Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

138 HBI Scholars in Residence and counting! The application for the 2025-26 academic year is now open. The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute offers outstanding scholars, writers, and artists the opportunity to be in residence at HBI and is open to those working on any aspect of Jewish women’s and gender studies in order to devote time to their research. Apply by February 7, 2025. Information: https://bit.ly/HBIScholar or scan the QR Code.

✨ FALL OPEN HOUSE at HBI ✨ This Thursday, 9/19, from 5-6:30 pm following HBI Seminar/Book Launch with Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar. Join us for one or both events! https://bit.ly/HBIEVENTS

We invite our local Boston community to attend the HBI Seminar and Book Launch with Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar this Thursday, 9/19, at HBI from 4-5 pm. Register for the seminar: https://bit.ly/HBIEVENTS. HBI's Fall Open House will follow this seminar, join us for one or both events!

About the Seminar: 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 of the boundaries at play and women’s roles in negotiating them.

In "Strictly Observant," Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar presents a compelling study of this dynamic, finding 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.

The 2025 HBI Research Award application closes next week on Sept. 18 →

The 2025 HBI Research Awards application is open! The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute awards grants to support research and artistic projects centered on Jewish women’s and gender studies. Awards are made to graduate students, early career, and established researchers. Apply by September 18. bit.ly/HBIResearchAwardInfo.

Musician and teacher Eliana Light joined HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe’s Jewish Feminisms class at Brandeis University earlier this week singing and speaking on innovations in sacred music and liturgy. Light, Brandeis class of 2013 and 2011 alum of the HBI Gilda Slifka Internship Program, envisions a joyful, vibrant, heart-centered Judaism that speaks to the soul and moves the spirit. Learn more about Eliana Light: https://www.elianalight.com

It's always the right time for a great book! 📚 Love to see these, especially Paula Birnbaum's Chana Orloff, Lilith Magazine's Frankly Feminist, and Carole Kessner's Marie Syrkin! cc: Susan Weidman Schneider and Yona Zeldis McDonough

Francine Klagsbrun, the award-winning author of "Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream," is our first author in this year's Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series. Join us on September 30th for this important conversation.

Join Hadassah-Brandeis Institute on 9/30 for an online discussion with Francine Klagsbrun, author of "Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream." Register now at https://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/programs/conversations/authors.html

Congratulations to Elizabeth Graver, Author on receiving the Massachusetts Center for the Book 2024 Massachusetts Book Award for her wonderful Sephardic family saga, KANTIKA! We're honored and delighted that Graver explored important research for KANTIKA during her residency at HBI, and then joined the Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series for a lovely discussion. Watch that conversation here: https://bit.ly/HBIConversations.

Drumroll please . . . We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2024 Mass Book Awards (a formidable & gorgeous batch of titles)! Take a gander at the full list at https://www.massbook.org/mass-book-awards

The 2025 HBI Research Awards application is open! The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute awards grants to support research and artistic projects centered on Jewish women’s and gender studies. Awards are made to graduate students, early career, and established researchers. Apply by September 18. bit.ly/HBIResearchAwardInfo.

✨Welcome to Fall & Upcoming Events: A Message from HBI Director Lisa Fishbayn Joffe✨

"People often think the summer is a quiet time, but for most academics, it is a hectic season filled with research, writing and meeting up at conferences. What a pleasure it was, this summer, to see and meet many HBI affiliates and research and travel grant recipients, at every stage of their careers, presenting new and exciting work..."

Read the full message: https://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/blog/index.html

We were delighted to speak with HBI founding director Shula Reinharz about “100 Jewish Brides” at the final event of last year’s Sandra Seltzer Silberman HBI Conversations Series. You can watch that special event at our website: https://bit.ly/HBIPastEvents. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! https://theconversation.com/each-jewish-couples-story-starts-long-before-the-wedding-and-so-does-the-celebration-of-their-life-together-230909 Shula Reinharz

Each Jewish couple’s story starts long before the wedding − and so does the celebration of their life together Jewish traditions to mark a marriage often involve ceremonies and celebrations before the big day, whether it’s a ritual bath or even a fiance’s conversion to Judaism.

Wonderful news about past HBI Gilda Slifka intern, (now) Rabbi Naima Hirsch Gelman!

We are so excited to welcome our new incoming students to JTS! Over the next weeks, we will be introducing you to a few new faces.

Based in Savannah, Georgia with her family, Rabbi Naima Hirsch Gelman will be an online MA student at the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education after receiving her rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Maharat. Her past experience as an educator includes teaching fifth graders about adversity in Jewish history, high schoolers about the power of ritual, and college students about approaches to Jewish sexuality. She is also a writer, and her poetry and prose have appeared in Lilith Magazine, The Lehrhaus, and Minyan Magazine, among others. We're excited to have Rabbi Hirsch Gelman join us!

Love to see this! In “Between Two Worlds,” the winner of two National Jewish Book Awards, Robin Judd shares how Jew­ish war brides like her grandmother floated between war bride, sur­vivor, and mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ties, nev­er ful­ly belong­ing to one or the oth­er.

