Contemporary Jewish Women Heroes Are Subject of New Multimedia Internet Exhibit

January 7, 2002—Dr. Lynn Amowitz has first-hand knowledge about Afghan women's lives under the Taliban. She recently conducted several interviews with displaced Afghan women for Physicians for Human Rights, and in 2000, interviewed Afghan women about human rights violations and their health status under Taliban rule. Amowitz' dedication to human rights, which has taken her to such places as Rwanda, Zaire, Albania and Kosovo, has also distinguished her as one of eight 2001 Women Who Dared, featured on a multimedia Internet exhibit on the Jewish Women's Archive website at jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/.

Each year, JWA selects several contemporary Jewish women who have dared to stand up for the rights of others. The women are honored at a spring event co-sponsored by Hadassah, and featured on JWA's website. The new Women Who Dared exhibit features biographical information, interviews, photographs and sound.

"With this new Women Who Dared exhibit, we will educate a broad audience about the challenges, strength and activism of Jewish women today," said JWA Director Gail Reimer. "The new exhibit is designed for easy navigation and to appeal to everyone, from school children learning about Jewish women's contributions to college students researching contemporary activism to adults interested in preserving a more complete history of Jews in North America."

Visitors to the Women Who Dared exhibit can choose their method of "touring." They can learn about each woman individually, or about all the women's perspectives on and experiences with being Jewish, being a woman or being an activist.

The other women featured in the exhibit are:

• The first woman Justice appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The Honorable Ruth Abrams, former Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, has pursued social justice through the courts since the late 1950s.
• An oncology nurse and breast cancer activist. Judi Hershfield-Bartek, RN, MS, OCN has spent the past decade changing the course of breast cancer treatment by increasing funding for research and by working to improve access to quality care for the uninsured and underinsured.
• A child abuse expert. Renee S. Tankenoff Brant, MD was a founding member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and started the Massachusetts chapter of the organization - the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children - and was its President. Renee Brant also helped develop one of the first multi-disciplinary teams in the country to evaluate and treat sexually abused children and their families, and to train medical and mental health professionals at Children's Hospital in Boston.
• A children's television advocate Peggy Charren has led the charge for responsible broadcasting practices since she founded Action for Children's Television in 1968. Charren has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work to get a Federal Communications Commission rule to require TV stations to air children's educational programming.
• An environmentalist and community preservationist. Since the 1960s, Betsy Shure Gross has worked tirelessly to help communities throughout Massachusetts to protect their irreplaceable historic, architectural, archeological and cultural heritage.
• A student activist. As a high school student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Hannah Jukovsky has shown an impressive commitment to social justice through her work mobilizing high school students against the standardized test, MCAS. She also has joined her fellow students on a 2½-week civil rights tour of the South.
• A social activist filmmaker. For more than 25 years, Oscar-winning film-maker Margaret Lazarus has used documentary film as a tool to address a range of social justice issues from rape and domestic violence to gays and lesbians in the Holocaust to nuclear war.

The 2002 Boston Women Who Dared program is scheduled for Wednesday, April 24 at Temple Mishkan Tefila in Newton, Massachusetts.

Women Who Dared is one of several JWA programs that address JWA's mission to make our histories more complete. JWA employs a combination of approaches to its work, from online exhibits to community-based oral history projects to public programs and events. Other programs include Weaving Women's Words, an oral history project; Women of Valor, an educational outreach program; and the Virtual Archive, an online archive of information and source materials chronicling the stories of Jewish women in North America.

The mission of the Jewish Women's Archive is to uncover, chronicle and transmit the rich legacy of Jewish women and their contributions to our families and our communities, to our people and our world. JWA uses traditional methods and emerging technologies to accomplish this mission. The JWA website is at jwa.org.

Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, is the nation's largest Jewish and largest Zionist organization. In Israel it supports the Hadassah Medical Organization and youth and education institutions. In the U.S. it promotes health, education, community volunteerism, social action and advocacy, Jewish education and research, and partnerships with Israel.