Calendar
Moving Beyond the Stereotypes: Jewish Women and Men on the Santa Fe Trail
Presented by Dr. Frances Levine
September 8, 2025
7pm via Zoom
The literature of the Santa Fe Trail spans more than two centuries of Western history. Jewish men were early traders in the commerce and were sometimes portrayed as unusual participants on the Trail. When joined by their families, women served as community builders creating the diverse landscape of the American West. Dr. Levine will survey the literature examining the stereotypes and the role of Jewish women, men, and their families on the Santa Fe Trail.
Frances Levine has had a distinguished career as a museum executive leader at both ends of the Santa Fe Trail. She was the Director of the Palace of the Governors/ New Mexico History Museum from 2002 until she moved to St. Louis in 2014. Dr. Levine was the President and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society and Missouri History Museum from spring 2014 until summer 2022. She served as the Interim Director for the opening year of the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum in 2022-2023. She now works as an author and museum consultant.
A native of Connecticut, Frances received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Dr. Levine is the author, co-editor or contributor to several award-winning books. Crossings will receive the 2025 Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá award from the New Mexico Historical Society recognizing it as an outstanding contribution to the history of the American Southwest and Borderlands.
For more information email admin@nmjhs.org or call 505-348-4471
NM State Historic Preservation Conference
October 3-5, 2025
New Mexico Highlands University
Las Vegas, NM
Go to www.preservenewmexico.com to learn more
Tunes and Tints: 18 Jewish Artists Who Played and Painted Their Way to Fame
Presented by Rabbi Jack Schlachter
January 20, 2026
7pm via Zoom
In this presentation, we’ll investigate the lives and creative works of nine Jewish visual artists and nine Jewish musicians for a total of 18 (=Chai) talented individuals. We’ll also explore the apparent restrictions on these two fields stemming from the Ten Commandments. The talk will provide an opportunity to see some familiar faces, view some remarkable works of art, listen to some wonderful music, and learn about these gifted trailblazers.
Jack Shlachter is a physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for over thirty years with briefer stints at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the Atomic Energy Agency, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, the latter two based in Vienna, Austria; he led both the Physics Division and Theoretical Division during his LANL career. In parallel, Jack is an ordained rabbi who led the Jewish congregation in Los Alamos for many years, was the rabbi in Center Moriches, NY, during his years at Brookhaven, and now serves as rabbi of HaMakom, a congregation in Santa Fe, NM as well as the Los Alamos Jewish Center. He has also provided itinerant rabbinic support to far-flung Jewish communities including those in Vienna, Beijing, Warsaw, and Bangkok.
For more information email admin@nmjhs.org or call 505-348-4471
Although Jewish history in New Mexico had its beginnings when it was still a far-flung colony of Spain, it has attracted Jews as diverse as the German-born merchants of the 1800s to immigrant and first generation Jews whose roots were in Eastern Europe. They played a significant role in the commercial, civic, and religious life of Albuquerque in the 20th century, building businesses and a vital community. Panel discussions and a walking tour address the contributions of Jewish merchants to Albuquerque, NM
Although Jewish history in New Mexico had its beginnings when it was still a far-flung colony of Spain, it has attracted Jews as diverse as the German-born merchants of the 1800s to immigrant and first generation Jews whose roots were in Eastern Europe. They played a significant role in the commercial, civic, and religious life of Albuquerque in the 20th century, building businesses and a vital community. Panel discussions and a walking tour address the contributions of Jewish merchants to Albuquerque, NM
In April of 1961, twenty-six year old independent news producer and broadcaster Natey Freedman became the first American journalist to arrive in Israel to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Initially treated as a minor story for select American markets with large Jewish populations, the Eichmann trial aroused national and international attention, bringing Nazi atrocities to the forefront of world news.
Drawing from his personal archives and journals, Freedman will discuss — for the first time in public — the searing testimonies from survivors that he recorded firsthand, and the experience of being in Jerusalem at a time when the unique horror and legacy of the Shoah was finally confronted after decades of silence.
NMJHS and Temple Beth Shalom of Santa Fe are co-sponsoring what promises to be an exciting two-part event: Free Poetry Reading with Joan Logghe and Miriam Sagan followed by a Writing Workshop (Suggested Donation) led by Joan Logghe.
Join us at Temple Beth Shalom (205 East Barcelona) for the Poetry Reading from 1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. followed by a pre-registration only workshop, from 2:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading: Join poets Miriam Sagan and Joan Logghe for a spirited reading of works with a Jewish theme. Both poets are active in the Santa Fe’s literary scene and co-edited the anthology Another Desert: Jewish Poetry of New Mexico (Sherman Asher Publishing). They will read from this collection plus more recent poems.
Writing Workshop: The Blue Tortilla Moon: Writing your Jewish New Mexican Self.
