JTA: A groundbreaking project aims to study the Latin American Jewish experience

HBI Scholar Dalia Wassner (center) with her HBI Gilda Slifka Summer Interns Gina Malagold (left) and Gabriela Bucay.

The Hadassah Brandeis Institute Project in Latin American Jewish & Gender Studies (LAJGS) is a pioneering initiative for the study and exploration of Jewish life and gender in Latin America (Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean) and among Latin American Jewish immigrants worldwide. Read this JTA story about the project, in which Dalia Wassner, a Jewish studies scholar who was raised in the United States and Mexico, explains that the stories of Latin American Jews have been less visible in academic research than those of Jews from other parts of the diaspora. This is also the first initiative to apply the lens of gender in looking at the lives of Latin American Jews, she tells the JTA.

Menachem Bandel '18, who worked with Wassner as an undergraduate, told the JTA, “The Latin Jews were kind of forgotten. No one knew about them. People didn’t even know you could speak Spanish and be Jewish at the same time. That to me was pretty mind-blowing.”

Read more about the project.