JWA chats with musician, song and prayer leader, and cultural organizer Batya Levine.

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Eastern Europe, Jewish women served their communities as spiritual leaders and paid religious functionaries. The main women’s leadership roles documented in Yiddish literature, memoirs, memorial books, and ethnographic studies include the midwife, the evil eye healer, the cemetery measurer, the prayer leader, and the mourning woman. 

The amount of page time devoted to questioning a ruling that diminishes the status of deaf people represented, to me, that these rabbis recognized that physical limitations should not keep people from following the mitzvot.  

JWA chats with Jewish musician, educator, and activist Molly Bajgot. 

Instead of using the poem the way a husband would honor his wife for taking care of the entire family, I chose to useEshet Chayil as my way of thanking and expressing the awe that I have for these female role models in my family.

JWA talks to Dr. Galeet Dardashti, cultural anthropologist and singer, about her new albumMonajat.

The idea that Miriam will dance with us to repair the broken world paints an image of a world in which change is actually achievable. How beautiful is the thought that we can advocate for a world that swirls with gender equality?

Ronda Spinak interviewed Rabbi Elaine Zecher in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 20, 2024, for the Boston Women Rabbis Oral History Project.Zecher, senior rabbi of Temple Israel of Boston, shares her journey as a female rabbi, her experiences as the first woman rabbi at Temple Israel, her love for liturgy and involvement in prayer book projects, her spiritual practices, Temple Israel's work with AIDS victims, and her deep connection to the universal values of Judaism.

Roz Bornstein interviewed Louise Azose on April 18 and May 26, 2001, in Seattle, Washington, as part of the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project. A Sephardic Jew from Turkey, Azose shares her immigration experience, family life, involvement in her synagogue, traditional cooking, cultural customs, the challenges of separation from her family, raising her children during World War II, the role of singing in her family, and her travels.

JWA talks with musician, vocalist, and composer Daniela Gesundheit about how her new album, Alphabet of Wrongdoing, makes the sacred accessible. 

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

Celebrating our differences has brought my partner and me closer—but it hasn’t always been easy.

Women can add, and have historically added, so much to Jewish culture and faith; I wanted this to be reflected at my camp, starting with the prayer books we read from.

I decided that I, a thirteen year old, would convince the rabbi of my synagogue to change a rule no one else had successfully challenged.

When I stared down at my siddur for the first time, the one I would come to memorize, I ran my pudgy fingers over the fiery red woman featured on its glossy cover.

At camp, every song had a different tune, and for every prayer I knew, there were four more I didn’t.

There were no chairs in the women's section of my school's shul. 

Louise Glück, American poet, essayist, and educator, was the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as numerous other awards for her writing; she also served as poet laureate of the United States from 2003 to 2004. One finds the personal, the mythological, and the Biblical woven intricately throughout Glück’s oeuvre.

I hope that contemporary feminists can learn from Debbie Friedman and bring people together through interactive art.

My Judaism guides me to use my words in order to lead a mindful life of gratitude.

For two hours a day, three days a week, the Orthodox rabbi led us through the strict and meticulous process of tefillin-making.

I expected to feel emotion and attachment to the Kotel. However, despite the burning midday sun, my first visit left me cold.

Last March, as I prepared to visit Holocaust sites as part of my high school semester in Israel, I braced myself.

Activist and writer Merle Feld recounts a harrowing experience praying at the Kotel with Women of the Wall.