity, resiliency and collectivity. Rabbi Vanessa Ochs, Ph.D., an ethnographer of Jewish practice and material culture, is Professor Emeritus in the UVA Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program. In '23-'24, she was the Rabbi Sally Priesand Visiting Professor at the HUC/JIR Rabbinical Schools. Her recent books include The Passover Haggadah: A Biography, Inventing Jewish Ritual (winner of a National Jewish Book Award) and Sarah Laughed.
October 28, 2024
10:30 am EDT | Online
Tamar Biala, HBI Research Associate
Together we will read midrashim written by women from Kibbutzim Kfar Azza and Nir Oz, sharing their experiences from Oct. 7 and afterwards. We will also share midrashim written by other Israeli women from around the country that address issues of captivity, displacement. They all ask, “Where was God on October 7th?”
Tamar Biala is engaged with Jewish feminism as a writer and lecturer. Over the last decade she has published two volumes of midrashim written by contemporary Israeli women, Dirshuni — Midreshei Nashim (Yediot Acharonot, 2009, 2018); Volume 1 was co-edited with Nehama Weingarten-Mintz. The English edition of Dirshuni was published in June 2022.
November 13, 2024
12:30 pm EST | Online
The Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
Award-winning Israeli-Canadian 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.
“Ayelet Tsabari has written a gorgeous, gripping novel that asks layered questions about history and politics, nation and borders, even as it pays rapt attention to the fabric of daily life. Filled with unforgettable characters, each as flawed and fully human as the next, Songs for the Brokenhearted is a gift.”—Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantika
Songs for the Brokenhearted is available on September 10 at Amazon, Bookshop, and your local bookseller.
While this event will be recorded and shared with registrants, it will not be available to view on the HBI website.
Photo Credit: Family photo used with author's permission. Jay Prosser's photograph by Leslie Hakim-Dowek.
December 11, 2024
12:30 pm EST | Online
The Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series
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, Blackwell's (with free shipping to the US), and your local bookseller.
This event will be recorded and shared with registrants. It will also be available to view on HBI’s website.