Can We Talk?

The day after Trump’s inauguration, millions of people around the world took to the streets in protest. March along with us in this episode! We'll meet participants in the Women's March on Washington, and go back to where it all began—the first women’s march in Washington, on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in 1913, before women even had the right to vote. Plus, two very special...

For many Jews, the election of Donald Trump signals a time of uncertainty. In this episode, we turn for guidance to three Jewish women who have spent their lives working for social change. Ruth Messinger, April Baskin, and Idit Klein share their responses to the election and how they’re finding focus in this new political climate. We also visit the Obama’s final White House Hanukkah party.

In search of some post-election, pre-Thanksgiving meaning, host Nahanni Rous and JWA Executive Director Judith Rosenbaum explore that great American symbol, the Statue of Liberty—and the Jewish woman who gave her a voice. Emma Lazarus was a poet and writer who is remembered for the sonnet that redefined the Statue as the Mother of Exiles. But she was also an activist who worked with the poor immig...

On Halloween of 1968, a coven of witches in black robes and pointy hats hexed Wall Street. They called themselves WITCH—Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell—but there was nothing international or violent about this guerrilla theater protest group that emerged in the early days of the women’s liberation movement. We talk with Bev Grant about WITCH’s origins at the Miss America Beaut...

This month, Can We Talk? attends a Bat Mitzvah with Women of the Wall at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The group has been fighting for women's right to read Torah at Judaism’s holiest site for nearly three decades—there have been arrests, multiple lawsuits, and a rift in the organization. The Israeli Supreme Court recently took the government to task for failing to provide a non-Orthodox prayer s...

In this episode, host Nahanni Rous and JWA Executive Director Judith Rosenbaum report from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where they were invited to cover Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential nomination. They speak to both Hillary and Bernie supporters and interview such powerful women as former senior advisor to Hillary Clinton Ann Lewis, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and Delega...

Summer's coming, and here at the Jewish Women's Archive, we're thinking about…hair. Curly, Jewish hair. The kind that turns to frizz in summer weather. And we're not the only ones—thousands of people every week visit our seven year old blog post on the topic. In this roundtable edition of Can We Talk? , we explore curly, wavy, frizzy hair and its deeper cultural and historic s...

A man with a beard admits he's the stereotypical Jewish mother…a woman who's always been afraid of teenagers explains why an 18-year-old from Somalia is calling her mom…and a veteran stage actor waxes philosophical about all the mother roles she has played—though she's not a mother herself. In this Mother’s Day episode, we celebrate the many forms motherhood can take, and look at what it means to...

“Every cuisine tells a story,” writes Claudia Roden in the Book of Jewish Food. “Jewish food tells the story of an uprooted, migrating people and their vanished worlds.” Claudia’s childhood world vanished when the Jewish community was forced out of Egypt in the 1950s. Her quest to collect family recipes led to a celebrated career as a cookbook author. But Claudia writes more than recipes—she trace...

45 years ago a group of women in the Boston area collectively published Our Bodies Ourselves —a groundbreaking book that put forward the radical notion that women should get to know their own bodies and take charge of their health and sexuality. Since its first publication, the book has sold more than four million copies and been adapted into 30 languages. In this episode, we talk to Vilunya Diski...

Our pilot episode is about… pilots! Elynor Rudnick and Zahara Levitov grew up on different continents: one in America, one in British-ruled Palestine. In the 1940s, they were both young Jewish women with pilot's licenses. During some of the most turbulent years in modern Jewish history, their stories were woven together—not by fate, but by flight. Plus, Deb Dreyfus, a modern day Jewish woman pilot...