CCNY's Cohen Library hosts Danielle Alhassid's “A Book of One's Own” installation, Nov. 4 - Dec. 16, 2026.
“A Book of One's Own,” a site-specific installation by artist Danielle Alhassid, opens Nov. 4 in the Archives and Special Collections of the Cohen Library at The City College of New York. Presented in collaboration with Elazar Elhanan of the Michael & Irene Ross Program in CCNY’s Jewish Studies Program, the exhibition runs through Dec. 16, 2026. An opening reception will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 4.
The evolving installation pairs stop-motion videos and prints with editions of the Tsenerene, a 17th-century Yiddish Bible translation known as "the women's Bible." Drawing on copies held in the Cohen Library's Special Collections, it explores exclusion and participation, technology, feminist history, the link between language and gender, and how rites and knowledge are passed on.
Alhassid's animations imagine the Tsenerene's readers as an alternative community. Shut out of the male synagogue space and its Hebrew Torah, they exist in parallel to it. Female figures gather around the Yiddish book, each a collage of words cut from different Tsenerene editions. Together they express both continuity and rupture in women's chains of cultural transmission. The project frees the book from the archive and the artwork from the white cube. Set outside the gallery, it becomes a community-oriented open forum. Scholars will be invited to respond to its themes: the history of vernacular Bible translation, print capitalism, religious ethnography and feminist readings of religious life.
About the Artist
Danielle Alhassid is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist working in stop-motion animation, printmaking, installation and live performance. Her research-based work explores memory, femininity and urban experience, often through texts written by or for immigrant women. She holds an MFA from Hunter College (2024) and a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2020). Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, the Amsterdam Museum, the Stedelijk Museum among others. Her Tsenerene installation was first created for the Amsterdam Museum with support from Asylum Arts and the Anolic Family Foundation. She is a LABA fellow. Click here to read more.
About the Collaborator
Dr. Elazar (Elik) Elhanan is an associate professor of Hebrew and Yiddish literature at CCNY, in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures and the Michael & Irene Ross Program in Jewish Studies. He earned his PhD in Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies from Columbia University in 2014. His research covers Jewish literature in Hebrew and Yiddish, language and nation-building, and modernism. His book, The Path Leading to the Abyss: Hebrew and Yiddish in Yaakov Steinberg's Poetry, was published by Mossad Bialik in 2025. Read More.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 2.2% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.7 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers, and society. At City College, more than 16,500 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity, and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together,” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College's mission. By May 2026, more than $500 million had been raised. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic, and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
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jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu