Playwright and actor Arielle Zaytsev's imaginative new play imagines Grigori Rasputin and Vladimir Putin as lovers.

The Matriarchs imagines a universe where life’s unfairest moments can be made more tolerable through friendship, conversation, and understanding.

A transformational leader, Shoshana Pakciarz helped build nonprofit social service and arts organizations across the Boston area. As executive director of Project Bread, she expanded the Walk for Hunger into a major annual fundraiser with over 40,000 participants, raising millions to fight hunger. A longtime board president of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, she helped it grow into a beloved and internationally recognized cultural institution.

Bertha Klausner was an influential literary agent in New York and Los Angeles. One of the earliest female literary agents, she represented major writers and cultural figures throughout the twentieth century.

Paula Vogel's play, Indecent,explores relationships against the backdrop of assimilation, antisemitism, and censorship. 

JWA chats with Ladino singer/songwriter Nani Vazana. 

JWA talks to Beth Lane, director of the documentaryUnBroken,which traces the extraordinary journey of seven siblings, including her own mother, who escaped Nazi Germany as children.

Madison’s realistic performance creates a likeable character who's hardnot to empathize with. But while Baker attempts to abandon a cliché, fairytale ending, he struggles to portray his protagonist without a male-savior-counterpart.

Despite the misogynistic undertones of the original myth, I believeHadestownpromotes a feminist message. 

While it tackles heavy subjects with sensitivity,Six unfortunately leans heavily on stereotypes in its characterization of Henry VIII’s wives.

Madame Goldye Steiner was the first known African-American woman singer ofkhazones, or Ashkenazi Jewish liturgical music. She was the only known African-American woman in thekhaznte artistic movement in which non-synagogue audiences experiencedkhazones, sung by women in concert halls, on the radio, and on gramophone recordings.

On March 23, 2022, Nani Vazana released her song “Una Segunda Piel” (“A Second Skin”). For the Judeo-Spanish community, her music has great significance, uniting and enriching the culture of Sephardic Jews. 

Inez Bensusan, an Australian and English playwright, actress, and suffragist, was born on September 11, 1871. She wrote and acted in many feminist plays and was active in multiple activist groups, often combining theater and feminism for a political cause.

JWA talks with Heather Dune Macadam, director of999: The Forgotten Girls, a new documentary that tells the story of the young women who made up the first transport of Jews to Auschwitz.

As 2024 draws to a close, the JWA team takes a moment to celebrate some of the incredible moments and achievements of Jewish women and gender-expansive people from the past year. Here are our picks for the standouts that inspired us, made us laugh, and reminded us of the power of resilience, community, and creativity.

Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun lived their life in a spirit of rebellion and defiance. From their precocious teenage years, defying conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with their shaven head and male attire, to their direct resistance of German occupying forces, they active worked against the suppression of liberty and freedom—a life of resistance. 

The film is at its sharpest depicting grief as a series of elephants in rooms, of ghost towns beneath well-trodden cobblestones.

JWA chats with actor and playwright Kres Mersky about her one-woman show,The Life and Times of A. Einstein.

Charlotte Charlaque was a transgender trailblazer, actress, and translator in Weimer Berlin and post-Shoah New York City. 

Sparks fly between the charming leads, but the series too often relies on tired stereotypes and shallow conflicts.