Writings from our Jewish roots, Joan Logghe will present readings to inspire your own memories, stories, and gifts of Jewish culture that your family keeps alive. Food, Festivals, and family are a tripod of Jewish life, and we will touch on all three.
Joan Logghe was Santa Fe’s third Poet Laureate, serving from 2010-2012. She has taught everywhere and to all ages, from Santa Fe Community College and Ghost Ranch, to Zagreb, Croatia and Bratislava. Winner of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry and co-founder of Tres Chicas Books, her latest publications are The Singing Bowl (University of New Mexico Press), and editing Odes & Offerings (Sunstone Press), Joan’s final project as Poet Laureate.
TO REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP: Participants must pre-register and pay prior to the Workshop. Space is limited! Suggested Donation: NMJHS and TBS Members: $20.00; non-members: $25.00. Please contact: joy.rosenberg@sftbs.org or 982-6161. Checks payable to TBS.
A Taste of Honey (ATOH), the annual day of Jewish learning for the New Mexico Jewish community, will celebrate its Eleventh year at the JCC. ATOH is the annual social, cultural and educational event that provides an opportunity to savor Jewish life at its best. It brings together all of the New Mexico community to explore Judaism and the Jewish experience. Presenters include Dianne Layden, NMJHS board member, Conversos and their Descendants in Literature. Brochures and more information are available at the J or by calling 348-4500.
Using recently donated siddurim from New Mexico’s first synagogue, Temple Montefiore as a springboard, New Mexico Reform Rabbis will discuss how American Reform Judaism has evolved, especially within our state.
Hannah Nordhaus, the award-winning journalist and author of The Beekeeper’s Lament attempts to uncover the truth about her great-great-grandmother, Julia–whose ghost is said to haunt an elegant hotel in Santa Fe–in this spellbinding exploration of myth, family history, and the American West.
The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Vases of flowers appeared in new locations. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, dancing balls of light.
La Posada–“place of rest”–had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home’s original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband.
American Ghost is a story of pioneer women and immigrants, ghost hunters and psychics, frontier fortitude and mental illness, imagination and lore. As she traces the strands of Julia’s life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story–and how difficult it can sometimes be to separate history and myth.
Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, the Village Voice, Outside magazine, and other publications. She lives with her family in Boulder, Colorado.
This presentation will explore the lives and music of two important Jewish American composers. Their educations, careers, and travels (including to New Mexico) helped define not only each of their compositional styles but also how we define Jewish music today. Examples of their works will be presented in their cultural and historic contexts what effects their experiences as Jews in America had on their music.
Jay Christopher Williams is currently Orchestra Director at Capshaw Middle School and Aspen Community School in Santa Fe Public Schools and teaches 5th and 6th grade and Adult Education classes at Temple Beth Shalom, Santa Fe. Jay graduated with a B.A. in Music from Lamar University in Beaumont, TX., and has performed with several Symphonies throughout the South and Southwest.
Author Andrée Aelion Brooks will speak about Doña Gracia and her contributions to Jewish history. Doña Gracia Nasi was a Portuguese-born Jewish woman who succeeded her late husband in the family’s international banking enterprise during the Renaissance. She “saved” many Converso Jews from the horrors of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal by running an “escape network”, enabling them to survive in Palestine and elsewhere. Some of those she saved are the ancestors of Converso Jews who later settled in northern New Mexico. Her considerable influence enabled her to organize an economic boycott of the prominent seaport province of Ancona (Italy) as a protest against the Inquisition’s burning of Jews there. Doña Gracia also knew Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and lobbied him for a permanent settlement in Palestine.
A Havdalah service will follow the presentation. Ms. Brooks’ biography of Doña Gracia Nasi, The Woman Who Defied Kings, is currently in pre-production for a TV mini-series.
Ms. Brooks’ other publications include Russian Dance: a True Story of Intrigue and Passion in Stalinist Moscow, Out of Spain, and Children of Fast Track Parents. She currently lectures to Jewish audiences nationally about stories of Jewish History.
- Keynote Speaker: Dr. Andree Aelion Brooks “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean”
- Workshop Sessions- attendees may choose from two below
- The Silvery Lining: Contemporary Judaica from Revolution to Today- JimCohen
- Was She or Wasn’t She? Dona Teresa versus the Inquisition- Victoria Erhart
- The Pew Foundation’s Portrait of Jewish Americans- Dr. Bette Novit Evans
- Ruth: Royalty and Loyalty- Maomi Israel
- Moon Landing and the Holocaust: The Lost Letters Connection- Melinda Hess
- Timeless Inspiration, Guidance and Strength from Women of the Bible- Sara Novenson
- Legendary Klezmorim- Steve Ovitsky
- Poetry of the Daughter of New Mexico- Isabelle Sandoval