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Loolwa Khazzoom and her Bandmates: woman with mouth open as if screaming, man on either side of her

Loolwa Khazzoom on her new single, "The Convert's Quest"

Sarah Jae Leiber

JWA talks to Loolwa Khazzoom, frontwoman of the rock band Iraqis in Pajamas, about the inspiration for her new single.

Black and white collage of clothing items and hangers

To Reveal or Not To Reveal: Modesty, Jewish Feminism, and the Male Gaze

Ava Weinstein

Recently, I’ve embarked on a mission to dress how I want, when I want.

Episode 90: Reproductive Rights After Roe

When the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, it eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. As of April 2023, it is now essentially illegal to have an abortion in 15 states. That means limited to no access to terminating a pregnancy. But many people don't realize these bans also affect people who want to get pregnant. Jessica Kalb, Lisa Sobel, and Sarah Baron are among those people. They're suing their home state of Kentucky for its abortion ban, claiming it violates their right to grow their families and their religious freedom as Jews. In this episode of Can We Talk?, we bring you a story about the far-reaching consequences of the Dobbs decision, and three Jewish women who are fighting back. 

German-Jewish Pietists: Attitudes towards Women

Despite their small numbers, the introspective and penitential religious outlook of the German-Jewish Piestists had a significant and lasting impact on European Jewry. Written by men and intended for a male audience, the Pietists’ writings heighten the profound ambivalence toward women that is inherent in the rabbinic tradition

Jennifer Sartori holding her baby baby daughter

For Jewish Adoptive Mothers Like Me, Mother’s Day is Anything But Simple

Jennifer Sartori

The “Hallmark holiday” stopped being torturous after I adopted my daughter. But it will always be complicated.

Collage with Three Women in Underwear; Background of Squares overlayed with underwear

Commercial Femininity: A Jewish Reckoning with Victoria's Secret's Legacy

Goldi Lieberperson

Growing up, Victoria's Secret models represented my default (and only) view of femininity and what it means to be an adult woman.

Agunot

Agunot are women who are unable to obtain a rabbinic divorce because their husbands or husbands’ male next of kin are unable to give one, leaving them chained in marital captivity. Although many efforts have been made to address these problems, for those most part agunot in halakhically observant communities continue to face deep-seated challenges.

Judith Hauptman

The first woman to receive a PhD in Talmud, Judith Hauptman has made significant contributions to the academic study of the origins and development of the works of the “canon” of rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity. A second prominent focus of both Hauptman’s scholarly and other work has been Jewish feminism and the status of women in rabbinic and related literature, particularly exemplified in her best-known work, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice.

Women of the Carvajal Family

The devotion of the Carvajal women to forbidden Jewish practices helped their family become the most famous Hispano-Portuguese secret Jews of colonial Latin America. The determination of these conversas, or New Christians, to create a recognizable Jewish identity shows the importance of women to crypto-Judaism at a time when the Inquisition of Spain and its territories prosecuted this belief system as heresy.

Female Martyrdom

In various eras, Jewish women chose martrydom, or Kiddush ha-Shem (sanctification of the Divine Name), rather than repudiate God or transgress certain commandments. Examples appear in Jewish Hellenistic writings, rabbinic literature, Crusade chronicles, medieval Hebrew piyyut (liturgical poetry), accounts of the seventeenth-century Chmielnicki pogroms, and documents connected with the Shoah. Scholars differ, however, regarding the accuracy of these martyrological texts, which often reshape actual events to conform to iconic imagery.

"Sleeping girl," painting by Sonia Delaunay, 1907

Blu Greenberg: Making a Home at the Intersection

Neima Fax

I learned from Blu Greenberg that to accept the discomfort of existing in the intersection between feminism and Judaism is an empowering thing to do.

Topics: Feminism, Jewish Law
Young woman standing next to brick wall, wearing ankle-length blue skirt with red striped pattern and a Vans shirt underneath a jean jacket. Signs photoshopped into the image next to the young woman in English and Hebrew read: "Please do not pass through our neighborhood in immodest clothes"

Wonder Woman's Hemline

Lilah Peck

The length of your hemline doesn’t matter as long as you choose it for yourself and you accept those who choose differently.

