Labor Rights

Content type
Collection
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Rally
August 30, 2024

Celebrate Labor Day with New Protections For Pregnant Workers

Zia Saylor

The recently passed legislation provides pregnant workers with much-needed—and long overdue—protections. 

Topics: Labor Rights, Women's Rights
Arms holding up a protest sign with 3 power fists on it on yellow background
June 14, 2023

Toward A Besere Velt (A Better World)

Ava Weinstein

The more I learn about the world and the society we live in, the more dissatisfied I feel and the more eager I am to change it.

Topics: Labor Rights, Feminism, Women's Rights
Alla Aberson

Alla (Hannah) Aberson

Project
Soviet Jewry

Alla Aberson was interviewed in Framingham, Massachusetts, as part of the Soviet Jewry Oral History Project. Aberson discusses her parents' "refusenik" jobs, life under KGB surveillance, participation in hunger strikes, antisemitism in the FSU, and their path to leaving the Soviet Union.

headshot of Rabbi Barbara Penzner

Barbara Penzner

Project
Boston Women Rabbis

Ronda Spinak interviewed Rabbi Barbara Penzner on February 25, 2014, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, as part of the Boston Women Rabbis Oral History Project. Rabbi Penzner reflects on her Jewish upbringing, calling to become a rabbi, studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, exploration of the mikvah ritual, working with interfaith couples, and balancing motherhood and her career.

Collage of Clara Lemlich on blue background
January 27, 2023

Slowing Down Fast Fashion: Lessons from Clara Lemlich

Clara Sorkin

Clara Lemlich, the female garment workers she led in striking, and the women who have come after her prove that strength truly comes in numbers and in unity.

Topics: Labor Rights, Unions, Fashion and Beauty
Collage of Maud Nathan on floral orange background
December 16, 2022

Remembering Maud Nathan on Election Day 2022

Irene Y. Raich

Suffragist Maud Nathan could never have predicted the labor protections and voting rights we have now, and just like her, I can never give up on fighting for what is right.

Topics: Voting Rights, Labor Rights, Unions
Collage of Bessie Hillman on orange and yellow patterned background
December 14, 2022

Lessons on the Labor Movement from Bessie Hillman

Nora Auburn

No one figure serves as the champion of the early 20th-century union movement, but Bessie Abramowitz Hillman comes close.

Topics: Labor Rights, Unions, Protests

Ellen David-Friedman

Project
DAVAR: Vermont Jewish Women's History Project

Ann Zinn Buffum and Sandra Stillman Gartner, project directors, interviewed Ellen David Friedman on November 8, 2005, in East Montpelier, Vermont, as part of DAVAR's Vermont Jewish Women's History Project. Friedman reflects on her family background, immigration history, Jewish identity, involvement in progressive politics, volunteer efforts, and her role as a grassroots labor organizer in Vermont.

Collage with Breastfeeding Outlined Figure with Blue Pomegranate Patterned Yellow Background
January 31, 2022

The Fight for Family Paid Leave: From 1919 to Today

Mira Eras

From activists like Rose Schneiderman in 1919 to activists today advocating for the paid leave section of the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill in Congress, we've been trying to change the system.

Topics: Feminism, Labor Rights, Politics and Government
Writer and editor Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz standing at a podium making a clenched fist of solidarity

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945-2018) was a lesbian-feminist writer and editor. She made multiple theoretical contributions to understanding Judaism, lesbianism, and feminism as intersectional identities, extended an awareness of class and economic justice through a Jewish lens, and made visible racial differences within Jewish communities. She advocated Radical Diasporism as a progressive alternative to Zionism.

Evelyne Serfaty

Evelyne Serfaty was one of the most active women in the Moroccan Communist Party. Through her activities with the party, she militated for Moroccan independence from French and Spanish colonial rule. She was kidnapped and tortured for her brother’s political activities in the early 1970s under Morocco’s post-independence authoritarian state.

Esther Luria

Esther Luria was a freelance journalist whose work appeared in many politically left-of-center Yiddish publications in the early twentieth-century United States. A socialist, a feminist, and a political activist, she was also an educator. She used her columns not only to advocate for the ideas in which she believed, but also to provide her mainly east European immigrant readers with a better understanding of their new environment.

Portrait of Ray Harmel

Ray Harmel

Ray Harmel was a powerful force in the trade union movement in Apartheid South Africa, a committed Communist, an anti-Apartheid activist, and ultimately a member of the African National Congress.

