Exclusively for JWA, Jessica Kirzane discusses her new translation of Yiddish author Miriam Karpilove's Diary of a Lonely Girl.

Rose Rosenberg represents so many women whose names are lost to history because they worked in supportive and administrative roles rather than in the limelight, but who, in pursing work in male-dominated environments, paved the way for women to have leadership roles today. Her story gives us a richer sense of what women have done in behind-the-scenes roles and how that fits into the narratives of history’s “great men.”

A few weeks ago, on the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I posed a question to the students in my class on "Jews and the Civil Rights Movement": "If you could plan a Jewish commemoration for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, what would it be? Who would be the audience? What would you do? Why should Jews, as Jews and in Jewish communities, commemorate this holiday?"