In 2012, the Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholars Endowed Fund was established to help bring leading scholars in Jewish culture, history, language and religion to CU campuses to further the curricular goals of CU’s Program in Jewish Studies. Attending lectures by leading scholars in this growing field provides students with the opportunity to learn from a broad range of academics. In addition, visiting lecturers create a unique opportunity for the Program in Jewish Studies and CU to engage both students and the local community. Public lectures catalyze discussions that include participants from a wide variety of backgrounds, enhancing students’ ability to think about issues beyond the walls of the classroom.
Laura Arnold Leibman – 2025 Sondra & Howard Bender Visiting Scholar
Laura Arnold Leibman is the Leonard J. Milberg '53 Professor in American Jewish Studies. Her work focuses 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 President of the Association for Jewish Studies, and the author of the author of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects (Bard Graduate Center, 2020) which won three National Jewish Book Awards. Her earlier book Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (2012) won a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award. Her most recent monograph, Once We Were Slaves (Oxford UP, 2021) was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and the Saul Viener Book Prize, and is about an early multiracial Jewish family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean and became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York. She is currently working on a book about Jews and textiles during the long nineteenth century.
The annual Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholar series is generously supported by the Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholars Endowed Fund, honoring the lives of Sondra and Howard Bender.