What Does Good Holocaust Education Look Like?
Elana Moscovitch
Teaching kids about the Holocaust should inspire them to fight injustice and change the world.
Topics: Holocaust, Feminism, Jewish Education, Non-Fiction
Reclaiming Europe's Jewish Past and Present
Savoy Curry
The Nazis stole Alice Urbach's cookbook. In her new book, her granddaughter, Karina, reclaims Alice's story—and Jews' rightful place in European life.
Topics: Recipes, Holocaust, Anti-Semitism
Q&A with Sarah Silberstein Swartz, Author of "Heroines, Rescuers, Rabbis, Spies: Unsung Women of the Holocaust"
Emma Breitman
JWA sat down with Sarah to discuss her new book, Heroines, Rescuers, Rabbis, Spies: Unsung Women of the Holocaust and the importance of continued Holocaust education.
Topics: Holocaust, Feminism
We Need Better Holocaust Education
Sam Mezrich
If non-Jews had more understanding of what our people went through, it would take a lot of emotional labor off the shoulders of Jewish kids.
Topics: Holocaust, Jewish Education, Schools
Rachel Finkelstein's Queer Feminist Holocaust Art
Emily-Rose Baker
Through its exploration of gender, sexuality, nationality, and intergenerational trauma, the work of artist Rachel Finkelstein is a reminder of the power that art holds as a form of activism.
Topics: Photography, Holocaust, LGBTQIA Rights, Palestine
Episode 82: When Jewish Women Talked to the Dead
In this season of ghosts and haunted houses, we're taking you back to a time when communicating with the dead was a popular way to spend an evening. Séances were the main practice of the spiritualist movement, which is based on the belief that when people die, they survive as spirits, and that we can talk to these spirits with the help of a medium. The movement had its heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Jews all over the world, from London to Brooklyn to Cairo, were at the forefront. Scholar Sam Glauber-Zimra explains why spiritualism had such appeal among Jews, what rabbis had to say about it, and why Jewish women were prominent as mediums.
From the Archive: Penny Yassour, "Mental Maps—Involuntary Memory"
Deborah Dash Moore and
Mimi Jessica Brown Wooten
The Posen Library shares Penny Hes Yassour's depiction of a 1938 German railway map.
Topics: Sculpture, Holocaust, Social Science
I Visited Six European Jewish Communities to Explore My Own Identity
Zia Saylor
My travels in Europe helped me reconcile some of the tensions in my Jewish identity.
Topics: Holocaust, Soviet Jewry, Anti-Semitism, World War II, Synagogues/Temples
A New Film About Charlotte Salomon Strips Her Soul from Her Art
Amelia Merrill
What could have been an innovative look at a forgotten artist instead becomes another cookie-cutter biopic.
Topics: Painting, Holocaust, Film
Learning Asian Jewish History Helped Me Make Space for Both My Identities
Liz Kleinrock
In learning the rich history of Jews in Asia, I finally found a sense of belonging.
Topics: Holocaust, Jewish Education, World War II
Czarna, Reimagined
Julie Zuckerman
A previous essay for JWA leads Julie Zuckerman to a long-lost relative and opens a door to her family's past.
Topics: Holocaust, Motherhood, Science
Episode 75: Eleanor Reissa's Invisible Birthmark
After a career spent telling other people's stories, Eleanor Reissa has finally uncovered her own. It started with 56 letters she found in a drawer while cleaning out her late mother's apartment. They were letters from her father to her mother, just a few years after they had both survived World War II. The letters sent Eleanor on a search to retrace her family history in Europe, which she chronicles in her new memoir, The Letters Project: A Daughter's Journey. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Nahanni Rous talks with Eleanor about how her life has been defined by being the daughter of people who lived through the Holocaust.
A Tale of Kindness and Survival
Marissa Wojcik
The women in Auschwitz helped Fritzie survive. She repaid them by telling their stories.
Topics: Holocaust, Recipes
Lessons From Gisella Perl, Reflections on the Texas Abortion Ban
Sarah Gorbatov
Holocaust survivor and doctor Gisella Perl's story has long been unsung; learning her story can serve all of us in our struggle for reproductive rights today.
Topics: Reproductive Rights, Holocaust, Medicine
Baroness Germaine de Rothschild
A member of one of France's most privileged Jewish families, Germaine de Rothschild (née Halphen) was a noted philanthropist, accomplished musician, author of two books, and mother of four. Most significantly, she orchestrated France's Kindertransport efforts, helping provide refuge to between 350 and 450 Jewish children.
Episode 69: Dara Horn: People Love Dead Jews (Transcript)
Episode 69: Dara Horn: People Love Dead Jews
Dara Horn's new book is a departure from her usual imaginative fiction. It's a collection of essays provocatively titled People Love Dead Jews. She also has a companion podcast called Adventures with Dead Jews. In both, Dara explores the subtler side of antisemitism, in which the role Jews play in the non-Jewish imagination has little to do with real Jewish lives.
How a Celebrity Chef Helped Me Connect with My Mixed Heritage
Celebrity chef Molly Yeh inspired me to share my Jewish fusion recipes with the world.
Topics: Food Writing, Holocaust, Television, Religion
Writing a One-Woman Show Re-Connected Me with My Jewish Heritage
Arielle Beth Klein
Writing a play about being a bad Jew helped me become a better one.
Topics: Performing Arts, Spirituality and Religious Life, Holocaust
Jewish Women Partisans
The testimonies of Jewish women partisans present a more complex gendered picture of partisan activism than the conventional portrayal of an exclusively male arena of armed guerillas. Women smuggled guns and ammunitions, fought in armed combat, engaged in reconnaissance activities, mobilized resistance, documented partisan activities, tended the wounded, and rescued and sheltered fellow Jews.
Hélène Cazes Benatar
Hélène Cazes Benatar was a Moroccan-born human rights lawyer who rescued thousands of refugees in North Africa during World War II. She was a life-long advocate for individual rights and political equality, especially for disenfranchised Maghrebi Jews. During World War II, she fought to protect victims of pro-Fascist Vichy rule; post-war, she promoted the migration of Moroccan Jews to Palestine and elsewhere.
Irena Klepfisz
Irena Klepfisz is a poet whose legacy is key to the history of Jewish, American and lesbian literature. Klepfisz is also a pioneer of the recovery of Jewish and Yiddish women's writing, to which she has dedicated translations, research, teaching, and activism.
Debra Renee Kaufman
Debra R. Kaufman has been a central voice in sociology, feminist studies, and Jewish Studies for over four decades. Her scholarship has spanned topics such as the role of women in Orthodox Judaism, post-Holocaust Jewish identity narratives, and contemporary American Jewish identity.
Miriam Katin
Miriam Katin is an award-winning comics artist best known for her Holocaust memoir We Are On Our Own. She was born in Hungary and now lives in New York City with her husband, Geoffrey Katin, a music educator.