Power Players and Changemakers in Washington
For decades, photographer Joan Roth has photographed Jewish women around the world, uniquely documenting milestones in the women’s movement and in Jewish feminist history: landmark conferences, groundbreaking marches for gender rights, protests and their counter-protesters. In 2016, as Lilith’s masthead photographer, she traveled the United Stated documenting the campaigns of Jewish women across the landscape, including state races like that of Alma Hernandez, the Latina Jewish woman elected to represent her Tucson district in the Arizona legislature. This winter she focused her feminist lens on ERA marches in Washington DC, the women interrogating Donald Trump’s nominees for high office, and the role that former Jewish women legislators still play on the national political scene.
Senator Elissa Slotkin, photographed by Lilith’s Joan Roth back in 2018 when she was first running for Congress (Slotkin graced Lilith’s cover!). As a brand-new Senator for Michigan in 2025, she has already made headlines with pointed questioning during Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearings. Meanwhile, her electoral success in a state that otherwise went for Trump is being hailed by strategists, and Slotkin as a rising star.
Outgoing Congresswoman Kathy Manning, the only Jewish person ever to represent North Carolina in Congress, speaking on Capitol Hill accompanied by released Israeli hostage Aviva Siegel (with her arm around Yarden Gonen, sister of the released female hostage Romi Gonen). Siegel, a lifelong Greensboro resident with a home in Israel, was among the first round of released hostages in 2023, while her husband, Keith, remained behind until early 2025. Manning’s advocacy for Keith Siegel’s release continued even as Manning decided not seek reelection in 2024 after her Democratic district was redrawn by Republican state lawmakers. She refers to this as an egregious example of gerrymandering. Also behind Manning: Florida Representatives Kat Cammack and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the first Jewish women elected to Congress from Florida.
In 2018 Jacky Rosen—a former synagogue president—was elected Senator of Nevada. Rosen was re-elected in 2024 by a narrow margin. Here, the again newly re-elected Rosen grills Pete Hegseth on Veterans benefits, during his January 2025 Senate Armed Services Committee Confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense.
