Spirituality and Religious Life

Content type
Collection

Joan Nathan

Award-winning journalist and cookbook author Joan Nathan is a transformative figure in documenting and exploring the evolving Jewish experience both in America and around the globe through the powerful lens of food. A long-standing contributing writer to The New York Times and Tablet Magazine, Nathan is the author of eleven books, as well as hundreds of articles, podcasts, interviews, and public presentations about Jewish, global, and American foodways. 

Torah with nature frame

Lessons from Our Backyard Bat Mitzvah

Julie Zuckerman

For one family, a backyard bat mitzvah during the pandemic brought fruitful lessons.

Women and Sephardic Music

Ladino or Judeo-Spanish Sephardic songs are primarily a women’s repertoire. The two main traditions are that of northern Morocco and the Eastern Mediterranean, primarily today’s Turkey, Greece, the Balkans.

Episode 55: Breathing Lesson

We kick off Can We Talk?'s spring season just in time for Passover... and about a year since we began living with the global pandemic. This time has been rough on so many people, for so many reasons—hard on working parents with kids in remote school, hard on people who have lost jobs, human contact, and loved ones. In this podcast episode, Judith Rosenbaum and Nahanni Rous—and our podcast listeners—get a breathing lesson from Janice Stieber Rous, founder of Body Dialogue (and Nahanni's aunt). They'll also talk about liberation, well-being, and how stress and exhaustion impact our ability to breathe.

Astrology Graphic

Astrology Is More Jewish Than You Think

Ilana Diamant

Judaism and astrology aren't incompatible. 

woman screaming underwater

What Does Resilience Look Like?

Emma Barthold

Resilience does not demand perfection—resilience only demands that we keep going.

Sally Gottesman

Sally Gottesman, born 1962 in New Jersey and residing in New York, is a non-profit entrepreneur whose leadership and philanthropy have had a major impact on the Jewish feminist and justice landscape.

Rezadeiras among Bene Anusim in Portugal

The rezadeiras, prayer-women, began to play an important role in crypto-Jewish practice after the late fifteenth-century Expulsions from Spain and then Portugal forced anyone who wanted to live as a Jew to do so in secret.  

Partnership Minyan

The Partnership Minyan is an Orthodox feminist prayer service that seeks to maximize women’s involvement in prayers while adhering to Jewish law, or halakha, by placing the bima (podium) in the middle and allowing women to lead select sections, although women do not count as part of the quorum of ten men. There are currently over 80 Partnership Minyanim around the world.

Sarah Rodrigues Brandon

Sarah Rodrigues Brandon (1798-1828) was born poor, enslaved, and Christian on the island of Barbados. By the time of her death thirty years later she was one of the wealthiest Jews in New York and her family were leaders in Congregation Shearith Israel. This entry explains Sarah’s life journey and highlights how her story relates to that of other women of mixed African and Jewish ancestry in early America.

Roslyn Lieberman Horwich's bat mitzvah speech, 1940–41 (page 1)

A Reform Synagogue's First Bat Mitzvah

Rabbi Daniel Kirzane

Temple B’nai Abraham Zion's Associate Rabbi discusses the congregations first bat mitzvah, Roslyn Lieberman Horwich.

Gold Star of David necklace hanging in midair, in partial focus.

"Tagen Alai": My Magen David Necklace and My Jewish Identity

Noa Gross

My Magen David necklace has transformed from a simple silver chain into an extension of my identity.

Photo of Monterey Bay

Revelations Through Music at Jewish Summer Camp

Ella Thompson

At camp, every song had a different tune, and for every prayer I knew, there were four more I didn’t.

Photo of Birkenau ash pond, a single red flower growing at its bank.

Flowers At Auschwitz: The Power of Jewish Tradition and Hope

Dahlia Plotkin-Oren

The simple image of a flower growing in Auschwitz reminded me of the strength and power that hope can carry.

Close up image of Shoshanah Curiel-Alessi's tie-dyed pink and purple tallit

How My Bat Mitzvah Tallit Helped Me Find My Voice

Shoshanah Curiel-Alessi

This prayer shawl was the antithesis of everything I’d told myself I was supposed to be; it challenged tradition, caught attention, and took up space.

Louise Glück

Louise Glück, American poet, essayist, and educator, was the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as numerous other awards for her writing; she also served as poet laureate of the United States from 2003 to 2004. One finds the personal, the mythological, and the Biblical woven intricately throughout Glück’s oeuvre.

Illustration of Raised Hands with #MeToo Written on the Palms

Why We Still Need to Be Talking about #MeToo in the Jewish Community

Dahlia Soussan

As too many Jewish women find their allegations unheard and unaddressed, I am responsible to amplify those female voices.

Virtual High Holidays Graphic

The High Holidays Go Virtual: Three Rabbis on Jewish Ritual during a Pandemic

Elana Moscovitch

JWA talks to three rabbis about how Judaism has changed, and stayed the same, during the pandemic.

Helene Aylon's Self Portrait, 2004

Wrestling with "Ruach" (God)

Belle Gage

I tend to have more questions than answers when it comes to God.

Photo of Woman at the Beach

Spirituality, Self-Care, and the Fight for Justice

Ellanora Lerner

To see everything as holy, to be amazed by the simple, beautiful things in the world, not only brings me happiness; it also inspires me to fight for justice.

Rising Voices Fellow Lilah Peck with her sister Adina

"Lech Lecha": My Sister’s Journey from Charlotte to Jerusalem

Lilah Peck

My sister went to seminary in Jerusalem after graduating high school, both geographically and symbolically far from her Charlotte roots.

Women of the Carvajal Family

The devotion of the Carvajal women to forbidden Jewish practices helped their family become the most famous Hispano-Portuguese secret Jews of colonial Latin America. The determination of these conversas, or New Christians, to create a recognizable Jewish identity shows the importance of women to crypto-Judaism at a time when the Inquisition of Spain and its territories prosecuted this belief system as heresy.

Inés of Herrera

Inés of Herrera was a twelve-year-old prophetess whose message of salvation appealed to the conversos of Castile at the end of the fifteenth century. The Inquisition was anxious to quickly deal with this threat, trying many girls and women as heretics as of 1500; their confessions reveal details about this movement.

Female Martyrdom

In various eras, Jewish women chose martrydom, or Kiddush ha-Shem (sanctification of the Divine Name), rather than repudiate God or transgress certain commandments. Examples appear in Jewish Hellenistic writings, rabbinic literature, Crusade chronicles, medieval Hebrew piyyut (liturgical poetry), accounts of the seventeenth-century Chmielnicki pogroms, and documents connected with the Shoah. Scholars differ, however, regarding the accuracy of these martyrological texts, which often reshape actual events to conform to iconic imagery.

"Old Olive Tree," 1935

The Wise Child of Climate Activism

Sasha Azizi Rosenfeld

When I asked my mom how she relates to the climate crisis through Judaism, she said, “I’ve never thought about it. I guess I’m the simple child.”

Donate

Help us elevate the voices of Jewish women.

donate now

Get JWA in your inbox

Read the latest from JWA from your inbox.

sign up now