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. 

Our society associates femininity with weakness, so was validating to learn that other members of my cohort had similar experiences with sexism.

The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, is a devastating yet beautiful memoir detailing the course of Dr. Eger’s life. 

The child of a Black Creole father and a biracial Jewish mother, Tova Ricardo grew up hearing stories of her family’s encounters with historical injustices, such as her maternal ancestors fleeing pogroms and her paternal ancestors reckoning with the aftermath of American slavery. Inspired by both her ancestors’ bravery and strength, as well as the continued presence of systemic oppression against African Americans and Jews in the world today, Ricardo uses her voice as a weapon of resistance against oppression. In particular, she turns to poetry as a means of exploring her intersecting identities and calling out injustice in the world around her. 

Being a Jewish woman means writing about what matters to me, and what I hope could matter to you. 

On the surface, our Rising Voices Fellowship has been about Jewish feminism, thought, and writing. But, to me, it was also about the power of words.

Masha Gessen’s departure from PEN is about artist versus art institution, colonial power versus subject, and the paradoxical notion of uplifting some voices by silencing others.

When I look at my American Jewish identity, I find that news from the Jewish community, and in particular, the Jewish feminist movement, continue to be underrepresented and under-publicized.

On December 10, 2018, Shelly Christensen publishedFrom Longing to Belonging: A Practical Guide to Including People with Disabilities and Mental Health Conditions in Your Faith Community. The book discusses how faith-based organizations can create welcoming and inclusive environments for people with disabilities and mental health conditions. Christensen includes many stories about her own experiences raising her son, who has autism.   

Judith Rosenbaum and Jayne Guberman interviewed Judith Kates on October 20th, 2005, in Brookline, Massachusetts, as part of the Jewish Women Changing America: Barnard Conference Oral History Project. Kates talks about her Orthodox upbringing, her struggle for gender equality within Judaism, her education, involvement in the women's movement, teaching women's studies, her gabbai position at a synagogue, and the impact of feminism on Judaism.

The entire Hebrew Bible has never been translated into English without the male-centric God language—until now.

Sam Cohen, author of Sarahland, which brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and providing new origin stories for its cast of Sarahs, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself on August 11, 2022.

Courtney Zoffness, author of Spilt Milk: Memoirs, which considers what we inherit from generations past―biologically, culturally, spiritually―and what we pass on to our children on August 4, 2022.

Siona Benjamin, contributor to Growing Up Jewish in India: From the Bene Israel to the Art of Siona Benjamin, about the Jewish communities of India, and illustrator of the children’s book I Am Hava, a story about the world’s most famous Jewish song—as told by the song herself on July 28, 2022.

Rachel Barenbaum, author of Atomic Anna, an epic adventure as three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past on July 22, 2022.

Discouraged and still reeling from the events of the past weekend, I took the story of Colleyville and the continued hatred against Jewish individuals in this country to our school newspaper.

As a Jewish feminist, I have a responsibility to further the movement started by the writers ofOur Bodies, Ourselves.

Through Joyce Antler’s writing, I can access the work of my foremothers on reproductive rights and can follow in their footsteps.

Judy Bolton-Fasman, author of Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets, which recounts the search for answers to the mysteries embedded in the lives of her Cuban-born mother, Matilde Alboukrek Bolton and her elusive, Yale-educated father, K. Harold Bolton on October 14, 2021.

A dancer, choreographer, educator, writer, and collaborator, Liz Lerman is among the dance field’s prominent public intellectuals, bringing deeply researched ideas about dance and community across fields as diverse as genetics, history, ethics of justice and reconciliation, and the science and religion of the origins of the universe. She draws consciously on the Jewish value oftikkun olam—healing the world—in her work.

Diane Noomin was an acclaimed cartoonist and editor and the creator of her alter ego, DiDi Glitz. Noomin was a central figure in women’s comics beginning with the early feminist publications of the 1970s. In 2011 she published an anthology of her work,Glitz-2-Go: Diane Noomin Collected Comics.

Miriam Katin is an award-winning comics artist best known for her Holocaust memoirWe Are On Our Own. She was born in Hungary and now lives in New York City with her husband, Geoffrey Katin, a music educator.

The Yiddish Book Center shares a page from Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman's children's book Mir Forn ("We're Off") from their archive.

Gilda Radner demonstrated that sharing one’s struggles publicly through humor can be a powerful act.

“Daughter Zion” or “Fair Zion” (in Hebrewbat tzion) is the personification of Jerusalem in poetic and prophetic literature. Initially, the city is positively likened to a daughter, protected under God’s special regard, but later, under the Babylonian siege, she is devastated, even ravaged. However, when Jerusalem is rebuilt, the daughter is forsaken no longer, returning to God’s grace in the prophecies of consolation.