Flannery O’Connor once said, “How do I know what I mean until I see what I’ve said?

I’ve been sitting at my desk since 3pm today, hands at ready on the keyboard, but I haven’t gotten much done. I’ve mostly been refreshing twitter, checking my email, and holding on for dear life. The Jewish Women’s Archive is located in Boston, a town that has been my home since 2000. It's hard to see your home being hurt. Especially when words like "hard" and home" are far too weak. Today Boston is under attack.

A few years after my grandfather passed away, my mother mentioned that for years he had refused to eat Spanish olives. I asked her why, and she said that he could trace his family history back to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and that this was his form of protest.

The Women of the Wall have been fighting for a woman’s right to pray at the Western Wall since 1988.

Today’s featured poet, Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff, responds to the latest challenge facing these women- the right to say Kaddish and mourn at the Western Wall.

Throughout the month of April we will be introducing you to a wide variety of Jewish poets and their poetry.

I’m honored to present the first poet in the series, Annie Jacobs.

The spotlight is on Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and her mission to change the balance of power in the United States.  Sandberg’s book Lean In hit the proverbial shelves this week and the media is buzzing.  Is Sandberg the new Gloria Steinem?  Will her message on women and leadership motivate real change? 

Adapted from The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America, by Joyce Antler (Schocken Books, 1997). 

Bel Kaufman, the daughter of East European immigrants and granddaughter of Yiddish novelist Sholom Aleichem, emigrated from Odessa with her family in 1923 when she was twelve, quickly learned English, and used the public libraries voraciously. 

You might expect a writer, at age 80-plus, to retire from the public eye. Not Faye S. Moskowitz. As chair of the English Department at The George Washington University, the acclaimed short story author still shapes the dialogue about Jewish American fiction and where it’s headed. She continues to give book talks and forge conversations between accomplished writers and aspirants. Her own work has sometimes been compared to that of famed Jewish American short story writer Tillie Olsen.

Back in the day (as we now say) when I was an undergraduate at a college that had been educating the country’s elite—all men, of course—for almost 350 years, the first ripples of Second Wave feminism were stirring things up outside the ivy covered walls. Inside, in a classroom filled entirely with women, an untenured (but well-published) female Senior Lecturer was teaching the institution’s first course on women’s history.

Best-selling author Judy Blume is among the Jewesses with attitude featured in “MAKERS: Women Who Make America,” the film that premieres on PBS tomorrow night.

Susan Kushner Resnick was recovering from post-partum depression after the birth of her second child when she struck up an unlikely friendship with Aron Lieb, a widowed, childless, elderly Holo

Singer-songwriter-humorist Lauren Mayer reflects on Hanukkah, Christmas, family, growing up a Jew in Orange County and how all this informs her own, artistic process. May you enjoy this in depth interview conducted by… herself.

What inspired you to write “Latkes, Shmatkes”?

Two years ago NPR did a program on Christmas music, and their expert was talking about how secular songs, like “Frosty The Snowman,” became classics, and then he said, “Some songs should never become classics, like this one”— and used an old recording of mine as an example. It was a novelty song I’d written and recorded years ago, “The Fruitcake That Ate New Jersey,” and when I wrote in to ask how they found it, they ended up interviewing me. I joked that now I was part of the great tradition of Jewish songwriters who create Christmas music, and I really should do a Chanukah album. Once I said it, I realized it could be a fun idea.

At the NOW (National Organization for Women) conference I attended in June, playwright Eve Ensler delivered the keynote speech. Ensler, who is featured in JWA’s online exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, was a riveting speaker whose passionate words truly rallied me to action. I’ve been hoping to see one of her plays ever since. Luckily, her newest show Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, is now playing Off-Broadway, and I was able to get tickets!