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Margaret Fleet, 1919 - 2013

Her teacher and piano were important in her life, but her Jewish identity and heritage were even more so. She was involved in many Jewish causes and organizations and was a proud supporter of Israel, especially in her life-long devotion to Hadassah.

Jeanne Manford, 1920 - 2013

She worked hard and organized. She would call parents cold when she learned they had a problem. “We don’t want to intrude,” she’d say, “but we can help.”

Rabbi Janie Grackin

For the Love of Children

Rabbi Janie Grackin

My heartbreak was saved by a friend who watched my interaction with groups of children on playgrounds and in schools who told me that because I didn’t have other children, my heart was big enough to hold everyone else’s. 

Jill Albert

A True Leader

Adina Karpuj

Jill Albert was radiant. She had an unmatched presence that could be felt by anyone touched by her warm embrace. She had a way of making all of the girls in my troop feel welcome, appreciated and unique. But her brilliance extended far beyond our small group of girl scouts: she baked cookies for her garbage men and always had a bowl full of Double Bubble in her car to give anyone who may have been having a bad day. Jill encapsulated the ultimate role model.

Teachers Tell All: Voices from the Field

Learn from a group of hand-picked educators from around the country. Seven teachers share their work and field questions from webinar participants. Presenter bios and Powerpoint presentations are included.
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. 

Faye Moskowitz, 2008.

Meet Faye Moskowitz, Writer and Teacher

Susan Morse

You might expect a writer, at age 80-plus, to retire from the public eye. Not Faye S. Moskowitz. As chair of the English Department at The George Washington University, the acclaimed short story author still shapes the dialogue about Jewish American fiction and where it’s headed. She continues to give book talks and forge conversations between accomplished writers and aspirants. Her own work has sometimes been compared to that of famed Jewish American short story writer Tillie Olsen.

Topics: Teachers, Fiction
Gerda Lerner, 1981

Saluting Gerda Lerner as Women’s History Month Begins

Ellen K. Rothman

Back in the day (as we now say) when I was an undergraduate at a college that had been educating the country’s elite—all men, of course—for almost 350 years, the first ripples of Second Wave feminism were stirring things up outside the ivy covered walls. Inside, in a classroom filled entirely with women, an untenured (but well-published) female Senior Lecturer was teaching the institution’s first course on women’s history.

"But, I Don't Teach History!" Using Historical Sources in Jewish Education

Get new ideas for using historical sources across the curriculum to build connections between different entry points for Jewish education.
Chalkboard in Jessica Kirzane's Classroom, January 2013

Guess What's Being Taught in my Sunday School Class?

Jessica Kirzane

A few weeks ago, on the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I posed a question to the students in my class on "Jews and the Civil Rights Movement": "If you could plan a Jewish commemoration for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, what would it be? Who would be the audience? What would you do? Why should Jews, as Jews and in Jewish communities, commemorate this holiday?"

Birth of Ruth Sager, innovative scientific achiever

February 7, 1918

“Science is a way of life.  I think it all comes from the inside.  It really gets to the very core of your existence.  It is much like being an artist or a dancer.

Heather Booth and Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964

Tikkun Olam in a Mississipi Freedom School

Doreen Rappaport

On February 1, 1960, four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at a race-segregated lunch counter in Woolworth’s and asked for service. When the waitress refused to serve them, they remained seated. This act of passive resistance launched a mass Civil Rights Movement involving tens of thousands of black southerners demanding equality and an end to the hideous system of racial segregation. I was a vocal music teacher in junior high school in the Lower East Side of Manhattan then, and not that much older than these students. Their courage and dignity in the face of constant violence fired my heart and mind.

Gerda Lerner at Sarah Lawrence College

Remembering Gerda Lerner: The "Mother" of Women's History

Joyce Antler

Gerda Lerner, pioneer in women’s history, remarkable public intellectual, and life-long activist, died this week in Wisconsin at the age of 92. A member of JWA’s Academic Advisory Council, she was enthusiastic about our mission of chronicling and transmitting the history of Jewish women. No historian was more identified with the field of women’s history. Receiving her Ph.D. at the age of 46, she wrote a series of groundbreaking books in which she almost singlehandedly created a conceptual framework for the field.

Image of an Afghani Girl

In the Name of Allah: What a Young Afghani Woman Has Taught Me

Samantha Wood

Tell someone a story, and you don’t know what will happen next.

Last summer I was lucky to study at the Jewish Women’s Archive’s Institute for Educators. We spent five intense days learning the Living the Legacy curriculum with top scholars in social activism, Jewish feminism and history. In the coming months, I will be using Living the Legacy to teach a series of social justice workshops to teens in western Massachusetts.

But something else happened because of what I learned at the Jewish Women’s Archive.

Judith Rodin, first woman named president of Ivy League university

December 17, 1993

This date marks two “firsts” for Judith Rodin—the first Penn graduate to serve as president of the University of Pennsylvania and the first woman to become president of an Ivy League institution.&n

Dorrit Zucker Cohn, 1924 - 2012

I most value the example Dorrit set with her integrity, modesty, and precision in teaching, advising, and scholarship.  She was respectful and generous with her time, and she never overstepped.

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."

Chicago Teacher's Strike, September 2012

What's With All The Teacher Hate?

Sarah Seltzer

Sarah Seltzer, contributing writer to the The Sisterhood, shares her thoughts on education, class, gender, unions, and workers' rights.

Judith Martin, 1918 - 2012

From 1963-2009, she developed a contemporary theater for children. The shows intimately reflected a child’s world.

Anita Steckel, 1930 - 2012

She taught in such a simple, loving way and made everyone feel safe. “You're allowed to mess up here,” she would say. “It's OK to fall.”

Amy Swerdlow, 1923 - 2012

This beautiful, wise and not-so-organized woman [was] not only a superb organizer but also an inspiring teacher and a colleague who exemplified what it means to meet one’s obligations to the human family.

Naomi Harris Rosenblatt

Naomi Harris Rosenblatt has had a distinguished career in Washington, D.C. as a psychotherapist and Bible teacher. Born in Haifa, she lived in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate and witnessed first hand the birth of the State of Israel. After her marriage to Peter Rosenblatt, a Washington attorney, she moved to the United States, which has been her home ever since.

Ruth Barcan Marcus, 1921 - 2012

Not afraid to make enemies and blessed with many loyal friends, [she] was unrelenting and consistent in upholding the highest standards for rigor and clarity in philosophy and in academia more generally.

Annette Baran, 1927 - 2010

Annette made a huge difference in people’s awareness and understanding of the importance of truth and the civil right of access to one’s birth certificates and to information about one’s self.

Beatrice L. Garber, 1912 - 1999

While she wasn’t your typical 'Bubbe,' cooking brisket or baking kugel, she was a gifted public speaker and totally dedicated to Hadassah, her synagogue, the Land of Israel, the Jewish people, and her family.

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