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Birth of Viola Spolin, creator of Theater Games

November 7, 1906

“If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn." Viola Spolin, the “godmother of improvisation"

Claude-Anne Kirschen Lopez, 1920 - 2012

I have decided it doesn't do anybody concerned any harm for a woman to take on a worthwhile project.

Gertrude Wishnick Dubrovsky, 1926 - 2012

To the credit of the nuns, my Jewish search was encouraged, my questions were never cut short, and a patient effort was made consistently to answer me.

Ann J. Lane, 1931 - 2013

Ann Lane was a bold advocate not simply for women but, even more important, for feminist scholarship.

Mae Rockland Tupa

Mae Rockland Tupa: Artist and Author

Keren R. McGinity, Ph.D.

The objects Mae made and the books she wrote helped shape the field of Jewish Americana. Mae’s work, taken as a whole, reflects her view that “just as Jews have become an integral part of the American scene, so can a classical American symbol be used to express a Jewish theme.” A shining example is her hannukiah titled “Miss Liberty”, which is emblazoned with the last lines of Emma Lazurus’s poem “The New Colossus,” and is in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum in NYC.

Topics: Crafts, Non-Fiction

Kathryn Wasserman Davis, 1907 - 2013

In 1998, at the age of 91, she took up kayaking, making regular excursions on the Hudson River and along the coast and on the lakes of Maine. As a result of these experiences, she became a significant supporter of environmental organizations.

Boston

Holding onto Humanity

Jordyn Rozensky

I’ve been sitting at my desk since 3pm today, hands at ready on the keyboard, but I haven’t gotten much done. I’ve mostly been refreshing twitter, checking my email, and holding on for dear life. The Jewish Women’s Archive is located in Boston, a town that has been my home since 2000. It's hard to see your home being hurt. Especially when words like "hard" and home" are far too weak. Today Boston is under attack.

Topics: Non-Fiction
Sheryl Sandberg

I’m Hitting “Like” on Leaning In

Evelyn Becker

The spotlight is on Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and her mission to change the balance of power in the United States.  Sandberg’s book Lean In hit the proverbial shelves this week and the media is buzzing.  Is Sandberg the new Gloria Steinem?  Will her message on women and leadership motivate real change? 

Bel Kaufman

Meet Bel Kaufman: She Wrote What She Knew

Joyce Antler

Adapted from The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America, by Joyce Antler (Schocken Books, 1997). 

Bel Kaufman, the daughter of East European immigrants and granddaughter of Yiddish novelist Sholom Aleichem, emigrated from Odessa with her family in 1923 when she was twelve, quickly learned English, and used the public libraries voraciously. 

Leaning In With Sheryl Sandberg

Jane Eisner

Editorial in the Forward published online March 6, 2013

It’s so tempting to deride Sheryl Sandberg for her new, self-appointed role as the leader of a social movement to bring more gender equality to the workplace.

She must be one of the richest, most successful working mothers on the planet, and in her new book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” her attempts to identify with ordinary working moms seem comical at times.

To illustrate that she, too, has found herself in unexpected situations as a parent, she describes a time when she discovered her children had head lice. What parent can’t relate? Except that Sandberg was on her way to a Silicon Valley business conference. On a corporate jet. Owned by the CEO of eBay.

Nah.

Gerda Lerner, 1981

Saluting Gerda Lerner as Women’s History Month Begins

Ellen K. Rothman

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 feminism were stirring things up outside the ivy covered walls. Inside, in a classroom filled entirely with women, an untenured (but well-published) female Senior Lecturer was teaching the institution’s first course on women’s history.

