Can We Talk?

When Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, they raped, tortured, and mutilated women’s bodies in unimaginable ways. News about the sexual violence emerged within days, but few women’s organizations spoke up to condemn it. Some even questioned whether the claims were true. In this episode of Can We Talk? , we discuss the sexual violence of October 7, the effort to collect evidence, and the...

Iris Bahr was halfway around the world when she saw her mother having a stroke over video chat. Within days, she was on an airplane, uprooting her life to become her mother’s primary caregiver. The stroke led to vascular dementia– an irreversible condition. Iris is a writer and actor and chronicles the story in a poignant—and funny— one-woman show  See You Tomorrow.   In this episod...

Food can be a vehicle for telling stories, connecting with people, and understanding our history—including the uncomfortable parts. In this episode of Can We Talk? , Jen Richler heads to Charleston, South Carolina to learn about Southern Jewish history through the lens of food. Over a home-cooked meal, Jen talks with Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey, co-authors of the new book Kugels...

Today, November 7, 2023, marks one month since the Hamas attacks on Israel, when 1,400 people in Israel were killed. A month has passed, which feels both like a lifetime and like one long, terrible day. This tragedy is present, and raw and still unfolding. Close to 250 Israelis and foreign citizens are still being held captive in Gaza. At least 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaz...

Israel has been at war with Hamas for nearly a month. Israeli and Palestinian casualties are devastating–and mounting. In Israel, women are on the front lines of a major grassroots mobilization: providing emergency relief to a country in crisis. An army of volunteers of all ages and genders has stepped in to organize clothing, food, and housing for displaced Israelis; students and therapists are w...

Vivian Silver has been missing since October 7, the day Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,400 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages to Gaza. Since then, more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israel's air strikes in Gaza. Vivian is 74 years old, from Kibbutz Be’eri, on the Gaza border. In this episode, we speak with her friend Ariella Giniger,...

It's been a terrifying week of violence in Israel. Instead of our planned episode of Can We Talk?,  this week we offer a poem called “Mishalot”—requests, or wishes—by Esther Raab , one of modern Hebrew’s first female poets, born in Israel in 1894.  She wrote “Mishalot” in 1967, around the time of the Six-Day War. The poem is a reminder that even in dark days, hope can be part of our lega...

What did JOIN for Justice, the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network, do when the pandemic made its in-person community organizing fellowship impossible? It turned the obstacle into an opportunity, shifting to a virtual fellowship specifically for people with disabilities.  Over seven months in 2021, a cohort of Jewish young adults with a wide range of disabilities, race and gender ide...

Golda Meir is known as Israel's "Iron Lady": gruff, chain-smoking, and fiercely ambitious. In the eyes of many, she was also responsible for the Yom Kippur War, which cost thousands of lives. But Golda's story is far more complex. In this episode of  Can We Talk?,  as we approach 50 years since the Yom Kippur War, we go beyond the caricatures and talk about aspects of Golda's career that...

While we’re hard at work on our fall season, which launches Sept 12, enjoy this bonus episode from Joia Putnoi. Joia recorded this conversation with her grandmother Fran Putnoi, or “Granfran,” for a college class. It's about passing recipes and stories from one generation of Jewish women to the next. We think you’ll love it.

That's a wrap! In this episode of Can We Talk? , Nahanni Rous, Jen Richler, and Judith Rosenbaum recap the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 seasons—from a celebration at a queer Jewish chicken farm to the fight for Israel's "chained women" to reproductive rights after Roe, and much more. 

From Portnoy’s Complaint to Seinfeld , the word shiksa is firmly embedded in popular culture. Where does the word come from, and how has its meaning changed over time? In this episode, we’re bringing you another installment of our “Word of the Week” series, where we dig into one word and explore how it relates to Jewish women. Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Keren McGinity, and Kylie Ora Lobell give us...

What did talented, dedicated Jewish women do before they could become rabbis? Some became rebbetzins . In this episode of  Can We Talk? , we’re looking at the changing role of the  rebbetzin —the rabbi’s wife. Women have been rabbis in America for just over half a century, but for as long as there have been rabbis, there have been rabbis' wives—and they've often served as leade...

