Exploring My Latin Jewish Roots Through the The Jews of the Americas Fellowship

At Brandeis University, through its Jews of the Americas Initiative (JOTA), artists and scholars from around the world gather to shine a spotlight on the world of Jewish Latin America.   

In 2025, Brandeis University launched its Jews of the Americas Fellowship for scholars and artists to delve deep into the Latin American-Jewish experience. The project is the brainchild of Dalia Wassner, Ph.D., an historian at Brandeis who developed the program in conjunction with the Argentine artist, Mirta Kupferminc.       

Dr. Wassner developed the Fellowship program with the intention of creating opportunities for artists and scholars to engage with Latin American Jewry. I was one of the fellows selected for the artist cohort.  My poetry relates to themes of migration and the environment, often discussing the arrival of my Italian and German grandparents to Brazil in 1939. My work examines questions of identity, diaspora, and language.    

The fellowship program creates opportunities for artists and scholars like myself to engage with Latin American Jewry and inspire one another. As part of the fellowship, I’ve joined an in-person residency visiting vibrant Jewish institutions, including the Vilna Shul, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Yiddish Book Center, Lehrhaus, the Rose Art Museum, and Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters.

The first cohort includes twelve scholars and artists from the Americas, representing Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Guatemala who work across a variety of mediums, including textile art, poetry, music, photography, and painting, and academic fields including history, literature, anthropology, and women’s studies. Each fellow works on a final project examining the theme of the spine.

The theme of this collaboration is “The Spine: Identity in Tumultuous Times” or in Spanish: “La Medula: Identidad en Tiempos Tumultuosos.” A wonderful symbol, the spine can represent the spine of a book, a human spine, a map which connects us all, or even the rivers and mountain ranges of the Americas. For my project, I am working on a book of poems inspired by rivers—including from New England, where I live, as well as from Brazil and Ancona and Genoa, where my Mother’s family is from.    

My experience as a fellow has taught me the value of working in community with other artists and given me the opportunity to build community and a sense of shared identity. For my entire life, my identity as a Jew has always been very distinct from my identity as a Latina or Brazilian. The JOTA Fellowship was enticing because it has allowed me to be part of a community of Jews with deep connections to Latin America. 

Working with artists and researchers from around the world has been transformational, giving me insights into my own journey and my family’s migration to Brazil as refugees from Italy and Germany. One of the most impactful aspects of the residency was a lecture at the Lehrhaus by the architect Julian Bonder, who shared the concept that “memory is a verb.” He invited us to consider how artists and scholars can be agents of change. His words helped me understand my grandfather’s wisdom and immigration experiences and translate them into poetry. 

Since starting the fellowship, I have focused on a long letter that my Nonno Vittorio wrote to his descendants about his life and arrival in Brazil in 1939. This letter, originally written in Italian and translated into Portuguese, is also a kind of spine, an inspiration for the poems that I created during the Fellowship. 

The program has given me permission to delve deep into my family history, to ask questions, to explore memory as a verb, and to consider ways in which our history can further both art and tikkun olam.  

The fellowship will culminate in an exhibition at Brandeis, to share the rich tapestry of Jewish Latin America curated by Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig, Ph.D.