Women's Rights

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Collection

Jill Abramson ascends to top spot at the New York Times

Kate Bigam

The New York Times announced a change last week in its managerial lineup when current executive editor Bill Keller said he would retire and managing editor Jill Abramson would take his placep in the paper's to spot.

Jaclyn Friedman

Jaclyn Friedman speaks out against slut-shaming and victim blaming at Slutwalk

Leah Berkenwald

Jaclyn Friedman is a 'Jewess with Attitude' who talks the talk and walks the walk -- the Slutwalk, that is. Jaclyn Friedman, founder and the Executive Director of Women, Action & the Media, is a powerful voice in the current Feminist movement. Co-author of Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, she is particularly concerned with tearing down rape culture.

Adele Landau Starr, 1916 - 2007

She had a strong sense of what was ethical and right; she didn’t just talk about it, she took action.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Mazel Tov Debbie Wasserman Schultz, new chair of the DNC!

Leah Berkenwald

Yesterday the Democratic party announced that President Obama chose Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the incoming chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, making her the first woman DNC chief in 15 years and the third in history. Considering that the first two women to lead the DNC only served temporary stints, Wasserman Schultz’s appointment is extremely significant.

Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

10 Things You Should Know About Gertrude Weil

Leah Berkenwald

Gertrude Weil was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1879. Her father, an immigrant from Germany, was among the business and civic leaders of the community. At the age of 15, she was sent to Horace Mann High School in New York City. She went on to Smith College, where, in 1901, she became the first graduate from North Carolina.

Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

10 Things You Should Know About Pauline Newman

Leah Berkenwald

Born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1890, Pauline Newman was barred from the local public school because she was Jewish. As a girl, her opportunities for a Jewish education were limited. Her father tutored well-to-do boys in Talmud; he eventually allowed her to attend Sunday classes, where she learned to read and write both Yiddish and Hebrew. The obstacles she faced in getting an education motivated her to fight for gender equality later in her life.

Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

10 Things You Should Know About Clara Lemlich

Leah Berkenwald

When Clara Lemlich was growing up in the Ukraine, her religious parents did not want their daughter learning Russian, the language of an antisemitic empire. But the strong minded girl was drawn to Russia’s literary masters—Tolstoy, Gorky, and Turgenev—and to the revolutionary literature being written in Russian. She took on odd jobs—sewing buttons, teaching folk songs, writing letters for illiterate women—to pay for Russian lessons and later for books she kept hidden from her family.

Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

10 Things You Should Know About Rose Schneiderman

Leah Berkenwald

Born in 1882 into a devout Jewish family in Saven, Poland, Rose Schneiderman was raised from an early age to believe she was capable of doing anything a man could do. Her parents enrolled her in a Jewish school at the age of four. Two years later, the family moved to the city of Chelm so that Rose could attend a Russian public school and receive an excellent secular education.

Eleanor Pearlson, 1921 - 2010

She was known equally for her generosity and her strong will, her enthusiasm and her temper, her warmth and her keen business sense. She might greet you or grill you, but chances were if you needed help with something on Martha’s Vineyard, she had the answer.

Evelyn Dubrow, 1911 - 2006

Ninety-five years was not long enough for us to enjoy [her] passion, wit, commitment to justice, and love of life.

Lani Silver, 1948 - 2009

She liked to tell me that she started out in life as conservative but that she did a full political turn when she traveled to South Africa at l9 and observed first hand the awful effect of apartheid. When she returned to San Francisco, she became active in the Jewish community and with liberal and social justice causes and campaigns.

Judith Krug, 1940 - 2009

The First Amendment lost a champion with the April 11 death of the director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, who fought censorship for 40 years with courage, intelligence, and wit. A look back at the career of a library legend.

Ruth Pulda, 1955 - 2008

... It was your run-of-the-mill start of a new era; an era of Ruth as a lawyer, a teacher, a mentor, an activist. But it also marked a time during which Ruth's desire to have a family became uppermost. To really know Ruth is to know that her mantra is: Family First! That applies to her immediate family and her many extended families.

Beatrice Holtzman Schneiderman, 1904 - 1996

Her courage was more than physical: she had the courage of her convictions. Passionate about social justice, she did not stand on the sidelines. If a cause mattered to her, she dove in wholeheartedly, attending rallies, volunteering for Board service, arranging meetings, and organizing fundraisers.

