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Voting Rights

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Melissa Klapper Headshot 2024

Writing Jewish Women Into America's Story

Sally Wiener Grotta

JWA chats with Melissa R. Klapper about her groundbreaking work on American Jewish women’s history, including her forthcoming book, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai.

Collage of torn paper forming a stylized American flag

Voting Rights in the U.S., From the Women’s Suffrage Movement to Now

Lucy Targum

As a feminist who cares about voting equality, it is clear to me that current voting rights advocacy is in part descended from the women's suffrage movement.

Judith Wright

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Judith Wright on July 25, 2000, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project, Wright discusses her family, Jewish identity, political activism, involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, incarceration during the Freedom Rides, and her continued engagement in various causes, including women's rights and antiwar activities.

Vicki Gabriner

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Vicki Gabriner on July 20, 2000, in Brookline, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Gabriner recounts growing up in Brooklyn, her journey through activism, involvement in social justice issues, experiences with the Weathermen, coming out as a lesbian, and her deepening connection to Judaism and Yiddish culture.

Collage of Maud Nathan on floral orange background

Remembering Maud Nathan on Election Day 2022

Irene Y. Raich

Suffragist Maud Nathan could never have predicted the labor protections and voting rights we have now, and just like her, I can never give up on fighting for what is right.

Collage with Image of Georgia Fried and Her Siblings Holding Volunteer Certificates for 2020 Polls in Columbus, OH

I Worked the Polls During the 2021 "Off-Year" Election: Here's Why It Matters

Georgia Fried

As last year's election came and went and my disillusionment peaked, I recalled all of the Jewish women who fought to get the right to vote.

Collage of Zoom Youth Phone-Banking Call Screenshot and Shabbat Candles, Pomegranate Symbol

The Power of Jewish Community: From Synagogue Services to Zoom Phone-Banking

Maddie Feldman

To this day, I’m astounded by congregants’ enthusiasm as they hopped on weekly—and eventually daily—Zoom voter phone-banking sessions.

Selma Browde

Selma Browde was a medical doctor and activist whose passionate work and advocacy on behalf of disadvantaged communities in South Africa spanned more than half a century.

Episode 49: Jewish Women Vote (Transcript)

Episode 49: Jewish Women Vote (Transcript)

Episode 49: Jewish Women Vote

As history unfolds in this election season, we talk with Jewish women about their voting stories—past and present. We hear from a poll watcher in Georgia, a young voter whose name was nearly wiped from the voter rolls, and a rabbi who said a blessing as she slipped her ballot in the ballot box. We'll also hear from a 92-year-old voter in Florida who remembers meeting suffragist Alice Paul in the 1970s, and a candidate for US Congress who talks about the dilemma she faced in sixth grade—whether to vote for herself for class president.

Episode 44: The Nineteenth Amendment Turns 100 (Transcript)

Episode 44: The Nineteenth Amendment Turns 100 (Transcript)

Episode 44: The Nineteenth Amendment Turns 100

One hundred years ago on August 26, 1920, Congress adopted the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks with historians Ellen Dubois, Martha Jones, and Melissa Klapper about the role of African American and Jewish women in fighting for the vote, and the racism, classism, and antisemitism that undermined the movement's impact.

Heather Booth and Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964

Freedom Summer: The Fight for Universal Suffrage Continues

Dr. Debra L. Schultz

Scholar Debra Schultz explores the history of Freedom Summer and the fight to enable all American citizens to vote.

Topics: Voting Rights
Adam and Eve Cast from the Garden of Eden by angel

Beyond Crime and Punishment

Mica Maltzman

America’s prisons, police forces, and courts seem beyond repair. Imagine how the world might look if God hadn't jumped to punish Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 

Topics: Voting Rights, Bible
Margaret Sanger and Fania Mindell on courthouse steps, 1917

Suffrage and the Fight for Reproductive Justice

Nina Henry

Many Jewish suffragists (and anti-suffragists) also belonged to the nascent birth control movement.

Emma Goldman in Union Square, 1912

Voting Isn't Enough: A Look Back at Emma Goldman's Radical Anti-suffrage

Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler

Is voting the be-all and end-all of civic engagement? Emma Goldman didn't think so.

Elizabeth Warren on stage in a purple suit, microphone in hand.

A Thank-You Note to Smart Women

Ella Plotkin-Oren

I'm writing this note with a hopeful but heavy heart. In March 2020, I voted for the first time. I believed that this would be a tremendous year for women. 

Suffrage in the United States

American Jewish women were heavily involved in the suffrage movement from its earliest days, though mostly as individuals rather than through organizations. Middle-class Jewish women believed the vote was necessary to achieve their broader reform goals, while working-class women hoped enfranchisement would improve their working conditions and economic opportunities. By the time the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed in 1919 the American Jewish community overwhelmingly supported it.

Elaine Weiss and book cover

An Interview with Elaine Weiss, Author of "The Woman’s Hour"

Betsy More

Exclusively for JWA, Elaine Weiss discusses her new book, The Woman's Hour, and the fight for women's suffrage in the United States.

porcupine quills

Quills

Emily Axelrod

I couldn’t understand why it was this incident that spurred me to tears—why it was the struggle of a dog rather than the countless struggles of humans that had made me cry.

Stock Photo of "I Voted" Stickers

Voting: Still a Right, Right?

Emma Nathanson

Typically, walking through the doors of my high school gym brings on a feeling of dread, accompanied by the smell of body odor and wet paint. When I walked into the gym this past November, however, the only thing I felt was excitement. On the day of the 2018 Midterm Elections, I had decided to spend my Tuesday afternoon and evening as an election official, helping voters register, cast ballots, and, most importantly, go home with an “I Voted!” sticker proudly affixed to their shirts.

Women Protest the Dissolution of Bella Abzug's 19th Congressional District, 1972

Channeling Bella and Challenging Power

Rachael Dubinsky

Women are strong leaders because we understand how deeply intertwined policy is with our everyday lives. Labeled a “passionate perfectionist,” Abzug refused to separate idealism from activism.

Pauline Steinem Letter 1 (1910)

I Learned it in the Archives: Women’s Rights Activism Runs in Steinem Family

Lisa Rickey

The letterhead listed the names of all the officers, and one name in particular caught my attention. The woman’s name was Pauline Steinem.

Emily Axelrod at L'Taken

Stirred and Spurred to Action

Emily Axelrod

Judaism never seemed to offer anything that stoked my social justice fire. I didn’t hear many calls to action in services; partly because I wasn’t looking, and partly because services felt mundane to me.

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