BOOK LAUNCH: 'Stained Glass: A Reflective History of Antisemitism'

Flora Casson will talk about her new book. Tickets include a copy of the book, nibbles and a glass of wine.

In Stained Glass, Flora Cassen traces a Jewish life shaped by family and history, moving between medieval Europe and the present to connect lived experience with the longer arc of Jewish history.

Drawing on her upbringing in Antwerp’s Jewish community and her grandparents’ escape from Nazi-occupied Europe to the Belgian Congo, Cassen writes from within a past in which powerlessness rubbed shoulders with power. From her later life in the United States, she considers Jewish life in Europe as a mirror that reflects enduring questions about vulnerability and belonging.

Reviews

Stained Glass asks what it means to leave Europe behind and to encounter in American Jewish life a vitality that is strikingly beautiful yet never fully settled.

"This is a powerful and compelling book that speaks to our time but also offers a longer-term historical perspective that is often lacking in contemporary discussions of antisemitism in the present. Deeply moving, I look forward to seeing it in the world." - Laura Levitt, author of The Objects that Remain and American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust

"Stained Glass is my favorite kind of book: one I have a really hard time describing. What do you call a memoir that is also art history, a book about antisemitism that is also about Jewish pride, a scholarly history as concise as a sonnet? I don’t know, but it’s worth reading, now." - Mark Oppenheimer, author of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood and Judy Blume: A Life

"Moving between Europe and America, personal memory and historical scholarship, Flora Cassen probes antisemitism, Holocaust memory, Jewish belonging, and the renewed sense of isolation that followed October 7. Written with remarkable economy and intellectual honesty, Stained Glass is a quiet masterpiece." - Daniel B. Schwartz, author of Ghetto: The History of a Word

About the author

Flora Cassen is the Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and Director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness at Brandeis University. Originally from Antwerp, Belgium, she earned a B.A. in History and Law from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, an M.A. in Comparative History from Brandeis University, and a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University. Prior to joining Brandeis, she held faculty positions at the University of Vermont, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has appeared in academic journals and presses as well as in public-facing venues including Haaretz, The Forward, Slate, Aeon, Sources, and Smithsonian Magazine.