Rachel Schinderman and her mother

Feed Your Child

Rachel Zients Schinderman

Not having a bar mitzvah for my son felt like the kind thing to do. It felt Jewish.

Topics: Family, Jewish Law

Episode 28: The Torah at Her Fingertips

Batya Sperling Milner’s recent bat mitzvah was groundbreaking; it was the first held in an Orthodox synagogue in which the Torah portion was chanted from braille. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Batya talks about the highlights of her bat mitzvah and her mother, Aliza Sperling, discusses her groundbreaking scholarship on blind people reading Torah within the bounds of Jewish law. We talk about the first ever braille trope system—one created especially for Batya. Batya describes her love of Torah, her commitment to Jewish law, and her desire to be recognized for who she is, rather than defined by a disability.

Phoebe Chapnick-Sorokin and Family at Disneyland

Leaving My Liberal Bubble

Phoebe Chapnick-Sorokin

Because of my upbringing, the gender separation at my cousin Zoe’s bat mitzvah came to me as a shock. Why couldn’t I stand with my dad and all my male cousins? Why wasn’t Zoe reading Torah like all the other girls I knew did at their bat mitzvah services?

2018-2019 Rising Voices Fellow Shira Minsk in First Grade

Why Keep Passover When You Love Carbs?

Shira Minsk

Now that I’m out in the secular world, I have to decide what Judaism really means to me. I have to distinguish between the things that are actually important to me and the things I’ve just done out of habit.

Nina Baran's Tanakh

Interpreting the Torah Through a Feminist Lens

Nina Baran

I got my own Tanakh and started doing some research. I looked up different passages, including some that I’d heard that seemed to go against my beliefs as a feminist and activist.

Good Jew or Bad Jew?

Are you a Good Jew or a Bad Jew?

Rakhel Silverman

This anxiety of “am I Jewish enough” is part of a larger historical problem, one of power dynamics and exclusionary politics. ... The “right” or “wrong” way to be Jewish has long been a narrative controlled by those in power.

Girls in Trouble: Women's Agency and Power in the Torah

Guest teacher Alicia Jo Rabins introduces two new study guides from her "Girls in Trouble" curriculum. By exploring the stories of the Sotah, and the daughters of Tzelofchad, participants consider women's agency and power in the Torah.

Ink of our Own: Women Who Scribe

Torah Scribe and Educator Julie Seltzer takes participants on a behind-the-scenes tour of how Torahs are written, and discusses the Jewish law that has long kept women from being scribes.

Harvey Weinstein

Seizing Control of the Narrative

Sofia Heller

The avalanche of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape allegations over the past few months, catalyzed by the sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, make it clear that sexual violence is a problem deeply embedded in our society; it even finds credence in Judaism’s foundational text, the Torah.

Topics: Bible, Jewish Law
Tamar Cohen at her Bat Mitzvah

Near(ly) a Woman

Tamar Cohen

Every year in the Hebrew month of Shevat, Jews around the world read Parshat Yitro, the Torah portion that contains the Ten Commandments. But the “Big Ten” are only part of this portion – Parshat Yitro also contains a visit from Moses’ father-in-law, a feast, and a set of instructions from G-d transferred with questionable integrity by Moses to the Israelites. Before becoming a Bat Mitzvah at age 12, I spent months studying this portion and its various commentaries. One line was particularly alarming to me: “Be ready for the third day: do not go near a woman.”

Drawing of Zelophehad's Daughters

Finding the Founding Feminists

Minnah Stein

Every year in July, the story of Pinchas is told. And on July 6, 2013, I was the one telling this story. Yep. Little 13-year-old me, electric green braces and all, was up on the bimah, knees knocking, chanting the story of Pinchas. And I did a great job, if I do say so myself. But as embarrassing as it is to admit now, my understanding of my Torah portion at that time was very superficial. I had spent so much time making sure I knew the words so I didn’t make a fool out of myself when I was chanting, that I didn’t put that much effort into fully understanding what I was saying, and how it affected me.

Topics: Bible, Jewish Law

Miriam Spira-Luria

Although little is known of her life, legends of Miriam Spira-Luria’s scholarship offer tantalizing hints of an intelligent, accomplished woman almost completely erased from history.

Susan Grossman

As a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), Rabbi Susan Grossman has helped shape the Conservative Movement’s policies on women’s rights and their roles in Jewish life.

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