Mae Rockland Tupa (b. 1937) is an accomplished multimedia artist and author whose prolific work has helped shape the field of Jewish Americana. Her work, including papercuts, prints, and textiles, explores themes of Jewish identity, history, and culture. She has published seven books, including the pioneering 1973 textThe Work of Our Hands: Jewish Needlecraft for Today. Her work is housed in the collections of numerous institutions, such as The Jewish Museum in New York City.

JWA chats with Barbara Rosenblit and Sheila Miller, the creators of Artful Disclosure, a program that honors the ordinary and extraordinary lives of Jewish women through visual storytelling. 

Every piece of Judaica Dolin creates is an expression of Jewish tradition and intention.

Despite my love for the Susan Alexandra Judaica collection, I can’t recommend it in good faith for one reason: it’s too expensive. 

JWA talks to Israeli artist Andi Arnovitz about her new (JWA-inspired!) piece,What We Bring,currently on display at the Jerusalem Biennale. 

With my grandmother and my mom in mind, I chose a design for my tallit bag that represents the influence that women have had throughout my life as a proud Jew.

Particular emphasis is put on setting the table for these occasions. So much of my Jewish and familial identity is tied to these meals.

My uncle had the idea that maybe I could weave a tallis of my own. But I didn’t want it to somehow invalidate my bat mitzvah.

As a teen with a Muslim-Palestinian father and a Jewish-American mother, the hamsa has always meant a lot to me.

Restoring my great aunt’s linen is a tribute to her for embracing my non-Jewish mother, in defiance of her family.

Lillian Simon Freehof (1906-2004) was a leader in developing transcription services for people with visual impairments and blindness, working with Sisterhood volunteers at Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh, PA, and, at the national level, with the Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (now WRJ).  She also wrote books and plays for children and young adults and books on needlework and Jewish festivals for adults. She was the wife of Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof.

London-born Marti Friedlander migrated to New Zealand in 1958. She became one of the country’s most outstanding and influential photographers in portraiture, photo-journalism, photo-books, and “street” photography. Her photographs still live vigorous public lives in exhibitions, books, and periodicals published after her death.

Perfection is the goal and trying is the consequence.

Collaging is an old hobby of mine that has taken on new value during this pandemic.

Chloe Wise uses her art to comment on consumer culture, most famously through her Bread Bags series, which creates purses made of realistic-looking bakery items, adorned with the straps, logos, and hardware of designer bags.

It was obvious that birth was a universal human experience and one that is central to women's lives. Why were there no images?

The objects Mae made and the books she wrote helped shape the field of Jewish Americana. Mae’s work, taken as a whole, reflects her view that “just as Jews have become an integral part of the American scene, so can a classical American symbol be used to express a Jewish theme.” A shining example is her hannukiah titled “Miss Liberty”, which is emblazoned with the last lines of Emma Lazurus’s poem “The New Colossus,” and is in the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum in NYC.

Last semester, I was one of four boys in a course at The Weber School dedicated to Jewish women in modern America—a group of people who have had great impact on our lives. However, this group has received little of the public recognition it deserves and is vastly underrepresented in traditional history classes. Like most other American high school students, I have spent the bulk of my academic career studying Christian men from Europe. No wonder that I knew little or nothing about these remarkable women. Yet learning about them is only one reason why this course was so enlightening.

I had never taken the time to learn much about my grandmother, Esther Rebeca Leibowich de Bortz’s past. While I knew that something in her history must have gone right—she became a renowned gynecologist in Argentina—large gaps existed between each of the detailed but disconnected anecdotes that she recounted to me over the years.

My grandmother—or Bobe as I call her—and I have never lived in the same country. She was born in Argentina and has lived there for her entire life, while I was born in Chile and have lived in Atlanta for most of mine. With each of her visits, I learn more about this woman I have always been taught to revere, but in truth never knew much about. Consequently, I welcomed the opportunity to take the course,“Jewish Women in Modern America,” at The Weber School in Atlanta, where I am a junior.

Sonia Delaunay (1885 – 1979) was in on the birth of several art movements—Dadaism, Surrealism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism.  She knew Picasso, Braque, Tzara, Diaghilev, and married the painter R

Miriam Karp is an artist who has been creating hundreds of one-of-a-kindketubot since 1976.

"Madame" Beatrice Alexander knew how to dream big. Born into a world in which many women worked but few achieved prominence in business, she built her own company virtually singlehandedly. Raised amidst teeming poverty, she amassed a significant fortune. From the obscurity of an immigrant neighborhood, she became one of the foremost female entrepreneurs of the twentieth century.