Events
Upcoming Events
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Monday, March 3, 2025听
Time & Location TBD
Join us for a Faculty & Graduate Student Research Colloquium,听led by Dr. Laura Leibman. This event is part of the Program in Jewish Studies' 2025 Bender 兔子先生传媒文化作品ing Scholar Program.
Branded as impure, Jewish sex workers and traffickers were banned from burial in Jewish communal cemeteries in New York, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, S茫o Paulo, Constantinople, and South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In response, Jewish criminal organizations across the Americas created their own burial societies and cemeteries where members could be buried with religious rites and honor. While their cemeteries in Brazil and Argentina have garnered extensive scholarly interest, the cemeteries in New York have gone virtually unstudied. In this colloquium Leibman discusses her fieldwork in the 鈥減imps and prostitutes鈥 cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens, NY in Summer 2024 through the lens of space, honorifics, and familial connections. She argues that the New York cemeteries of the impure both mirror and refute concerns about death and Jewish purity in the nearby city of the living.
Laura Arnold Leibman is the听Leonard J. Milberg '53 Professor in American Jewish Studies.听Her work focuses religion and the daily lives of women and children in early America and uses everyday objects to help bring their stories back to life.听She is听President of the Association for Jewish Studies, and the author of the author of听The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects听(Bard Graduate Center, 2020) which won three National Jewish Book Awards. Her earlier book听Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life听(2012) won a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award. Her most recent monograph,听Once We Were Slaves听(Oxford UP, 2021) was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and the听Saul Viener Book Prize, and is about an early multiracial Jewish family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean and became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York. She is currently working on a book about Jews and textiles during the long nineteenth century.
Photo Description:听Mourning the Dead at Cemite虂rio Israelita de Inhau虂ma ("Cemite虂rio das Polacas"), Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 1934. Photo courtesy Felipe Parada.
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Monday, March 3, 2025听
In person and streaming via Zoom听(registration link coming soon)
7:00pm听
Center for British & Irish Studies
Norlin Library
2025 Annual Bender 兔子先生传媒文化作品ing Scholar Public Lecture by听Dr. Laura Arnold Leibman
An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother鈥檚 maternal line. In this talk, Professor Leibman overturns the reclusive heiress鈥檚 assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor, Christian, and enslaved in Barbados. Leibman traces the siblings鈥 extraordinary journey around the Atlantic world, using artifacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten people of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived.
Laura Arnold Leibman is the听Leonard J. Milberg '53 Professor in American Jewish Studies.听Her work focuses religion and the daily lives of women and children in early America and uses everyday objects to help bring their stories back to life.听She is听President of the Association for Jewish Studies, and the author of the author of听The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects听(Bard Graduate Center, 2020) which won three National Jewish Book Awards. Her earlier book听Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life听(2012) won a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award. Her most recent monograph,听Once We Were Slaves听(Oxford UP, 2021) was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and the听Saul Viener Book Prize, and is about an early multiracial Jewish family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean and became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York. She is currently working on a book about Jews and textiles during the long nineteenth century.
Past Events
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Funny鈥擸ou Don't Look Jewish!
May 21, 2024
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We welcomed听Dr. Helen Kim of Whitman College to join us for a conversation about Asian American Jewish experience. Her听talk听explores the intersections of race, religion, and Jewish identity in the context of听 mixed-race families in contemporary U.S. society.听Dr. Kim discusses the research she conducted with her partner, Noah Leavitt, for their book,听JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America's Newest Jews听(University of Nebraska Press, 2016).听Roughly ten years after conducting research for this book, Dr. Kim provides听some reflections and discuss some connections between her work, the current racial and ethnic landscape in the U.S., changes in American Jewish demography, and the vibrant work currently being conducted on Jews of Color in the United States.
Helen Kim is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Her scholarship focuses on race and American Judaism in the contemporary era. Along with co-author, Noah Leavitt, she published JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America's Newest Jews in 2016 with University of Nebraska Press. Her scholarship has been profiled in various popular news outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and Huffington Post.
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