Podcasts by Can We Talk?
Each month on Can We Talk?, the Jewish Women’s Archive features stories and conversations about Jewish women and the issues that shape our public and private lives. Visit us at jwa.org.
Further podcasts by Jewish Women's Archive
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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Episode 69: Dara Horn: People Love Dead Jews from 2021-12-07T11:33:11
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Episode 68: Beyond the Count: Talking to Jews of Color from 2021-11-23T09:50:48
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Episode 66: Eye to Eye with Joan Biren from 2021-10-26T13:47:57
In 1971, photographer Joan Biren, also known as JEB, started doing something revolutionary: documenting the everyday lives of lesbians. This was an era when you could lose everything—your job, y...
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Episode 65: Regendering the Torah from 2021-10-13T14:59:30
Yael Kanarek wanted a more direct relationship with the Divine than she experienced through male-centric Jewish sacred texts-- so she rewrote the Torah. In Toratah, or Her To...
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Episode 64: Anita Diamant Talks Menstrual Justice from 2021-06-23T19:02:58
Menstrual justice is the latest front in the global fight for gender equality. Author Anita Diamant's new book, Period. End of Sentence, explores the stigma around menstruation and effo...
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Episode 63: JIMENA: Mizrahi and Sephardi Voices from 2021-06-08T13:17:35
The 20th century brought major disruptions, displacement, and annihilation to Jewish communities all over the world. In the Middle East and North Africa, over one million Jews fled or were force...
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Episode 62: The Mystery of Esther Brandeau from 2021-06-01T13:16:09
In 1738, a young Christian man stepped off a boat in the French colony of Quebec and was doubly outed as a Jew and a woman. Esther Brandeau was born around 1718 in Saint Esprit, a Jewish communi...
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Episode 61: Being Heumann with Judy Heumann from 2021-05-25T11:05:12
Judy Heumann is a lifelong disability rights activist—from fighting for her own right to live in a college dorm, to lobbying for the Americans with Disabilities Act, to leading major initiatives...
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Episode 60: The Jewish Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo from 2021-05-19T13:32:28
In 1976, a military dictatorship seized power in Argentina. The regime systematically kidnapped, tortured and killed 30,000 people who were suspected of opposition. A year into the war, mothers ...
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Episode 59: Zohra El Fassia from 2021-05-11T12:23:51
Zohra El Fassia was born around 1905 near Fez, Morocco. She sang from the time she was a girl, and by the mid-20th century, she was a star. El Fassia recorded hundreds of songs for international...
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Episode 58: Playing Fair with Eve Rodsky from 2021-05-04T12:37:54
Who keeps track of when the mustard is running low? Who does the laundry? Who takes the call from school when kids are sick? These are some of the questions author Eve Rodsky asks in her book an...
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Episode 57: Youth vs. Climate Change from 2021-04-20T11:21:04
"We don’t want to exist, we want to thrive and create a better world." In this episode of Can We Talk?, three young Jewish women reflect on how they became active in fighting climate ch...
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Episode 56: The Light of Days: Judy Batalion from 2021-04-06T11:43:22
"They were women who carried cash in their garter belts and dynamite in their underwear," says Judy Batalion, the author of The Light of Days, a new book about Jewish women resistance f...
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Episode 55: Breathing Lesson from 2021-03-23T10:51:19
We kick off Can We Talk?'s spring season just in time for Passover... and about a year since we began living with the global pandemic. This time has been rough on so many people, for so...
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Can We Talk? Fall 2020 Season Wrap from 2021-01-13T11:53:13
In this season wrap, host Nahanni Rous recaps Can We Talk?'s Fall 2020 episodes—from the history of Jewish and African American women's participation in the fight for voting rights, to ...
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Episode 54: Mamalas: Building Jewish Families from 2020-12-17T11:06:23
The election of Kamala Harris to the Vice Presidency has sparked excitement in the Jewish community. Not only will she be the first woman and person of color to serve in the role, but she also h...
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Episode 53: Sabrina Orah Mark Writes Into Brokenness from 2020-12-09T12:37:21
Writer and poet Sabrina Orah Mark joins us for the final episode in our four part series on creativity in pandemic times. Her monthly essays in The Paris Review are loosely based on mot...
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Episode 52: Siona Benjamin's Transcultural Art from 2020-12-02T12:26:51
Siona Benjamin’s art dances with vibrant colors and mythical figures—Lilith wrapped in a prayer shawl, Vashti with angels wings, a blue-skinned woman with multiple arms held up like a menorah. S...
