Once We Were Slaves: A Multiracial Jewish Family in Early America

Laura Arnold Leibman, Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, gave the 2022 Paul and Dorothy Grob Memorial Lecture on American Jewish Life, "Once We Were Slaves: A Multiracial Jewish Family in Early America," on February 17.

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Professor Leibman is the author of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects, which won three National Jewish Book Awards, and Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life, which won both a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award. She is the Vice President of Publications and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Association for Jewish Studies. Her most recent book Once We Were Slaves is about a multiracial Jewish family who began their journey enslaved in the Caribbean and eventually became one of the wealthiest Jewish families in New York.