Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Learning and Teaching Jewish American History

Jews Across the Americas, 1492-present

Michael Waas

Michael Waas is a genealogist and historian, specializing in Sephardic Jewry with a particular interest in the Portuguese Jewish Nation. He received his MA from the University of Haifa in Jewish History and the subject of his thesis was the development of Jewish Heritage projects and identity in Turkey and Greece in three former Ottoman Jewish Communities: Salonika, Izmir, and Tire. During his MA research, he received the Gaon Prize for Outstanding M.A. Thesis research for the academic year 2017-2018 from the Moshe David Gaon Center for Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) Culture as well as the Prize for Research into the Heritage of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry, awarded by the Ben Zvi Institute and the Israeli Ministry of Education, for the year 2017-2018. In addition, Waas volunteers as a co-administrator on the Genetic Census of the Jewish People study (aka the Avotaynu DNA Project). He has presented on a variety of topics at numerous international conferences and has had multiple articles published.

He is available to give talks or class visits online or in person for a fee. Languages: English, Hebrew, Spanish.

Website: hollander-waas.com

Avotaynu DNA Project: https://avotaynuonline.com/avotaynu-foundation-dna-project/

Recent publications:

  • “The Surprising Origins of the Coryell Family of Colonial New Jersey.” American Ancestors 23(4):27-31. Co-written with Lea Coryell and Adam Brown https://avotaynuonline.com/2023/01/the-surprising-origins-of-the-coryell-family-of-colonial-new-jersey/

CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cG9TPzSGQ8j8bdgBPwYrFzxf6KhcxjWh/view?usp=sharing

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.