A Photographic Portal of Sephardic Women’s Lives
The title of Becky Behar’s new photographic exhibition, “Tu Ke Bivas,” takes its name from a Sephardic Jewish blessing her parents recited before she undertook a major life transition. The saying in Ladino translates to “May you live, grow, and thrive like a little fish in freshwater.”
Behar is a Sephardic Jew whose family was expelled from Spain in 1492. Among the things the family took with them into the diaspora was Ladino, also known as “Jewish Spanish.” Behar recently told JewishBoston, “Throughout the centuries we maintained our Judaism, Sephardic customs, and our Ladino. The language has charted my family’s migrations to Turkey, Colombia, and the United States.”
Behar was born in Bogota and immigrated with her family to Miami when she was seven years old. She was passionate about photography from a young age and recalls mastering her craft with a pinhole camera. She learned black-and-white techniques that she applied to edit her high school yearbook, and then formally studied photography during her time as an undergraduate at Wellesley College.
She put photography on hold to raise her family. In 2015, she returned to it full-time after enrolling in a workshop at a local museum near her home in the Boston suburbs. It quickly became clear that family was central to her work.
In 2018, she began a collaborative series with her children. Her daughter Leah’s 21st birthday inspired “Seeing You, Seeing Me.” Leah is both her model and muse. She is a serene presence in these photographs, wearing her mother’s clothing to evoke what is passed down through the generations.
In addition to photographing Leah, the Tu Ke Bivas exhibition brings in Behar’s mother, Matilde. In the images, Matilde and Leah wear identical dark blue gowns, suggesting a romantic sensibility as well as a generational legacy. In one such image, Behar calls L’Dor V’Dor, From Generation to Generation, with Matilde holding a framed sepia photograph of her own mother in front of her face.
In another image, Espina, Spine, Leah has her back to the camera to show a skeleton key on a blue silk cord that hangs down her back. Behar has beautifully intertwined her themes of displacement and generational longing with the implied story that some Sephardim carried keys in the diaspora for centuries – keys that once opened the doors to their homes in Spain before 1492.
Behar notes that the accessories she uses in all her photographs are already in her home or the homes of family and friends. For example, in Charity, Tzedaka, Matilde’s seemingly floating hand grasps the top of her silver tzedaka box. Tehilim, Prayer, shows just Matilde’s hands against a dark background holding her well-loved prayer book.
One of the signature photographs of the exhibition, which first opens on September 4 and runs through September 18 at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, is a portrait of Leah pouring cassette tape out of an old-fashioned spout. Behar explains the tape symbolizes “the information we feed our children, often overwhelming them. My daughter would have had no idea what this audio tape was and how it works. I’m pointing to the oral traditions that make up the heritage of younger generations. And I’m questioning how our kids will cope and decipher all this overflowing information.”
Two small individual triptychs, Kubridas kon Kavana, Covered with Intention, features Matilde and in the other Leah, showing the different ways, people cover their eyes when saying the Shema. Behar says she gave neither woman instructions on how to cover their eyes with their hands. In each image, grandmother and granddaughter use their hands differently. “The images,” she says, “create the ability to compare and ultimately see this covering of the eyes as a progression.”
Behar has also created an accompanying limited addition artist book with a catalogue for Tu Ke Bivas with stitch binding. “My hand is all over the place. I literally sewed the book. But you don’t see me in any of my images, and that is intentional. It’s a commentary on the generations of Sephardic women who have not been seen.”
Behar dedicates the collection, “For Leah and Matilde. My daughter and my mother, who walked on this journey with me. Together we wove memory and presence, rekindling Sephardic traditions and creating rituals of our own. In the quiet hours of making, between laughter, light, and whispered stories, we found something sacred: a lineage alive in our hands and hearts. This work is ours.”
In creating Tu Ke Bivas, Becky Behar has brought these graceful images of her Sephardic heritage and matriarchal lineage to life, as viewers consider their own oral histories.
THE BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S STUDIES RESEARCH CENTER AND HADASSAH-BRANDEIS INSTITUTE PRESENT: BECKY BEHAR’S TU KE BIVAS IN THE KNIZNICK GALLERY: SEPTEMBER 4-18, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 4, 5-7 PM // Gallery Hours: Monday – Thursday, 10 AM – 4 PM
Judy Bolton-Fasman – www.judyboltonfasman.com – is the author of Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets published by Mandel Vilar Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers including the New York Times and Boston Globe, essay anthologies, and several literary magazines.
