Six Jewish Feminist Highlights of a Tough Year

Gentle Lilith readers, I’ve been doing this Jewish feminist end-of-year roundup for 10 years now. My list has always included 7 highlights because 7 is the number associated with blessing and creation in the Jewish tradition. While I remain PROFOUNDLY grateful for all the smart, mouthy Jewish feminists in my life and in the world, 2024 simply isn’t feeling all that blessed. To mark the grief and the anxiety that so many of us are experiencing right now, my 2024 Jewish feminist list is deviating from tradition and only includes 6 items.

May each of you fill in your own #7 or, better yet, your hope and action plan for repairing a very broken world in 2025. 

  1. In an otherwise dismal election year (how’s that for understatement?), Jacky Rosen and Elissa Slotkin, both Jewish Democratic women, managed to win Senate seats in states that swung Republican for president. Slotkin of Michigan comes to the job with the experience of having been a representative for three terms; prior to her political career, she was a CIA analyst. Rosen was re-elected in Nevada and, like Slotkin, ran a campaign that included strong support for reproductive rights. On Oct. 17, Rosen identified herself as “the only Jewish mother in the Senate” and wrote on Instagram, “my heart shattered as we met with the families of those taken hostage by Hamas and heard their stories in Israel.” While the political mishigas (Yiddish for craziness) that’s coming will surely try Jewish women’s souls, it’s good to know that we have peeps in the Senate who are up for a fight. 
  1. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of executed Oct. 7 hostage, Hersh Goldberg, has been a profile in courage. A “high functioning introvert,” she advocated tirelessly for her son and the other hostages. She called out to him at the Gaza border. And at his funeral, she said, “I want to do hakarat hatov [recognize the good] and thank God right now for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh. . . . For 23 years, I was privileged to have this most stunning  treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.” May Hersh’s memory be for the blessing of peace.
  1. In the wonderfully offbeat dramedy Between the Temples (directed by Nathan Silver), Carol Kane plays an adult bat mitzvah student tutored by a recently widowed cantor (Jason Schwartzman) who has lost his voice. In the past, she was his music teacher; in the present, the two of them save one another from grief and loneliness. What I have elsewhere called Kane’s “kooky sultriness” is on full display in Between the Temples, and as those who watched Kane in Hester Street already know, she is a national treasure. Kane just snagged the award for best supporting actress from the New York Film Critics Circle, but don’t let the title of that trophy fool you: in the storyline as well as in the acting, Schwartzman supports her just as much as she supports him. 
  1. Ruth Westheimer—aka Dr. Ruth—died at 96 after a life well-lived. As a renowned educator, talk show host, and writer, she promoted sex positivity long before that term became a thing. Her accented English betrayed her origins as a German Jew whose parents sent her to Switzerland after Kristallnacht. She never saw them again, and her post-war journey took her to British-controlled Palestine, then Paris, and finally to the States in 1956. Working at Planned Parenthood in Harlem after earning her doctorate in education set the stage for life as a joyful sex educator. She was a firm believer in abortion rights and an ally to queer folks; her mantra as an advocate for safe and satisfying sex was “Get Some.” At her funeral, one of her granddaughters movingly eulogized her: “She saw all four of her grandchildren grow up and go to college, something she often said reminded her that Hitler lost and she had won. . . . The world was lucky to have my Omi but I’ve been luckier to have her as my person.” 
  1. After 4 long years, Malky Berkowitz finally got her Jewish divorce contract known as a gett. Berkowitz’s plight as an agunah, a chained woman, became a cause célèbre in the Orthodox world and beyond thanks to the “sex strike” activist friend Adina Sash began in March. Her plan was designed to call attention to Berkowitz’s case and to pressure Berkowitz’s husband to do the right thing. Even Aristophanes, who penned the Greek play Lysistrata about a women’s sex strike for peace, couldn’t have imagined the power of Orthodox sisterhood!
  1. Judith Rosenbaum, PhD celebrated her 10th anniversary as CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive this year. Under her leadership, JWA’s hallmark encyclopedia was overhauled, JWA’s Can We Talk Podcast tackled the horrors of Oct. 7, the Nicki Newman Tanner Oral History Collection came into being, and virtual book clubs, film clubs, and online courses have built Jewish feminist community. Mazel tov to Judith and to the whole amazing JWA team. 

Helene Meyers is the author of Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition. You can find her at @helenemeyers.bsky.social.