Exclamations of pride and wonder filled the room when we filed into the kitchen and found that the dough we had carefully mixed and kneaded had successfully grown into two pillowy, pungent loaves. Pulling off an olive-sized piece of dough, I recited the blessing “Blessed are you, God, who has sanctified us with your commandments and commanded us to separate challah.” Laughing and singing, we split the dough and began forming it into loaves.

This piece was inspired by a webinar on “Jews and the Civil Rights Movement” presented by the Jewish Women's Archive in collaboration with AVODAH as part of the AVODAH Alumni network’s distance learning program. It  was originally posted on AVODAH's blog on February 5, 2013.

In 2009 I attended a workshop focused on Anti-racist organizing for white folks. The presentation allowed for self-reflection and next steps in our own organizing. At the end of the workshop, we were asked to share who our white social justice role models were. It was shocking, although not surprising, that the majority of the attendees shared that they did not have any white, social justice activists to look up to. I’ve been searching for my answer to this question ever since.

JWA's CEO Judith Rosenbaum reflects on a recent screening of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, the film adaptation of Judy Blume's groundbreaking novel. 

JWA chats with Samantha Perlman, a city councilor and mayoral candidate for Marlborough, Massachusetts about the Jewish women who inspired her to run for office, how she responds to pushback about her age and gender, and showing young people they can be drivers of change.

The “first female rabbi in a full-time congregational position in Cape Town” will not look and sound like other women rabbis. She will look and sound like me, because I am her. And because the only way I can authentically answer the question is to just keep being me; keep being the rabbi I already am (and am proud to be).

Writing a play about being a bad Jew helped me become a better one. 

Celebrating our differences has brought my partner and me closer—but it hasn’t always been easy.

The film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which premiered in theaters last November, explores the unusual and tumultuous life of Hedy Lamarr—a Jewish and Austrian-born Hollywood actress considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

So, when prompted with the question, “Which piece of culture would you like history to forget?” I truly couldn’t think of anything. To willingly want to erase a historical cultural record really shows no regard for history at all. The culture we create is a reflection of our values during that period. Books, movies, TV, music, are the most compelling historical records we have of the mood of a society, and this includes the ugly parts. 

My bat mitzvah party theme was outer space. Each of the tables were named after the nine planets in the solar system at the time: Mercury, Venus, Mars.