Alice Shalvi has been an Israeli feminist pioneer for decades. Born in Germany and raised in England, she moved to Israel in 1949, a young woman excited to help build a new state. She’s spent her life there, working for gender equality and a more just society. In this episode of  Can We Talk? , Judith Rosenbaum joins us to tell Alice’s story, and to talk about the ways she’s fo...

Hebrew is a very gendered language; every noun in Hebrew is either feminine or masculine. So are pronouns, including “I” and “you.” This makes it nearly impossible to utter a sentence in Hebrew without using gender. So as a Hebrew speaker, how do you refer to a mixed-gender group? What about nonbinary people? In this episode of Can We Talk?, we speak with Michal Shomer, Dafna Eisenreich,...

Israel turns 75 this week. This milestone comes at a moment of unprecedented upheaval in Israeli society and escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Over the past few months, around 1.5 million Israelis have poured into the streets to protest the judicial reforms proposed by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government, which would weaken the power of the Supreme Court. In this episod...

When the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, it eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. As of April 2023, it is now essentially illegal to have an abortion in 15 states. That means limited to no access to terminating a pregnancy. But many people don't realize these bans also affect people who want to get pregnant. Jessica Kalb, Lisa Sobel, and Sara...

Samira Mehta is the daughter of a white American mother and a South Asian immigrant father.  She’s also a Jew by choice and a scholar of American religious history and women’s and gender studies. Her new book,  The Racism of People Who Love You  examines the subtle, everyday racism of intimate interactions. In this episode of Can We Talk? , Judith Rosenbaum speaks with Sam...

Here at Can We Talk?, we’re podcast fanatics. And we especially like shows that feature Jewish women’s voices. So we decided to bring together some of our favorite Jewish women podcasters to talk shop. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum takes us behind the scenes with Stephanie Butnick from Unorthodox, Judy Gold from Kill Me Now, and Emily Bazelon from Slate's Political Gabfest, to...

In 2017, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the New York Times story about producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse of women. Their reporting lit a fire under the #MeToo movement, led to Weinstein’s conviction, and prompted a national reckoning with sexual abuse. They chronicled the experience in their book She Said, which was made into a film by the same title in 2022. In this episode of Can...

It all started at a preschool Hanukkah party a few years ago. That's when an offhand remark led Rabbi Minna Bromberg to start Fat Torah, a project to end fat stigma in Jewish communal life. In this episode of  Can We Talk,  Judith Rosenbaum speaks with Minna in her home in Jerusalem about how fatphobia plays out in Israel versus the US, the ways it intersects with gender, and how Jewish...

Teens were already struggling before COVID. When the pandemic hit, things just got worse. In this episode of  Can We Talk?,  we speak with Vanessa Kroll Bennett, co-host of The Puberty Podcast, parenting writer, and mother of four, about teens and mental health—before, during, and after the pandemic—gender differences, and what caregivers and Jewish communities can do to help. We al...

For a long time, Rebecca Soffer, co-founder of the website Modern Loss , had been planning to write a guide to coping with grief. Then the pandemic hit, and the need felt especially urgent. So she wrote The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Resilience.   The book came out earlier this year. In this episode of Can We Talk? , we speak with Rebecca a...

In Israel, marriage and divorce are governed by Jewish law and controlled by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinical courts. If a Jewish woman wants a divorce, she has to get permission from her husband, in the form of a document called a get —and he can refuse. That's exactly what happens to about 1 in 5 Jewish women in Israel who want a divorce, according to a recent survey. That figure doesn't even inclu...

In this season of ghosts and haunted houses, we’re taking you back to a time when communicating with the dead was a popular way to spend an evening. Séances were the main practice of the spiritualist movement, which is based on the belief that when people die, they survive as spirits, and that we can talk to these spirits with the help of a medium. The movement had its heyday in the late nineteent...