Jewish Women's Archive
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'It is a Jewish tradition to bury the placenta beneath the entryway to the home as a means to deter the evil eye from entering. It was believed that if the mother stepped over the buried afterbirth several times, the holiness of the placenta would re-enter her body."

buff.ly/WJUMfdi
JWA Book Talks:

🔸 Oct 30—Jane Eisner, Carole King: She Made the Earth Move
🔸 Nov 6—Esther Chehebar, Sisters of Fortune
🔸 Nov 13—Minna Bromberg, Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness
🔸 Nov 20—Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us
Simchat Torah celebrates the conclusion of the annual cycle of Torah readings, and marks the beginning of a new cycle. The holiday starts tonight!

📷 People gathered around an open Torah being read during Simchat Torah as others hold a tallit aloft over the children and Torah. Photo by Bill Aron.
A poem by Lea Goldberg that speaks to the joy, grief, and hope of this moment.
Jewish lesbian tennis player Helen Hull Jacobs played her way into the International Tennis Hall of Fame ♥️

Winner of numerous championship victories, Jacobs was a force to be reckoned with on the tennis court in the 1920s-30s.

Read more in our new encyclopedia entry: buff.ly/gk7hYi4
"I knew that my dream would be to write about sex. I could be someone to help answer those questions that my younger self was afraid to ask, and show women that there’s nothing shameful about being sexual."

JWA sat down with Mia Sherin to discuss embracing her sexuality: buff.ly/MjgwQKb
Two years after October 7, JWA's podcast speaks with family members of Vivian Silver and Hayim Katsman, Israeli peace activists who were murdered that day. Hayim’s mother Hannah Wacholder Katsman and Vivian’s son Yonatan Zeigen share how they are carrying on their legacies. Listen: buff.ly/iw5clZK
Sukkot begins tonight 🌿✨ A festival of harvest and memory, marking the Israelites’ desert wanderings and the season’s abundance.

📷 The Benguiat family, late nineteenth century Smyrna (now Izmir), Ottoman Empire, late 19th century. The Jewish Museum.
At the height of WWII, Elaine Buchman Yoneda became the only Jewish woman on record to be imprisoned in an American concentration camp.

In our new podcast episode, tracyslater.bsky.social describes how anti-immigrant policies tore families apart and how those forces are reemerging: buff.ly/zMgBVOI
We are links in a long chain of tradition 💙 You’re looking at a woman praying on Yom Kippur in 1496 Italy — a detail from Maraviglia’s Prayer Book, scribed by Yo’el ben Shim’on Feibush.

Yom Kippur begins at sundown tonight. G'mar chatima tovah.
"I don’t see 'fantasy' as an escape from reality, but as a way into a deeper experience of what is most real."

L.A.-based painter Hannah Lupton Reinhard explores Jewish femininity through vibrant colors studded with Swarovski crystals: buff.ly/2LQxtoT
Jewish New Year and Shabbat card, 1899.

Two men are sitting and reading from a book, a woman is standing with a covered plate in her hand and a boy is beside her. At the bottom of the postcard is an inscription: Shabbat night kiddush, for a new year.

Shabbat shalom!
JWA's Online History Course "Belles and Butches: Jewish Women in the American South" continues Sep 25 at 8 PM.

Join us w/ Marcie Cohen Ferris for The Edible Jewish South. Explore food as language and cuisine shaped by privilege and deprivation.

Register: buff.ly/wczFfcJ
Yemenite Jews observing Tashlich in Tel Aviv, 1926.

Tashlich is a symbolic ritual of the High Holidays. The Hebrew word means “to cast off.” By a body of water, people release crumbs or small pieces of bread as a gesture of letting go, renewal, and beginning the year unburdened.

📷 Shimon Korbman
This illustation appeared on the cover of suffrage activist Selina Solomons’ 1912 book "How We Won the Vote in California."

In 5786, may we carry forward the commitment of Solomons and other Jewish women to protecting democracy and bringing a more just world into being.

Shana tova! ⭐
"The trees are more than landscaping. They are my neighbors, my deep-rooted friends. But our neighborhood, like our climate, is changing."

On JWA's blog, Lisa Trank considers environmentalism and Rosh Hashanah:
Asking For A Tree's Forgiveness This Rosh Hashanah | Jewish Women's Archive
The trees are more than landscaping. They are my neighbors, my deep-rooted friends. But our neighborhood, like our climate, is changing.
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Reposted by Jewish Women's Archive
#TheaterBSKY check out this review from @sarahjaeleiber.bsky.social and then see this extraordinary play!!
"In this play, men are a non-entity—a taste of their own medicine with regard to the way matriarchs are sidelined in the Torah."

A TheaterLab through Sep 28, The Matriarchs imagines a matriarchal Judaism:
"The Matriarchs" Review | Jewish Women's Archive
The Matriarchs imagines a universe where life’s unfairest moments can be made more tolerable through friendship, conversation, and understanding.
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"In this play, men are a non-entity—a taste of their own medicine with regard to the way matriarchs are sidelined in the Torah."

A TheaterLab through Sep 28, The Matriarchs imagines a matriarchal Judaism:
"The Matriarchs" Review | Jewish Women's Archive
The Matriarchs imagines a universe where life’s unfairest moments can be made more tolerable through friendship, conversation, and understanding.
buff.ly
JWA's Online History Course ✨ Belles and Butches: Jewish Women in the American South ✨ continues on tomorrow, Sep 18, at 8 PM ET! Register at buff.ly/eZtuWz7.

Join us with Rachel Gelfand for "Queer, Jewish, Southern," examining different generations of queer experiences in the South.
From 1929-1950s, Molly Goldberg was America’s favorite Jewish mother. Her character was written and embodied by Gertrude Berg, the first female showrunner.

In our podcast ep, Emily Nussbaum talks about the history and how the show resonates today: buff.ly/mt82Wpn
Rosika Schwimmer was one of Hungary’s leading voices for women’s rights, organizing women workers, birth control, and campaigning against child labor.

Her vision for equality and peace made her a force of nature, but drew intense antisemitic and antifeminist backlash: buff.ly/xL8H7IE
There's only been one Jewish Miss America in history, and her name was Bess Myerson.

Just months after the revelations of the Holocaust, Myerson was crowned Miss America on September 8, 1945. Her victory was symbolic of the US post-war vitality of the American Jewish community: buff.ly/kzlky1e