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Poetry

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Alicia Jo Rabins

With her indie rock song cycle Girls in Trouble, musician Alicia Jo Rabins has reinterpreted the women of the Bible for a modern audience.

Jane Yolen / Rachel Swirsky

Fantasy Authors

Seeking Justice Through Fantasy

Timbrel

Leading with Timbrels: Another Side to the Passover Story

Molly Pifko

Every year, my temple holds a women’s seder on the second night of Passover. This ritual has always been important to me because throughout my Jewish education, I have clung to stories as the basis for my learning. 

Grace Aguilar

The Dangerous Gift

Tess Kelly

What got my attention wasn’t the writing, though it does connect us. I wasn’t drawn in by the poetry or the Judaism or any of the other traits I share with this woman. No, what caught my eye was the measles. Grace Aguilar: British/Jewish novelist, poet extraordinaire, religious writer, social historian, and liturgist; and I wanted to write about her because of the measles. 

Topics: Fiction, Poetry

Henny Wenkart

Through her creation of the Jewish Women’s Poetry Workshop, Henny Wenkart created much-needed community and resources for Jewish women writers.

Episode 9: Sonnet for America

In search of some post-election, pre-Thanksgiving meaning, host Nahanni Rous and JWA Executive Director Judith Rosenbaum explore that great American symbol, the Statue of Liberty—and the Jewish woman who gave her a voice. Emma Lazarus was a poet and writer who is remembered for the sonnet that redefined the Statue as the Mother of Exiles. But she was also an activist who worked with the poor immigrants of the 1880s and challenged her upper class Jewish community to take responsibility for these Russian Jewish refugees.

Joy Ladin and Lesléa Newman

Identity Poetics: An Afternoon with Joy Ladin and Lesléa Newman

Bella Book
Tara Metal

On a sunny but cold Sunday in Boston, poets Joy Ladin and Lesléa Newman spoke at a JWA-sponsored event about their newly released collections of poetry, Ladin’s Impersonation and Newman’s I Carry My Mother

Hannah Szenes, 1944, cropped

Living A Life Of Valor

Sarah Groustra

I don’t think I’m a very brave person. I’m normally quite timid, and taking a stand is something that does not come naturally to me. I sometimes hesitate to say what I really think for fear of how others will react, and I often find it easy to fade into the background in large groups.

Marcia Falk

May You Be Blessed In All That You Are

Eliana Gayle-Schneider

Each Shabbat my parents bless me with the words, “Be who you are and may you be blessed in all that you are.” These words have been embedded in my mind as my family’s traditional blessing, signifying the start of Shabbat.  While other families bless their children saying, “May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah,” this alternative prayer has been our way of welcoming the Sabbath for as long as I can remember. 

West Coast Highway

I Came to Explore the Wreck

Rachel Landau

Boxes of slide reels still cover my repurposed kitchen table. To help with storage, a nearby closet offers enough space for a whopping twelve boxes for a total of sixteen, all compiled by my paternal Grandfather. I’m no mathematician but I can easily calculate that, with sixteen boxes of eighty slides, there must be over twelve hundred squares of film.

Maxine Kumin, 1925 - 2014

Among those of us who have been traveling in her wake for decades, she was and is a model of how to live, as well as how to write, courageously and sanely, with artistic craft and generosity, out of a profound love of our shared life.

Adrienne Rich / Erika Meitner

Feminist Poets

Writing Truth To Power

Erika Meitner

Erika Meitner’s poetry plays with the idea of overlooked but vital spaces, from malls and suburban developments to women’s bodies.
"I Carry My Mother" by Leslea Newman

Book Review: I Carry My Mother

Miriam Cantor-Stone

I Carry My Mother is not only a tribute to the works of famous poets but, more importantly, to Newman’s mother, who passed away three years ago. The poems show her mother both as Newman wants her to be remembered as well as how Newman saw her as she was dying in her hospital bed.

Topics: Poetry

Alice B. Toklas Moves In Permanently with Gertrude Stein

September 9, 1910
Alice Babette Toklas heard distinct chiming when she met Gertrude Stein.
Adrienne Rich

Poetry is Politics

Rachel Landau

One of the best ways to write poetry is to read poetry: this is common knowledge probably spoken at every writing class in the world. However, this advice is not specific enough. The leader of the class should instead announce to the group of rookie writers that one of the best ways to write poetry is to read the poetry of Adrienne Rich.

Topics: Activism, Poetry

Long-lost Poem by War Heroine Hannah Szenes is Found

September 2, 2012

A poem by WWII hero Hannah Szenes was discovered 68 years after her death.

Emma Lazarus

Mining the Archive: Emma and Immigration

Yana Kozukhin

Long before Emma Lazarus’ words were immortalized on that great copper statue, she was a young Jewish American girl growing up in New York. Throughout her life she produced numerous poems, essays, letters, translations, and even a novel.  

Topics: Activism, Poetry

Death of writer Amy K. Blank

September 17, 1990

Amy Blank's poetry expressed the gentleness, insight, and devotion for which she was known.

Adrienne Rich Poem Image

The World As It Is: Learning To Read Adrienne Rich

Margaret Bostrom

The words are purposes.
​The words are maps.

            —Adrienne Rich, from Diving into the Wreck

When I think of Adrienne Rich, I think about the differences between maps and routes, between shortcuts and whole geographies. I think about the difference between following directions that lead you straight from A to B and sitting down with your Atlas of the Difficult World with no destination yet in mind. I think about trying to take in all that maps have to tell you with your heart and eyes open, about looking to learn without knowing what you will find or where this new knowledge will lead you. When I think about Adrienne Rich, I think of the different ways we learn, the different ways we come to know the world, ourselves, and vice versa. 

Topics: Poetry

Birth of Esther Broner, co-creator of "The Women’s Haggadah"

July 8, 1927

Esther Broner "made room for us at the table by creating a whole new one—a Seder table at which women’s voices were heard.”

Bernice Sains Freid

Bernice Sains Freid called her time in WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during WWII “the happiest days of my life.”

Deena Metzger

Deena Metzger’s iconic portrait, “The Warrior,” changed the way we look at surviving breast cancer.

Jean Trounstine

Jean Trounstine taught literature to women inmates and cofounded an award-winning alternative probation program that uses writing and literature to offer prisoners a second chance.

Merle Feld

Both through her writing and in her work with Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups, Merle Feld supported the difficult and delicate struggle to make peace in the Middle East.

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