Eve Rodsky and book cover

Episode 58: Playing Fair with Eve Rodsky

Listen Now

Who does the laundry? Who takes the call from school when kids are sick? These are some of the questions author Eve Rodsky asks in her book and accompanying card game Fair Play. The pandemic has laid bare the unfair burden placed on women in the home—but could this be a moment to "re-deal the deck" as we rebuild our society? In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks to Eve about the dynamics around caregiving and domestic labor, how to make sure responsibility for household tasks is shared fairly, and how to value women's and men's time equally.

Vacuum and Dollar Signs Composite Image
March 25, 2021

Domestic Labor: Where Feminism and Orthodox Judaism Agree

Ellie Klibaner-Schiff

Domestic Labor is labor. Time to pay up.

Topics: Feminism, Labor Rights
Image of Bessie Margolin in 1955

Bessie Margolin

Bessie Margolin was raised in New Orleans’s Jewish orphanage, where she learned powerful lessons in social justice that propelled her trailblazing legal career through the New Deal and Nazi War Crimes Trials to the United State Supreme Court, where she championed the rights of millions of American workers. A reluctant feminist who became the nation’s top fighter for equal pay for women and a co-founder of NOW, Margolin used intellect and charm to open courtroom doors for countless women who have followed.

Hannah Downing in Yorkin, Costa Rica
February 20, 2019

Bananas and the Bourgeois (How I’m Confronting My Privilege)

Hannah Downing

Last summer, I embarked on a URJ Mitzvah Corps service trip to Costa Rica. As part of our program we spent a week in Yorkin, a community located in the Indigenous reserve of Bribri.

Topics: Labor Rights, Writing
Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, 1983
February 13, 2019

Rosalie Silberman Abella: The Canadian RBG

Nina Baran

In my opinion, Abella has demonstrated intersectional feminism through her work as a legal advocate and supporter of civil rights for marginalized communities. Before her appointment to the bench, Abella was considered one of Canada's foremost human rights lawyers.

Topics: Feminism, Labor Rights, Holocaust
Rebecca Traister Good and Mad

Episode 27: The Power of Women’s Anger

Listen Now

On this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks to Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, one of JWA’s Book List picks this year. We explore the topic of women’s anger: how it is perceived, how it has historically been put to use, and how in 2018 midterm elections, women harnessed it to win a record-breaking number of seats in Congress. From Abigail Adams, to labor organizer Rose Schneiderman, to Congresswoman Bella Abzug, women have wielded their anger to create political change.

Rose Schneiderman
September 1, 2018

A Treasure Trove of Fiery Jewish Women Labor Activists

Talia Lang

The directory of Jewish female labor activists is endless, from the better-known to the nearly invisible. [This] Labor Day, here is a list of Jewish female labor activists you never knew, or never knew were Jewish, or never knew said that, or never knew did that.

Topics: Labor Rights
Alla Aberson

Alla Aberson

Alla Aberson is a Soviet Jew who grew up in a family that was critical of Communist Party rule. When she and her family were denied exit visas to emigrate, they became known as refuseniks.
headshot of Rabbi Barbara Penzner

Barbara Penzner

Rabbi Barbara Penzner has been a moral force for her congregation, leading it in multiple actions to uphold human rights around the world and in the local community.
Parade of Suffragists, July 4, 1910
July 3, 2017

Five Jewish Disruptive Patriots You Should Know

Emily Cataneo

Let’s be honest: the Fourth of July is a fun holiday, what with the hamburgers, the watermelons, the fireworks, and the summer camps, but I’m guessing that many of us are not super enthused about celebrating the land of the free and the home of the brave this year, given the current garbage fire of American politics and the dark truths that said garbage fire has revealed about the priorities and mores of our nation.

Topics: Civil Rights, Feminism, LGBTQIA Rights, Labor Rights, Voting Rights, Disability Rights
Janet Rosenberg Jagan

Janet Jagan

As president of Guyana for two years, Janet Rosenberg Jagan was the first American-born woman to serve as president of any country. Jagan was a student at the Cook County Nursing School in Chicago when she met Cheddi Jagan, a dentistry student.
Clara Lemlich in a Shirtwaist, circa 1910
March 8, 2017

Writing a Revolutionary

Melanie Crowder

Authors are often asked about the inspiration behind their books. Usually, that question is a tricky one to answer. But in the case of my historical novel for young adults, Audacity, it’s easy. The life of labor activist Clara Lemlich was all the inspiration I needed.

Topics: Labor Rights, Poetry

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