Jewish Holidays

Content type
Collection

Episode 124: Dayenu: Jewish Climate Action Now

The climate crisis has entered an alarming new era. Since President Trump started his second term, the Environmental Protection Agency has fired scores of climate scientists and is trying to roll back climate protections and slash clean energy funding. For organizations like Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action, it's been a giant step backward. In this episode of Can We Talk?, we speak with Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, CEO of Dayenu, about how climate activists are navigating a new political landscape, how Jewish values fuel her work, and how the fight for climate action echoes the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, which Jews will soon mark at our Passover seders.

Episode 122: Miriam Anzovin on Power and Gender in the Megillah

In this special Purim episode, Talmudic TikToker and storyteller Miriam Anzovin joins us to talk about the darker side of the Purim story, especially the role of gender. We start with a dramatic retelling of the Megillah, with Miriam's very contemporary spin on the traditional tale. Then we take a closer look at the story's gender dynamics, which still resonate 2,500 years later. Happy Purim!

Slavena Nissan and her mother, 1997 and 2019

When I Chop Onions, I Think of My Female Ancestors

Slavena Salve Nissan

A writer reflects on how learning to cook deepened her connections with her Mountain Jewish ancestors and shares a Purim recipe.

Women Religious Workers in Eastern Europe

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Eastern Europe, Jewish women served their communities as spiritual leaders and paid religious functionaries. The main women’s leadership roles documented in Yiddish literature, memoirs, memorial books, and ethnographic studies include the midwife, the evil eye healer, the cemetery measurer, the prayer leader, and the mourning woman. 

Love You A Latke Book Cover

A Hanukkah Romance About Self-Love

Zia Saylor

The most interesting tension here isn't between the romantic leads, but between Jewish woman's sense of identity and the pull of assimilation. 

Topics: Hanukkah, Fiction
Sarah Dolin and Menorah

Elevating Jewish Rituals With Clay

Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba

Every piece of Judaica Dolin creates is an expression of Jewish tradition and intention.

Topics: Crafts, Hanukkah, Ritual
Collage of tallit, a kippah, and other Jewish ritual objects.

The Question that Sparked My Jewish Journey

Yona Pianko

I hadn’t thought much at all about why I engaged with Judaism—or even why I was Jewish beyond having been born that way.

Collage of a torah scroll with the sky in the background

Catastrophe in Costume: The Jewish Practice of Mourning Through Festivity

Liana Galper

Purim’s festivities celebrate not only Jewish survival but also Jewish resistance.

Topics: Purim, Antisemitism

Episode 118: The Femme Fatale in the Sukkah

This Sukkot, we're welcoming a special guest into Can We Talk?’s virtual sukkah: the Talmudic “femme fatale” Homa, one of the women featured in her new book, "The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic." In this episode, Talmud scholar Gila Fine tells Homa’s story, reinterprets it from Homa’s perspective, and explains why she thinks Homa makes a fitting symbolic guest for Sukkot.

Rabbi Dov Linzer and Abigail Pogrebin

Q & A: Rabbi Dov Linzer & Abigail Pogrebin on "It Takes Two to Torah"

Judith Rosenbaum

JWA chats with Orthodox rabbi Dov Linzer and Reform journalist Abigail Pogrebin about their new book, It Takes Two to Torah. 

Chef Jerzy Gonzalez Arroyo

The Amazing Flavors of Chef Jerzy

Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba

Chef Jerzy Gonzalez-Arroyo takes her clients on a cultural journey of amazing Sephardi flavors.

Cantor Jacqueline Rafii

7 Questions For Cantor Jacqueline Rafii

Sarah Groustra

JWA chats with Persian-American cantor Jacqueline Rafii.

Helen Kim Headshot

7 Questions For Helen Kim

Sarah Groustra

JWA chats with sociology professor and author Helen Kim.

Episode 107: A Persian Family's Musical Legacy

Danielle and Galeet Dardashti grew up in a very musical family—they had a family band, their father was a cantor, their mother was a folk singer, and their grandfather was a famous singer in “the golden age” of Iran in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, with his own show on Iranian national radio. But growing up, they didn’t know much about the Persian side of their musical legacy. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Nahanni speaks with Galeet, an anthropologist, musician, and composer, and Danielle, a journalist and storyteller, about uncovering that legacy in their new podcast series, The Nightingale of Iran. They talk about what it was like to connect with their family’s Persian musical tradition—and what happened to that tradition when the family left Iran.

Drawing of male and female holding basket and looking at each other

Maraviglia's Fifteenth-Century Prayer Book

Evelyn Cohen

The British Library shares a fifteenth-century prayer book commissioned by a father to his daughter, Maraviglia, a testament to women’s participation in fifteenth-century Italian Jewish ritual life.

Sign that says Kidnapped and includes names and information about two Israelis kidnapped in Hamas attack on October 7

My Neighborhood is Now a House of Mourning

Rachel Bernstein

In the awful days since October 7, the people in my tight-knit, mostly Orthodox LA neighborhood have come together to share their sadness, anger, and grief. 

Album cover showing two faces and the words Monajat: Galeet Dardashti featuring Younes Dardashti

7 Questions For Galeet Dardashti

Mirushe "Mira" Zylali

JWA talks to Dr. Galeet Dardashti, cultural anthropologist and singer, about her new album Monajat.

Loolwa Khazzoom and her Bandmates: woman with mouth open as if screaming, man on either side of her

Loolwa Khazzoom on her new single, "The Convert's Quest"

Sarah Jae Leiber

JWA talks to Loolwa Khazzoom, frontwoman of the rock band Iraqis in Pajamas, about the inspiration for her new single.

Gold line drawings of woman, mask, and tambourine on blue and gold background

The Megillah's Two Models of Leadership

Maya Viswanathan

Megillat Esther reminds us of a different way to lead, a different way to change the world.

Seder Plate

Preserving and Refurbishing Passover Traditions

Ilene Smith

Next year in Jerusalem, we like to say. But really, next year, who knows?

Topics: Passover

Magda Schaloum

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Roz Bornstein interviewed Magda Altham Schaloum, on June 5, 2001, in Mercer Island, Washington, for the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project. Schaloum shares her experiences growing up in Hungary, including enduring antisemitism, the impact of anti-Jewish laws, her family's separation and deportation to Auschwitz, her survival through slave labor camps, and her life after the war, including immigrating to Seattle and building a new life with her husband and children.

Collage of character from Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse on gold background

Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse Taught Me the Importance of Teshuvah

Clara Sorkin

When I thought about where I learned how to make amends, I realized it wasn't just from Hebrew school or from my family. It was, instead, one of my most-read books from childhood: Kevin Henkes’ Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse.

Collage of Julia Haart and a megillah scroll on an orange gradient background

Julia Haart: The Anti-Esther

Aviva Schilowitz

Queen Esther used her power to save and lift up other Jews. That’s my version of Jewish power and feminism. But Julia Haart, the star of My Unorthodox Life, uses her power as a weapon against other Jews.

Image of the hebrew letters samech, tav, resh on one row, followed by tav, resh, samech, on the row underneath

Esther and Teresa: A Play on Words for Purim

Ellen Kanner

This Purim, learn all about Teresa de Lucena, a conversa who revered Queen Esther. 

Topics: Purim, Antisemitism
Cartoon roll of film with a menorah on light pink background

Spiritual Jewish Representation on Film: Next Year’s Hanukkah Gift?

Samantha Berk

Watching the Hallmark movie Eight Gifts of Hanukkah, I felt like I could relate spiritually to a Jewish character portrayed in mainstream media for the first time. 

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