Journalism

Ellen Willis, 1941 - 2006

Willis brought lucidity and style to the most controversial and baffling cultural issues—her thought was a beacon of clarity. For those of us fortunate enough to have been her comrades, anticipating her insights was part of what kept us returning to meetings month after month, year after year.

Hilda Silverman, 1938 - 2008

Whether Hilda was sharing her moral outrage, her prodigious memory of historical events, handing out leaflets, or vigiling with Women in Black, she was for me a courageous and passionate teacher and activist.

Bert Milstone Cohen Hirshberg, 1919 - 2008

She cared passionately about the arts, Boston, literature, politics, and her family and friends… She was one of those Jewish women who helped pry the door open continually so that others less assertive than she could follow.

Carolyn Goodman, 1915 - 2007

On various occasions Carolyn met with young people, urged them to take on world challenges, ran essay contests for them and celebrated the winners enthusiastically, spoke in different settings about the importance of supporting the next generation and encouraging them to be involved in healing the world.

Tikva Frymer-Kensky, 1943 - 2006

As a scholar, Dr. Frymer-Kensky challenged her students to study deeply and obtain mastery of their subjects; any less was insufficient. In her writing, she modeled both rigor and relevance…. She wrote in order to bring us the ancient and to create a more just present.

Muriel Cohen, 1920 - 2006

She gave her editors indigestion, but she won them a Pulitzer, too, guiding the <em>Globe</em>'s coverage of the pain and the chaos that greeted court-ordered busing to achieve desegregation of Boston's public schools.

"International Encyclopedia of Dance" Front Cover, Edited by Selma Jeanne Cohen

Selma Jeanne Cohen, 1920 - 2005

Despite the difficulty of translating the evanescent nature of dance into words, Selma Jeanne Cohen believed that dance, as much as painting, music and literature, deserved a history of its own. She spent a lifetime creating the structures necessary to making the recording of that history possible….

October 12, 2010

We Remember Those the New York Times Won't

Ellen K. Rothman

I admit it: I am a third-generation compulsive reader of obituaries.

Topics: Journalism

October 6, 2010

The Jewish Press Must Not Kowtow to Religious Homophobia

Leah Berkenwald

On October 4, the New Jersey Jewish Standard published an apology for printing a same-sex wedding announcement. In that apology, the paper’s editor, Rebecca Boroson, made it clear that the decision to stop running same-sex wedding announcements, and the apology, was in response to pressure from the so-called "traditional/Orthodox" Jewish community. Thanks to the internet, the outrage felt at this editorial decision was felt across the nation.

Topics: LGBTQIA Rights, Spirituality and Religious Life, Journalism

Suspicious of forced tonsillectomies, Jewish mothers riot

June 27, 1906

Immigrant Jewish mothers in the early 20th century were hardly inclined to trust officials to protect their children.

Unit 3, Lesson 2 - Growing tensions I: Black-Jewish Relations

Analyze how underlying rifts in the relationship between African Americans and Jews brought these groups into more overt conflict in the late 1960s, with a focus on the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school crisis and a poetry slam activity.

Unit 3, Lesson 4 - Moving Inward: bringing liberation movements into the Jewish community

Act out, through tableaux vivants, the ways Jews took what they had learned from the Civil Rights Movement and other liberation movements and used these insights to change the Jewish community.

July 20, 2010

The "Women's Pages": Then and Now

Leah Berkenwald

Recenytly, Ruth Rosen wrote in the Ms. Magazine blog that the "women's pages" of the 1950s and 60s have been reincarnated on the internet. While she acknowledges the differences in content between those women's pages (society, cooking, and fashion) and today's "women's pages" (analytical coverage of events, trends or stories overlooked by mainstream news), she argues that the designation of separate women's sections keeps us tied to the assumption that women's stories don't belong on the front page.

Topics: Feminism, Journalism

January 26, 2010

Household hints from the "American Jewess"

Leah Berkenwald

Take a look at these "household hints" published in American Jewess in January, 1896. Published between April 1895 and August 1899, The American Jewess was the first English-language publication directed to American Jewish women. I wonder what household hints American Jewesses would share today?

Topics: Journalism

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman dedicated her life to the creation of a radically new social order. Convinced that the political and economic organization of modern society was fundamentally unjust, she embraced anarchism for the vision it offered of liberty, harmony and true social justice. For decades, she struggled tirelessly against widespread inequality, repression and exploitation.

Bobbie Rosenfeld

During the workday, Canadian Olympic medalist Fanny "Bobbie" Rosenfeld was a stenographer in a Toronto chocolate factory. It was only on evenings and weekends that she had time to resume her role as the "world's best girl athlete." On any given day she could be seen winning softball games before crowds of thousands, breaking national and international track records or leading an ice hockey or basketball team to a league championship.

Ray Frank

Ray Frank's position in American Jewry was truly a novel one. In 1890, she became the first Jewish woman to preach formally from a pulpit in the United States, inaugurating a career as "the Girl Rabbi of the Golden West" that would help to blaze new paths for women in Judaism. Virtually overnight, Frank became a sensation in the Jewish world, and she would remain so for nearly a decade.