Women's History

Back in the day (as we now say) when I was an undergraduate at a college that had been educating the country’s elite—all men, of course—for almost 350 years, the first ripples of Second Wave femini

Just a few months ago, I received an e-mail from someone who expressed appreciation for JWA but took issue with the phrase “women rabbis,” a phrase that often appears in Jewish Women’s Archive features including This Week in History and Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution. Her point was this: for a feminist organization that does empowering work, there is something unseemly and demeaning about modifying rabbi with woman when we wouldn’t dare do the same thing with man.

Why have we, a group of Jewish young women respectful of pop culture and history, opted to call ourselves "Jewesses with Attitude"? After all, when we tested "Jewesses" with friends and colleagues, we were told it sounds "Jappy," "old-fashioned," and "weird." But we decided we love it, in large part because it immediately sparked heated discussion.