January Book Talks

Join JWA on Thursdays, January 16-30, at 8 PM ET for exciting conversations with innovative authors. Register here.

Thursday, Jan 16, 8 PM ET—Anya Liftig, Holler Rat: A Memoir

Anya Liftig grew up with her feet in two very different worlds. While her mother's upbringing was so rural that the other kids called her "holler rat," her father came from a comfortable, upper-middle-class Jewish family. A funny, vivid, and heartbreaking memoir about forging identity in the chasm between cultures and classes.

Thursday, Jan 23, 8 PM ET—Maira Kalman, Still Life with Remorse

Maira Kalman uses her signature wit and tenderness to reveal how family history plays an influential role in all of our work, lives, and perspectives. Still Life with Remorse illuminates the powerful universal truths in our most personal family stories.

Thursday, Jan 30, 8 PM ET—Rachel Somerstein, Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section

An incisive yet personal look at the science and history of the most common surgery performed in America—the cesarean section—and an exposé on the disturbing state of maternal medical care.

Online History Course: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Global Jewish Experience

How do the particularities of nation, race, ethnicity, and gender shape what it means to be a Jewish woman? This series invites viewers into the lives of Jewish women around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, from Iran to the US, from Ethiopia to Argentina. Register here.

Thursday, February 13, 12 PM ET—Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah, Jewish Women and Modernity in Turn-of-the-Century Baghdad

What was life like for the Jewish women of Baghdad (and beyond), in the 19th and early 20th centuries? How did they position themselves in a rapidly changing world and assert their agency? This talk will explore the experiences of Baghdadi Jewish women from the perspective of philanthropy and education. 

Dr. Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah is assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen. Her current research project is entitled Optimizing Orientalism? Rethinking the Global Jewish Elite.

Thursday, Feb 20, 12 PM ET—Shula Mola, The Women of Enkash, Ethiopia: The Zar Spirit and the Mergem Gojo (Blood Hut) as Spaces of Resistance

Drawing on her groundbreaking oral history research, Dr. Mola will unfold the history and culture of the Beta Israel women of the village of Enkash and explore how their unique religious practices created space for resistance to patriarchy. 

Dr. Shula Mola, a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University, explores DEI discourses, focusing on group tensions and the impact of the Gaza war on marginalized communities. Mola co-founded Mothers on Guard, fighting police brutality. Her work preserves the heritage of Ethiopian-Israeli women and communities. 

Thursday, Feb 27, 12 PM ET—Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, Madame Goldye Steiner: First African-American Singer of Jewish Liturgical Music

Discover the fascinating story of Gladys Mae Sellers (stage name: Madame Goldye Steiner), trailblazing early 20th-century vocalist. She performed with early jazz innovators as well as in the Yiddish theater and on Broadway. As "Goldye di Shvartze Khaznte," or “Goldye the Colored Woman Cantor,” she was the first known African-American woman singer of khazones, or Ashkenazi Jewish liturgical music.   

Shahanna McKinney-Baldon is based at the University of Wisconsin and the Edot Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity and Racial Justice Collaborative. She chairs the Jews of Color and Allies advisory for the Reconstructionist Movement and stewards several artistic endeavors, including her research and performance project on Madame Goldye Steiner.  

Thursday, Mar 6, 12 PM ET—Dalia Wassner, Contesting Totalitarianism: Feminist Jewish Culture in Argentina

In the years after World War II, Argentina served as a refuge for former Nazis. A generation later, the Argentine military government abducted and “disappeared” thousands of its own citizens. Learn how Jewish feminist cultural activists deployed Holocaust imagery in their pursuit of truth, reconciliation, and inclusiveness in post-dictatorship Argentina.  

Dr. Dalia Wassner, Director of the Brandeis Initiative on the Jews of the Americas, is the author of Harbinger of Modernity: Marcos Aguinis and the Democratization of Argentina. She serves on the Boards of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association and the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.