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Journalism

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Rachel Adler

The size and diversity of the gathering were strong evidence that we were not just disaffected individuals. We were a movement.

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.

Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters: Profiled by MAKERS

Jordyn Rozensky

In this amazing clip from MAKERS, Barbara Walters speaks of breaking not just the glass ceiling—but the steel ceiling. It’s hard to imagine Barbara Walters as anything other than successful and confident.

Nancy Popkin Popkin, 1930 - 2013

The legacy of Nancy Popkin Popkin, who danced on my coffee table at her 80th birthday party, is her unrelenting determination to celebrate life, family, and friends, with an abundantly generous spirit and a refusal to let even significant losses stand in her way.

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. 

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.

Flames

Rosa Parks and Hanukkah: Why Ignorance Isn't Always Bliss

Etta King Heisler

On the Thursday night before Hanukkah began, I attended an event called A Sip of Eser, an introductory session to the ten-part young adult learning program Eser (meaning 10) run by Hebrew College in nearby Newton, MA. Amidst the tumult of a Boston bar, and alongside several dozen people I had never met, I heard rabbinical student, Seth Wax, tell a Hanukkah story none of us had ever heard.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Founding Editor of Ms. Magazine, Talks with "The Slant"

The Slant

Accepting an award from the Jewish Women’s Archive earlier this year, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a longtime activist, pointed to the Statue of Liberty, just visible in the foggy distance, and quipped, “I love her, even though she’s not Jewish.” Over murmurs of laughter, she spoke of her love for Lady Liberty’s “grace and beauty,” and defined what the monument represents to her: “welcome, freedom, hope.” The same could be said of Pogrebin herself.

New York Times reviews Nora Ephron’s last book

November 26, 2010

“She’s familiar but funny, boldly outspoken yet simultaneously reassuring,” wrote Alex Kuczynski in a review of Nora Ephron’s final book “I Remember Nothing,” a sequel to her 2006 work “I Feel Bad About My Neck.”

Rena Glickman featured by Sports Illustrated

November 24, 2008

“The father of men's judo was a small, quiet, disciplined athlete who lived in Japan a century ago. No big surprise there. The mother of women's judo?

Gloria Stern Penner, 1931 - 2012

In the 1970s, I was a vigorous believer that women needed better representation in business and society, and I worked hard to make that happen. I doubt my demeanor resembled the TV-film stereotype of the obedient, dutiful babe in the background.

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."

Business Person

The Plea for Parnussah

Susan Reimer-Torn

On Rosh Hashanah we re-enthrone the Sovereign King in order to perpetuate the ancient world order. But what happens when this particular male-dominant, top down world order is reversed?

Ruth Gruber, circa 1944

Happy 101st Birthday to Ruth Gruber: Activist, Rescuer and Chronicler of her People’s Story

Deborah Fineblum Raub

More than half a century after the August day in 1944 when Ruth Gruber coaxed reluctant refugees off the bus—told they would be taken to the showers, these concentration camp survivors refused to disembark—I stood on that very spot in upstate New York.

Dorothy Parker

Putting “All Her Eggs in One Bastard” –– Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker!

Deborah Fineblum Raub

On August 22, 1893, a child was born who would make the world a decidedly wittier place.

Beauty Exercises, 1897

We've Come A Long Way, Rosa: Title IX and The American Jewess

Gabrielle Orcha

You didn’t think Title IX would reach its 40th birthday and go unrecognized here at JWA, did you?

Nora Ephron, 1941 - 2012

For all her acerbic humor, she was always warm to me. For all her Jewish disconnection, she felt utterly Jewish to me.

Gabrielle Orcha

Carrying the torch

Gabrielle Orcha

Perhaps what I love most about the Jewish tradition, about the dance of life and its cycles, is that wonderful interplay between tradition and innovation.

Topics: Journalism
Leah Berkenwald Wins Rockower Award, 2011

Our own Jewess with Attitude wins prestigious journalism award

Gabrielle Orcha

We are thrilled to share some exciting news:  our very own, Online Communication Specialist and Blogger-in-Chief, Leah Berkenwald, earned a coveted 2011 Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism.  She won first place in Division A (with readership of 15,000 or more) for Excellence in Single Commentary for her piece, “Harry Potter: Four Progressive Lessons for the Jewish Community.” The adjudicators stated that Leah effectively made “connections between the themes of freedom and equality in the most widely read story of her generation to the movement for equal rights for women and resistance to bigotry in a clear, energetic and youthful voice.”

Topics: Journalism

Susan Stamberg

Susan Stamberg, longtime host and special correspondent for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, “a world that totally enwraps you in Jewishness.” While not an observant Jew, Susan nonetheless feels sociologically and ethnically Jewish, and credits Jewish values, among other things, for her interest in learning, opinion, and discussion.

Sheila Cheimets , 1936 - 2011

She never put much stock in her pioneering achievements ... until she became a grandmother... It was when she had her granddaughters around her that she began to think about what their lives were going to be like.

Bernice W. Kliman, 1933 - 2011

She found that her feminism conflicted with the synagogue practice of denying women a place on the bimah. Only later did she [find] a sympathetic rabbi and a group of congregants who also believed in women’s equality.

Tila Tequila

The Superficial's moronically hateful coverage of Tila Tequila's conversion to Judaism

Kate Bigam

Let’s get the meat of the gossip out of the way: Reality show star Tila Tequila (real name: Tila Nguyen) is converting to Judaism.

Sarah Silverman on Complex.com's List of Hot Jewish Women

Are lists of "hot" Jewish women kosher?

Leah Berkenwald

This week on the Sisterhood, Naomi Zeveloff wrote:

'Hot Jews' and the Peril of Ethnic Fetishism

‘Tis the season for year-end lists, and the pop culture web site Complex.com has come out with one that places them squarely in skeez territory: the 50 hottest Jewish women, a catalog of actresses, porn stars, and models with Semitic heritage.

Topics: Feminism, Journalism

Top 10 Moments for Jewish Women in 2011

Jewesses With Attitude
10. We celebrated the 40th anniversary of Our Bodies, Ourselves

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