HBI is honored to have awarded Prof. Judd an HBI Research Award for this work. The application for the 2025 HBI Research Awards is open now until September 18! https://bit.ly/HBIResearchAwards Jewish Book Council

Today is Tu B'Av! In celebration of this, we're returning to Robin Judd's BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: JEWISH WAR BRIDES AFTER THE HOLOCAUST, which won two National Jewish Book Awards. Judd's book offers a rare glimpse into the marriages of women who survived the Holocaust and married military personnel, including famed Ladino singer Flory Jagoda. Dig into the author's fascinating research below. (University of North Carolina Press)

✨Applications for the 2025 HBI Research Awards and the 2025-26 HBI Scholar in Residence Program are open!✨

HBI RESEARCH AWARDS: HBI awards grants to support research and artistic projects centered on Jewish women’s and gender studies. Awards are made to graduate students, early career, and established researchers. Apply by September 18, 2024: bit.ly/HBIResearchAwardInfo

HBI SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE: HBI offers outstanding scholars, writers and artists the opportunity to be in residence at HBI and is open to those working on any aspect of Jewish women’s and gender studies in order to devote time to their research. Apply by February 7, 2025: https://bit.ly/HBIScholar

Image: Words - Brandeis, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Celebrating HBI's 25 Years, HBI Applications Open. Image of notebooks with 2025-26 HBI Scholar in Residence Program and 2025 HBI Research Awards on the covers.

“We should remember Szalit not only out of a sense of obligation but also because the artworks themselves are unforgettable, just like the artist who created them.” — Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College professor and HBI Research Award recipient on her profound, new biography "Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit" (1888-1942) about Szalit’s life from the Pale of Settlement/Lithuania to Poland, Berlin, Paris, and ultimately Auschwitz. Penn State University Press

Gettysburg faculty publish eight major scholarly works in 2023-2024 A highly selective four-year residential college of liberal arts and sciences in historic Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Nine Jewish feminists weighed in for this great list of podcasts curated by writer and former HBI intern Chanel Dubofsky for Lilith Magazine. Delighted to also see HBI affiliates Rabbi Avigayil Halpern and Dr. Shayna Weiss here!

Podcasts for Comfort, Education, Distraction Nine Jewish feminists weigh in about the podcasts they’ve been listening to — for comfort, for sanity, for enlightenments, and for laughs.

Don’t miss this Hadassah discussion with author Joan Leegant about her award-winning collection of short stories, Displaced Persons, set in both the US and Israel. These beautifully written stories explore the experience of exile, belonging, and what it means to call a place home, and will leave you wanting more. HBI was honored to provide Leegant a quiet, creative space during a part of her writing process.

Just one week until our next One Book One Hadassah with Joan Leegant! Joan will discuss her award-winning collection of short stories, Displaced Persons, with Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein.

Exquisitely written, Joan's captivating tales are set in Israel and the United States. Event is free and open to all. Register here now!
https://events.blackthorn.io/8c4sgS87/g/tws32mT8YD/one-book-one-hadassah-joan-leegant-author-of-displaced-persons-4a3dPbAzS1/overview

We're delighted to share Brandeis University Professor Ilana Szobel's interview with Israeli artist Limor Ashkenazi - the cover story of Lilith Magazine's summer issue. Professor Szobel spent her sabbatical last year with HBI as a scholar in residence working on her book project, "The Un-Chosen Body: Disability Culture in Israel,” which examines the ways in which disability as a lived reality informs Israeli film, performance, and literature.
https://lilith.org/issue_management/summer-2024/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEnHEZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVrKEiWmZkMn8foLPNapgxv20rNY-mru-JqyiEtvrosf7L7qhGK3Va_kDg_aem_4tS795AmmIqAyNoypZXCVQ

Summer 2024 Art, sexuality and disability. Who gave Anorexia its name? Summer books, fresh fiction. Freud’s famous patient. Intergenerational trauma. Living apart together.

Thank you Erika Dreifus for including information about the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute/HBI Research Awards in this great collection. The application is open until 9/18/24. More information is below and at HBI online: http://bit.ly/HBIResearchAwardInfo

Jewish Literary Links: Opportunities Edition - Erika Dreifus This week: current/upcoming Jewish writing opportunities.

HBI is now accepting proposals for our undergraduate grant in Jewish Gender Studies. Up to $500 will be awarded to a Brandeis University student to support a research project in the field of Jewish Gender Studies. Apply by October 28, 2024. https://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/programs/grants/undergraduate-grant.html

HBI Undergraduate Grant in Jewish Gender Studies HBI is accepting proposals for our undergraduate grant in Jewish gender studies. Up to $500 will be awarded each fall to a Brandeis undergraduate to support a research project in the field of Jewish Gender Studies.

Delighted to share this European Association of Israel Studies interview with Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks, authors of “Holy Rebellion, Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel”, one of the latest in the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion & Law from the Brandeis University Press.

Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women’s Rights in Israel In Holy Rebellion, Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks examine social change in Israel through a rigorous analysis of the shifting entanglements of...