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Episode 51: Alicia Svigals, Klezmer Fiddler from 2020-11-24T11:27:33
Alicia Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer fiddler and has played a central role in the klezmer revival. Alicia was a co-founder of the Grammy-Award winning band, the Klezmatics, and she has ...
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Episode 50: Laughing with Liz Glazer from 2020-11-17T11:56:19
Stand-up comedian Liz Glazer left a successful career as a tenured law professor six years ago to pursue comedy full time. "It's the usual route to stand-up," she says. As a result of the pandem...
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Episode 49: Jewish Women Vote from 2020-10-27T10:02:49
As history unfolds in this election season, we talk with Jewish women about their voting stories—past and present. We hear from a poll watcher in Georgia, a young voter whose name was nearly wip...
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Episode 48: A Ceiling Made of Eggshells from 2020-10-06T12:33:16
Gail Carson Levine is famous for writing retellings of classic fairy tales with a modern twist—like her best-selling novel Ella Enchanted—but her most recent book, A Ceiling Made of...
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Episode 47: RBG in Her Own Words from 2020-09-24T11:00:34
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman to sit on the nation’s highest court, died on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Justice Ginsburg was an American and feminist icon and a...
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Episode 46: Virtual Holidays: Lessons from our Muslim friends from 2020-09-15T11:16:48
Back in April, many of us celebrated Passover with a virtual Seder, or two. Now, five months later, we enter the High Holidays in much the same predicament. It’s hard not to feel disconnected wh...
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Episode 45: Shofar in the Desert from 2020-09-15T10:40:21
No sound is more iconic for the Jewish New Year than that of the shofar blast. This year, many Jews will hear the sound of the shofar virtually. Can We Talk? producer Sarah Ventre is on...
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Episode 44: The Nineteenth Amendment Turns 100 from 2020-08-26T09:48:44
One hundred years ago on August 26, 1920, Congress adopted the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. After many decades of determined activism, American women had won the right to vote. Desp...
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Can We Talk? Spring 2020 Season Wrap from 2020-07-06T14:31:12
As they wrap up another season of Can We Talk?, Nahanni Rous and Judith Rosenbaum look back on episodes and interviews from this season. They reflect on how the podcast has been a vehicle ...
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Episode 43: Black Lives Matter from 2020-06-10T16:07:43
A wave of protests is sweeping the country following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. In this episode, we speak with Atlanta-based educator and activist Tarece Johnson about...
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Episode 42: Ode to Ladino from 2020-05-19T12:55:26
Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, was once the mother tongue of Sephardic Jews in Turkey and other Jewish communities that once thrived around the Mediterranean. Now, there are only about 100,000 Ladino...
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Episode 41: Coming of Age with Judy Blume from 2020-05-06T11:36:40
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Judy Blume's classic teen novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, a story that normalizes the experiences of teenage girls: what it’s like to...
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Episode 40: Rachel Sharansky Danziger: Let My Story Go from 2020-04-06T15:54:07
Rachel Sharansky Danziger’s connection to the Exodus story is personal. Her parents, Natan and Avital Sharansky, were born in the Soviet Union. Natan spent nine years in a Soviet prison after he...
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Episode 39: Esther Safran Foer: We're Still Here from 2020-03-30T13:05:15
Every family has hidden stories, but some are more deeply hidden than others. Esther Safran Foer’s parents both survived the Holocaust, but most of their relatives were killed. Like many survivo...
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Episode 38: Joan Rivers and Treva Silverman: Partners in Comedy from 2020-03-24T11:35:21
Joan Rivers and Treva Silverman were friends and partners in comedy for decades. In this delightful conversation from JWA’s archive, Joan and Treva talk about what it was like to be women in com...
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Episode 37: Joan Rivers, can we talk? from 2020-03-17T10:58:11
Joan Rivers’s comedy career spanned six decades, from off-Broadway and cabaret to television and books. She was self-deprecating and abrasive, and charted new territory by telling stories from h...
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Episode 36: Relearning to Wash Our Hands from 2020-03-13T12:01:59
We're facing a global pandemic, the likes of which most of us have never lived through. In these unsettling days, community healer and spiritual leader Dori Midnight brings us this prayer for re...