Barbara Seaman, 1935 - 2008

Thinking about Barbara, I realize that she was a one-woman social networking site. She remembered everyone she had ever met and tried to connect them with everybody else she had ever met. She recalled where you were from, whom you dated, your health problems, and your writings or accomplishments and then she introduced to people who you should know.

Celebrating Ruth Proskauer Smith, an unheralded champion of women's and human rights

Emily Kadar

Ruth Proskauer Smith, a longtime women's and human rights activist, passed away last Friday at the impressive age of 102. Smith co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, which later became the National Abortion Rights Action League and is today known as NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Trusting women: A look back

Judith Rosenbaum

Today is the 37 anniversary of the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision, and as such, it's also NARAL's 5th annual Blog for Choice Day. The question NARAL has posed for this year is "What does Trust Women mean to you?" And I've chosen to answer this as historians do best -- by dipping into the archives for a story about Jewish women and reproductive rights that goes back much farther than 1973.

Blogging, Tweeting, and Facebooking for Choice: An interview with Gloria Feldt

Leah Berkenwald

Happy 5th Annual Blog for Choice Day!

Today is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and to celebrate this occassion, we wanted to discuss one of the more exciting new developments in Choice organizing: the use of social media.  Who better to speak on this topic than Gloria Feldt, whose passion for Choice organizing remains strong after 30 years of leadership at Planned Parenthood. Gloria volunteers on the board of the Women's Media Center and the Jewish Women's Archive, and worked as a consultant for Not Under the Bus, a platform and aggregator for the many media campaigns working to combat stop anti-abortion measures in healthcare reform.

What the Women of the Wall Want

Anat Hoffman

Anat Hoffman is director of the Israel Religious Action Center of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism and chair of Women of the Wall.  This was originally published as an op-ed in The Forward.

Topics: Women's Rights

Take action today with Not Under the Bus

Leah Berkenwald

Today I discovered a particularly obnoxious column in the Boston Globe that began with the line, "A specter is haunting America, and much of the industrialized world - the specter of female domination."  The piece, by Globe columnist Alex Beam, argues that women are taking over America and that boys are "tomorrow's second sex."  Beam claims that because women outnumber men in general, in colleges, and in the workforce, they are, in effect, "dominating" America. As the father of 3 sons, Beam wonders if he is "raising the underclass of tomorrow."  Seriously? 

Topics: Women's Rights

Obsessive Segregation Is About Misogyny — Not Modesty

Elana Sztokman

I knew I would regret it as soon as I started typing, but I did it anyway. As much as I try to avoid getting into virtual arguments in talkback-land, this week I found myself unable to restrain myself. The language, it seems to me, is at the root of the problem, and that’s where the fight needs to take place.

Topics: Women's Rights

The Western Wall: ground zero for the struggle for equality and pluralism

Leah Berkenwald

Today Jane Eisner, editor in chief of The Forward, reported the second egregious injustice at the Western Wall in the following pieces.

Women of the Wall Leader Interrogated by Police

The leader of Women of the Wall, a group of women who gather monthly to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, was questioned by police, fingerprinted, and told that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what is considered Judaism’s most sacred site.

Topics: Women's Rights

Women of the Wall: Keeping the faith for 21 years

Judith Rosenbaum

You may have heard about the arrest last month of medical student Nofrat Frenkel for wearing a tallit (prayer shawl) when she prayed with Women of the Wall (WOW), a monthly women's prayer group that meets at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Topics: Women's Rights

Hannah Greenebaum Solomon

Hannah Greenebaum Solomon dared to go out into the world and establish the first national association of Jewish women. A superb organizer, Solomon emphasized unity, and orchestrated agreements among Jewish, gentile, and government groups on local, national, and international levels.

Gertrude Weil

Gertrude Weil's passion for equality and justice shaped the course of her long life. Inspired by Jewish teachings that "justice, mercy, [and] goodness were not to be held in a vacuum, but practiced in our daily lives," Weil stood courageously at the forefront of a wide range of progressive and often controversial causes, including women's suffrage, labor reform and civil rights. She worked tirelessly to extend political, economic and social opportunities to those long denied them.

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