Feminism

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Collection

We remember Esther M. Broner

Leah Berkenwald

We were saddened to wake up to the news that Esther M. Broner passed away yesterday. A beloved novelist, playwright, ritualist, and feminist writer, Esther M. Broner was born on July 8, 1927, in Detroit, Michigan. Her writing, including Her Mothers (1975), A Weave of Women (1978) and many others, made her one of the most important teachers of Jewish feminism and feminist Judaism.

Jaclyn Friedman

Meet Jaclyn Friedman: Jewess with attitude

Leah Berkenwald

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.

Jaclyn Friedman

Jaclyn Friedman speaks out against slut-shaming and victim blaming at Slutwalk

Leah Berkenwald

Jaclyn Friedman is a 'Jewess with Attitude' who talks the talk and walks the walk -- the Slutwalk, that is. Jaclyn Friedman, founder and the Executive Director of Women, Action & the Media, is a powerful voice in the current Feminist movement. Co-author of Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, she is particularly concerned with tearing down rape culture.

Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Security Team in the Situation Room, 2011

Hillary Clinton "too sexy" for Hasidic newspaper

Leah Berkenwald

Brooklyn-based, ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic Jewish newspaper, Der Tzitung, has decided to rewrite history by photoshopping Hillary Clinton out of the photo of U.S. leaders receiving an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden (right). Why? Because the idea of a woman in the Situation Room was "too scandalous."

Barbara Dobkin receives honorary degree

May 5, 2011
Barbara Dobkin, the Founding Chair of the Jewish Women's Archive, receives an honorary degree from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in recognition of her visionary advocacy of women's causes.
Women's Liberation Daughters: The Next Generation Panel

Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity: Bringing it home

Leora Jackson

Last week, I had the great privilege of attending the conference “Women’s Liberation and Jewish Identity: Uncovering a legacy of innovation, activism, and social change.” (JWA was a conference sponsor, and you can check out Judith Rosenbaum’s response to the conference here!) As a research intern for Professor Joyce Antler, the conference convenor, this past summer, I spent hours reading short essays, activist statements, and poetry by many of the conference’s speakers, who were primarily Jewish women involved in feminist activism in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Seeing their words come to life as they spoke to an audience of peers, academics, and a few young feminists was enlightening, particularly as it provided me with a chance to rethink my own relationship to Jewish feminism as it relates to Jewish ritual practice.

The Wandering is Over Haggadah: Including Women's Voices

The modern Haggadah: New voices and the reactionary

Elyssa Cohen

This year I tried something new at my family’s Seder. We used a new Haggadah!

Spanx

Spanx may make panty lines invisible, but can't smooth over feminist critique

Leah Berkenwald

This delicious article in the Boston Globe had me pumping my feminist fist in the air! In a report on the Combined Jewish Philanthropies Women’s Philanthropy’s annual Pomegranate event held at Congregation Mishkan Tefilah in Chestnut Hill, MA, Beth Teitell reported that there were no "visible panty lines," or "VPLs."

Rachel Berry from Glee

Why Rachel Berry deserves our compassion

Leah Berkenwald

Recently in The Forward, Jay Michaelson compared four characters from “Glee” to the “Four Children” from the Passover seder tradition. What I loved about the piece was Michaelson’s point that for young Jews, Jewish identity is one variable in a multi-variable identity that youth will embrace, when and if they find it meaningful. What bothered me about the piece was the language Michaelson used describing Rachel Berry, the analogous “Wise Child,” as an “irritating control freak” and “intolerable.” It was particularly difficult to read this because, well, I used to be Rachel Berry.

Joyce Antler

Q&A: Joyce Antler on "Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity"

Chanel Dubofsky

I first read the Joyce Antler’s book The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America as an undergraduate, deep in the thrall of Jewish feminist academia.

Netiva Ben-Yehuda

Remembering Netiva Ben-Yehuda

Ari Davidow

Many years ago I was sitting in a kibbutz dining hall in the north of Israel. One of the older members, a woman, was reminiscing about the equality of the sexes that supposedly existed when the kibbutz was founded.

"The Feminine Mystique," by Betty Friedan

Planting the seed: Memories of "The Feminine Mystique"

Susan Reimer-Torn

There’s a lot of buzz these days about Stephanie Coontz’s new book A Strong Stirring, an assessment of Betty Friedans’s 1963 manifesto The Feminine Mystique. It’s stirring up some personal memories of my own.

Egyptian women make their voices heard

From the Rib

It’s an exciting, scary, and revolutionary time in Egypt right now. In spite of our opinions on the political implications of the anti-Mubarak and pro-Mubarak protests, I think we can all appreciate the large number of Egyptian female revolutionaries with roles in the spotlight. I read an interesting article on this in the New York Times today that described the surprisingly large involvement of women in the protests in Egypt.

Glee Cast on GQ Magazine Cover, 2010

Glee's sexy cover as a "teachable moment"

Galit Breen

I am such a Gleek. So naturally I was fascinated by the uproar caused by the risque, but let’s just face it crazy-hot, GQ photo shoot that Leah blogged about here.

Topics: Feminism, Television

Rhonda Copelon, 1944 - 2010

Rhonda Copelon often worked behind the scenes, but her finger prints, or perhaps I should say brain waves, are all over many of the most important breakthroughs in progressive feminist advances both in the United States and globally.

Lani Silver, 1948 - 2009

She liked to tell me that she started out in life as conservative but that she did a full political turn when she traveled to South Africa at l9 and observed first hand the awful effect of apartheid. When she returned to San Francisco, she became active in the Jewish community and with liberal and social justice causes and campaigns.

Anne Wexler, 1930 - 2009

There was no one I would rather be compared to – or confused with!

Rita Arditti, 1934 - 2009

She went from a young Argentinian middle- to upper-class kid raised not to question women's roles in the home to leading crusader for women's issues (notably as they applied to the world of science)...

Helen Yglesias, 1915 - 2008

...her protagonists come from the variable Jewish life of New York. ... these women are assimilated but concerned with utilizing the morals of the Jewish past and its prophetic ethic—a concern for justice and dignity.

Maxine Feldman, 1945 - 2007

Never content to play only gay spaces, she would perform 'any place that would have her.' She loved being a bridge, helping others to gain confidence and find the resources they needed.

Joyce Warshow, 1937 - 2007

…She chose action over passivity. She chose to reform rather than to conform. Her diverse background and interests led her down many paths. As a renowned feminist, filmmaker, psychologist, educator, author, and activist who fully invested herself in every fiber of her work-literally, physically, metaphorically-Joyce touched the lives of many.

Ellen Willis, 1941 - 2006

Willis brought lucidity and style to the most controversial and baffling cultural issues—her thought was a beacon of clarity. For those of us fortunate enough to have been her comrades, anticipating her insights was part of what kept us returning to meetings month after month, year after year.

Madeleine Stern, 1912 - 2007

…an innovative and revered entrepreneur in the leather-armchair world of gentlemen antiquarian book dealers; unmarried in a world where women were wives, Stern lived in a universe in which it was not possible to live the way she wanted to. She simply ignored that impossibility, created her own universe and, in a small but exquisite way, changed the world.

Grace Paley, 1922 - 2007

But even more, even more than I admired the stories, which was a lot, I admired Grace Paley's activism and her moral courage.

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