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Can We Talk? Spring 2020 Trailer from 2020-03-12T13:21:15
Welcome back to a new season of Can We Talk?! We’re kicking off our season next week, but in the meantime here’s a taste of some of the episodes coming your way from the Jewish Women’s...
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Episode 35: Becoming Abby Stein from 2019-11-12T12:39:04
Author and transgender activist Abby Stein grew up in a tight-knit, insular Hasidic community in Brooklyn; she calls it one of the most gender-segregated societies in America. From early childho...
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Episode 34: Emily Nussbaum Likes To Watch from 2019-10-24T00:01:09
If we're living in the golden age of television, then The New Yorker's TV critic Emily Nussbaum is our soothsayer. In this episode of Can We Talk?, JWA's CEO, Judith Rosenbaum,...
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Episode 33: Sarah Hurwitz: From the White House to the Torah from 2019-09-27T11:13:43
Sarah Hurwitz had what she calls her dream job: She was a White House speechwriter for a president and first lady she admired. At the end of the Obama Administration, she took a break from polit...
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Episode 32: Silence Helps Others Forget from 2019-06-06T09:31:16
Host Nahanni Rous talks to Holocaust survivor and author, Irene Butter. Like Anne Frank's family, Butter’s fled Nazi Germany, settled in Amsterdam, and was eventually deported to concentrat...
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Episode 31: Single Mothers By Choice from 2019-05-06T11:23:39
In this special Mother’s Day episode of Can We Talk?, host Nahanni Rouss speaks with three single mothers by choice: Lizzie Skurnick, Naomi, and Wendy Shanker. These women felt motherho...
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Episode 30: Women in Israeli Politics: An Election Primer from 2019-04-02T12:02:37
On April 9, Israeli voters head to the polls. In this chaotic and potentially momentous election, the headlines are mostly focused on political maneuvering and corruption scandals in the top-ran...
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Episode 29: BRCA: A Jewish Legacy from 2019-03-13T12:17:41
One in 40 Ashkenazi Jews carries the BRCA genetic mutation, which is strongly linked to breast and ov...
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Episode 28: The Torah at Her Fingertips from 2019-02-07T14:23:54
Batya Sperling Milner’s recent bat mitzvah was groundbreaking; it was the first held in an Orthodox synagogue in which the Torah portion was chanted from braille. In this episode of Can We T...
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Episode 27: The Power of Women’s Anger from 2018-12-18T13:41:09
On this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks to Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, one of JWA’s Book List picks...
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Episode 26: A Thanksgiving Seder from 2018-11-19T10:20:54
The Lauter and Rosenblit families have been celebrating Thanksgiving together for decades. This year will be no different. Together, they will eat turkey, discuss what it means to be a Jewish Am...
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Episode 25: A Visit to Pittsburgh from 2018-11-02T10:28:10
On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven Jews during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. While taking lives, the gunman shouted that “all Jews must die.” That mornin...
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Episode 24: Archiving #MeToo from 2018-10-23T16:14:03
“Why aren’t women believed?” “Why is a man’s reputation considered more important than a woman’s physical safety?”
In the first episode of th...
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Episode 23: Can We Talk? Season Wrap from 2018-06-19T15:59:49
As they wrap up another season of Can We Talk?, Nahanni Rous and Judith Rosenbaum look back on their favorite episodes and interviews. They reflect on how the podcast has addressed both...
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Episode 22: The Red Tent: Claiming Our Place in the Story from 2018-05-23T00:42:42
Anita Diamant's 1997 novel The Red Tent began as a word-of-mouth book club favorite, and went on to become a publishing phenomenon and the inspiration for women's organizations around t...
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Episode 21: TRYmester: Lifting the Silence on Infertility from 2018-03-29T10:35:51
Infertility is seldom discussed openly in a tradition that prioritizes children and families, but many Jewish adults struggle with it, and isolation compounds the painful experience. With a new ...
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Episode 20: Breaking the Sound Barrier from 2018-02-18T21:28:24
Why do women’s voices generate more criticism than men’s? Susan Stamberg – the first woman in America to host a nightly national news broadcast – talks with us about voice and gender bias, losin...
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Episode 19: Dirty Dancing Turns 30 from 2017-12-19T13:59:19
A surprise hit in 1987, Dirty Dancing has captivated audiences of all ages for 30 years with its story of Catskill culture, a young woman’s coming of age, and the class divide in Americ...