Birth of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman

January 30, 1912

Early in her career, Barbara Wertheim’s job was clipping and filing newspaper articles for The Nation magazine.  The fact that her father had bought the publication to keep it from go

Birth of iconoclast intellectual Susan Sontag

January 16, 1933

Declaring a “new sensibility that was “defiantly pluralistic,” Susan Sontag published wide-ranging criticism that was a force in American culture for over 40 years.  She rejected limitations o

Geraldine Brooks’ novel "People of the Book" reviewed in the Chicago Tribune

December 29, 2007

A time-traveling novel that encapsulates a story of many religious people in one historical artifact, People of the Book mixes a modern story with clues from across six centuries to construct a multi-layered and compelling narrative of struggle and redemption.  A modern rare-book conservator traces the tale of the Sarajevo Haggadah, created in 14th century Spain and surviving the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi occupation, and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  In the course of her historical exploration of persecution mixed with religious tolerance, she makes important discoveries about her own past.

Birth of Anne Roiphe, feminist author of "Up the Sandbox!"

December 25, 1935

Over 40-plus years, Anne Roiphe’s work has been so extensive that Salon’s critic Sally Eckhoff wrote that tracing her career

"We Killed," by Yael Kohen

"Have you ever considered the girl to be the somebody?"

Stephen Benson

Yael Kohen’s new book, We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, has many revealing tales about how change happens. But one stands out for me: in 1966, the actress Marlo Thomas approached the head of ABC-TV programming with a novel idea. She wanted “to play the person with the problem, not the person who assisted the person with the problem.” She recalled:

I didn’t want to be the wife of somebody, or the secretary of somebody, or the daughter of somebody…”Have you ever considered the girl to be the somebody?” And he said, “Would anybody watch a show like that?” I said, “I think they would.” And so I gave him a copy of The Feminine Mystique, and he read it and kind of became convinced.

Topics: Comedy, Film, Non-Fiction
Bookshelf and Books

The Talmud: Repository of Wisdom or Masculine Tool of Oppression? Maggie Anton Weighs In

Preeva Tramiel

Writer Maggie Anton, whose "Rashi’s Daughters” series has sold 175,000 copies, believes that studying Talmud is the most feminist thing a woman can do. “Knowledge of Talmud is the key to halacha,” she says. Anton asserts that modern Jewish law is made at a table full of Talmud scholars, and that women can have a seat at that table.

Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

Tasty Treat: Talking Shop with Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman

Etta King Heisler

Just before my favorite holiday last week, I sat down with the prolific food-blogger-turned-cookbook-author Deb Perelman. The founder of the Smitten Kitchen was recently given a spot on the Forward 50 and is currently touring the U.S. to promote her new book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook. Next week, I will post more of the story about how her recipes have inspired my own culinary pursuits. But first, here is your chance to be a fly on the wall in our conversation about how she came to write and publish her delicious new book.

Red Flower

In Celebration of Our Bodies...and Our Unique Wiring

Gabrielle Orcha

In case you haven’t heard, Naomi Wolf just came out with a new book, Vagina: A New Biography, and it just might change your life.

Dorrit Zucker Cohn, 1924 - 2012

I most value the example Dorrit set with her integrity, modesty, and precision in teaching, advising, and scholarship.  She was respectful and generous with her time, and she never overstepped.

Lynn Gordon, 1946 - 2012

She believed deeply in the enduring importance of feminism, a political force which transformed the world but one Lynn believed had much more to accomplish. She was a deep believer in social justice and also in the centrality and needs of the State of Israel."

Amy Swerdlow, 1923 - 2012

This beautiful, wise and not-so-organized woman [was] not only a superb organizer but also an inspiring teacher and a colleague who exemplified what it means to meet one’s obligations to the human family.

Mollie Weinstein in France, July 1945

War, Motherhood, & A Little Cheesecake

Cyndee Schaffer

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to work with your mother and learn about her life and in doing so discover a completely different person?

Joan Nathan

Joan Nathan is the author of numerous cookbooks, each of which focuses on an aspect of Jewish life and culture. What makes her books unique is that each recipe comes with a story, enabling the reader to learn about much more than how to prepare a dish, but where the dish originated, how Jewish migration and living in different lands have changed the dish, and its meaning to the family from which it came. Thus, Joan is not only a cookbook author, but a cultural historian and food writer as well. Her books educate about Jewish life, tradition, and Jewish history.

Lucy Kramer Cohen, 1907 - 2007

She never put herself in the limelight to lead and yet she was a leader.

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