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. 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.
Flora Cassen is the Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and the Director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness at Brandeis University. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
Foreword by Yossi Klein HaleviPreface: A Jew-Free EuropeJonathas’ StoryWalking on HistoryCulture ShocksHistory Doesn’t Change – Only Our Interpretation DoesThe Dutch Synagogue in the Belgian ShtetlLearning from the PastIn the Shadow of the ShoahA History of Tears or Resilience?Medieval Anti-JudaismChrist-Killers Past and PresentThe Story That Never DiesThe Jewish Badge in Renaissance ItalyWake up, Flora!Getting Slapped by Both WingsTeaching about HateMonuments in the PresentAnti-Judaism in the WestTwo Women in AntwerpWhen Spain and Portugal Expelled Beatrice (1492 and 1497)Inquisition From Lisbon to AntwerpBeatrice’s StoryHidden Identities, Double SelvesPola’s AntwerpThe Belgian ExodusLife under Nazi OccupationA Wartime Marriage The Lemon on My Seder PlateLooking JewishCrossing the Pyrenees MountainsArrestedIn the CongoA New LifeBecoming ColonistsExile, Not HomeMeanwhile Back HomeFriendshipsThe Histories I CarryHolding the ContradictionsTell Me about MalaNo One Saw Him DieMala’s EscapeIn Mala’s Broken HouseA House Built on Shaky FoundationsMarching to the PastMaybe It’s Better to Forget?I Was 20 in 1945Everyone Learned the Lessons of the Holocaust Except… An Old Christian ReproachLike the Cross at AuschwitzThe Backlash YearsThe Price and Politics of MemoryPink, Fat, and Wealthy JewsJews and Money: An Old MythDon’t Touch our CarnivalThe Jewish Soccer TeamWho?Hannah and IreneTo Stay or Go?Why Not There?Jewish Women ProtestingIn My ClassroomDefinitions, Definitions…October SevenLonelinessA Verbal GhettoGazaZionist and Anti-WarCould I Come up with Better Words?Replacism and EliminationismThe Myth of Elimination as JusticeA Christian Transfer of GuiltA Replacist and an Eliminationist Meet in a BarWhich Past in Our FutureNot the Holocaust but the Middle AgesCourt JewsProtection or Rights?The Personal is PoliticalWhat I Learned from a Disappeared SuitcaseWho Stole the Carps?Acknowledgments