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Episode 18: Mah Jongg Tov from 2017-11-21T09:24:11
We join the Mah Jongg Tov Mah Jongg Club for an evening of laughs, nostalgia, and the sounds of Mah Jongg … an ancient Chinese table game that’s embedded in Jewish culture. Mah Jongg is tactile,...
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Episode 17: Four Mothers: Orna’s Story from 2017-10-19T11:42:36
She was protesting a war she thought was futile—and then her son was killed in it. Hear the poignant story of Orna Shimoni, an Israeli woman who 20 years ago turned her pain into action—and toda...
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Episode 16: Women Wage Peace from 2017-10-19T11:38:09
Are women the key to peace in the Middle East? In this episode, we hear voices from Women Wage Peace, a powerful new movement in Israel demanding peace with the Palestinians—and insisting on wom...
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Episode 15: A Day at the Met with the Mixed-Up Files from 2017-06-14T15:54:04
Beloved children’s book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler turns 50 this year. E.L. Konigsburg’s best-selling novel tells the story of two suburban children who run aw...
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Episode 14: Making a Family from 2017-05-11T10:48:34
“I think people need to talk about how families are created and there’s so many different ways, and there’s more every day. And it’s not easy and it’s not a given.” In this month’s episode, we t...
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Episode 13: Borders of Love from 2017-04-20T09:59:33
Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan’s novel All the Rivers is a steamy, Middle Eastern “Romeo and Juliet”: an Israeli-Palestinian love affair that confronts themes of borders,...
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Episode 12: A New Era for the ERA from 2017-03-15T11:51:50
Surveys show that around 90 percent of Americans support an Equal Rights Amendment—and yet, still, the Constitution does not explicitly guarantee equal rights for women. On this month's episode,...
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Episode 11: Still Marching from 2017-01-26T10:45:40
The day after Trump’s inauguration, millions of people around the world took to the streets in protest. March along with us in this episode! We'll meet participants in the Women's March on Washi...
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Episode 10: Rededication from 2016-12-22T10:13:16
For many Jews, the election of Donald Trump signals a time of uncertainty. In this episode, we turn for guidance to three Jewish women who have spent their lives working for social change. Ruth ...
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Episode 9: Sonnet for America from 2016-11-23T10:52:15
In search of some post-election, pre-Thanksgiving meaning, host Nahanni Rous and JWA Executive Director Judith Rosenbaum explore that great American symbol, the Statue of Liberty—and the Jewish ...
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Episode 8: WITCH in Action from 2016-10-27T11:20:43
On Halloween of 1968, a coven of witches in black robes and pointy hats hexed Wall Street. They called themselves WITCH—Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell—but there was nothing...
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Episode 7: Women of the Wall from 2016-09-21T15:16:16
This month, Can We Talk? attends a Bat Mitzvah with Women of the Wall at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The group has been fighting for women's right to read Torah at Judaism’s holiest ...
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Episode 6: JWA at the DNC from 2016-07-29T14:13:49
In this episode, host Nahanni Rous and JWA Executive Director Judith Rosenbaum report from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where they were invited to cover Hillary Clinton’s ...
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Episode 5: “Jewish Hair” from 2016-06-15T21:10:22
Summer's coming, and here at the Jewish Women's Archive, we're thinking about…hair. Curly, Jewish hair. The kind that turns to frizz in summer weather. And we're not the only ones...
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Episode 4: Mothering from 2016-05-04T11:28:51
A man with a beard admits he's the stereotypical Jewish mother…a woman who's always been afraid of teenagers explains why an 18-year-old from Somalia is calling her mom…and a veteran stage actor...
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Episode 3: People of the Cookbook from 2016-04-05T17:57:45
“Every cuisine tells a story,” writes Claudia Roden in the Book of Jewish Food. “Jewish food tells the story of an uprooted, migrating people and their vanished worlds.” Claudia’s childhood worl...
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Episode 2: Body of Knowledge from 2016-02-28T20:24:18
45 years ago a group of women in the Boston area collectively published Our Bodies Ourselves—a groundbreaking book that put forward the radical notion that women should get to know thei...
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Episode 1: The Pilot's Pilot from 2016-01-25T10:49:20
Our pilot episode is about… pilots! Elynor Rudnick and Zahara Levitov grew up on different continents: one in America, one in British-ruled Palestine. In the 1940s, they were both young Jewish w...
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Episode 1: The Pilot's Pilot from 2016-01-25T10:49:20
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