Interview

I want to give a shout out to Lesléa Newman, an iconic yet under-recognized gay Jewish writer whose work continues to inform the changing landscape of GLBT rights in the U.S.

One of my favorite aspects about being Jewish is mixing tradition with the present.

Estie would rather be a dog or a turtle or a monkey than a person.

I recently had the pleasure to sit down for brunch with Jaclyn Friedman, Executive Director of Women, Action and the Media and co-editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. Jaclyn Friedman is writer, speaker, activist, and rising star in the current feminist community.

What began with a 2008 story about autobiographical comics by Jewish women in The Forward has developed into a touring museum exhibit.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Hilary Price about the upcoming 15th anniversary of the national syndication of her popular comic strip, Rhymes with Orange. With its debut, Hilary Price became the youngest woman ever to have a nationally-syndicated cartoon strip at age 25.

The following is a piece by Ethan Grossman, a high school student at the Weber School in Atlanta. As part of a project called AdDRESSING Women's Lives, created by Barbara Rosenblit and Sheila Miller, Ethan interviewed Millie Rotter Kinbar and documented her oral history in a multi-media work of art, revealing her character and life experiences through the metaphor of a dress.

Friday is StoryCorps' National Day of Listening. Since you can order your Making Trouble DVDs conveniently online at www.makingtrouble.com, there is no need to go shopping on Black Friday.  Instead, join Storycorps and sit down with a loved one and record their story.  Ellen wrote about the National Day of Listening last year, and explained why the tradition of listening is so important to Jews, especially in the context of Thanksgiving, a holiday important to many Americans with immigration histories.

Last week I interviewed one of my new favorite Jewesses with attitude - Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. I recently (finally!) finished her new book, Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion.

Seventy-one years ago today, Broadway got a little bit feistier when 27-year-old choreographer and dancer Anna Sokolow made her debut with several politically and socially charged compositions.

Anna Schön, a 23-year-old graduate of Barnard College, is a present-day radical dancer of another kind.