Jews of the Americas Academic Conferences
Jews of the Americas Inaugural Conference, 2023
The Jews of the Americas Initiative at Brandeis University hosts regular events that bring together scholars and policymakers to examine and discuss new approaches to the study of Latin America and Latin American Jewish religious and cultural identity.
Past Events
April 16, 2023
The Launch Event of the Brandeis Initiative on the Jews of the Americas (JOTA) brought together extraordinary Latin American trailblazers in conversation, in order to promote new ways of thinking about global Jewish peoplehood, immigrant and diaspora life, and the larger lessons that can be learned by the Jewish experience when understood as part of the Americas writ large. Our speakers included leading figures in fields of journalism, literature, art, architecture, human rights, entrepreneurship, the museum world, communal organizations and political figures, and they represented a host of countries including Mexico, Argentina, Panama, Venezuela and Chile.
July 9-11, 2023
Hosted by the Brandeis Initiative on the Jews of the Americas, the LAJSA International Research Conference brought together scholars from multiple disciplines and geographical regions whose work focuses on the lives, languages, experiences, cultural production, and representations of and by Jews in and from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The conference featured academic presentations and roundtables as well as two evening events open to the public:
July 9, keynote address (English) Professor Claudio Lomnitz
Columbia University anthropologist, Professor Claudio Lomnitz discusses "On the Integration of Jewish History into Latin American History (And Vice Versa)— A Personal Perspective"
July 10, presentation (Spanish) Dr. Daniel Abouganem
Author of Historia de los judíos en Colón: Una gran familia, Dr. Abouganem rescues the history of Jewish settlement in a city located at the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal and tells the story of three communities established before and after the construction of the crossroads of the Americas.
Adrián Krupnik discusses his latest book, Between Two Homelands: Argentine Migration to and from Israel (Alabama University Press, 2023). Dr. Krupnik will speak to the experience of “return migration” among Argentines who have migrated to Israel and then left, undergoing at times multiple migrations. Aliya will be discussed as part of diaspora processes; a dialectical activity that is not a singular step or uni-directional.
Professor Jonathan Sarna, a leading scholar in US history who helped pioneer the concept of “return migration,” will introduce the event. Professor Raanan Rein of Tel Aviv University, a leading scholar of Argentine Jewish history, will serve as the respondent.
May 7, 2024
JOTA welcomes scholars from across the Americas and around the world to Brandeis for a collaborative academic workshop hosted by the Brandeis Initiative of the Jews of the Americas and co-sponsored by JDC Archives, the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA), and the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry (ASSJ). The keynote address by Sergio Widder, Latin America Director of the JDC, is titled “Jewish Immigrants, Local Communities, and International Jewish Organizations in Twentieth Century Latin America and the Caribbean: A Triangular Relationship.”