Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Learning and Teaching Jewish American History

Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Deborah R. Prinz

Independent scholar Rabbi Deborah Prinz, authored On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals and Recipes to the Magic of Cacao (2nd edition, Turner Publishing). She was awarded a Starkoff Fellowship and a Director’s Fellowship from the American Jewish Archives as well as a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship from the Rockefeller Library to research the book. In 2017, she co-curated “Semite Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate,” a museum exhibit based on the book mounted at the Herbert and Eileen Bernard Museum of Temple Emanu-El, New York City. Rabbi Prinz lectures in-person and virtually about historical connections between Jews and chocolate, as well as about Jewish celebratory breads nationally and internationally. Her forthcoming book explores Jewishcelebratory breads. More information may be found at her website: https://onthechocolatetrail.org.

Available to give talks or class visits online or in person for a fee. Languages: English.

Extended Bio: https://onthechocolatetrail.org/bio-for-rabbi-prinz/

Laura Leibman

Laura Arnold Leibman is Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her work focuses on religion and the daily lives of women and children in early America, and uses everyday objects to help bring their stories back to life. She is the author of "The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects" (BGC 2020), "Indian Converts" (UMass Press, 2008) and "Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2012), which won a National Jewish Book Award, a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies, and was selected as one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013. Laura has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Utrecht University, the University of Panama, and the Leon Levy Foundation Professor of Jewish Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center. Laura, who earned her PhD from UCLA, is currently at work on a book that uses material culture to trace the history of members of a multiracial family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean but became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York.