Spring 1987

Racism and sexism meet in South Africa. Aviva Cantor interviews Vitke Kempner, WWII partisan. Laughing at Joan Rivers. How Jewish comediennes use humor to fight stereotypes. Campaigning to free Soviet prisoner Ida Nudel.

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Bima

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I live in the vibrant, integrated community of Boro Park, Brooklyn. Yet, I am different; I have several disabilities which keep me from mainstreaming into the larger society. I have... Read more »

Lifting The Yoke

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Thousands of women came to Jerusalem in December to express their views on how the Jewish legal system oppresses them, and to call for action. But were the male rabbis, who have the power to change things, really listening?

She Fought Back – An Interview with Vilna Partisan Vitke Kempner

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“Partisans of Vilna” is the first documentary on the Holocaust to focus on Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Produced by Aviva Kempner (no relation to Vitke Kempner) and directed by... Read more »

Funny and Feminist Too

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Two Jewish comediennes use humor to fight stereotypes—and still get laughs.

Comedy and Consciousness

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Can thinking women find anything to identify with in the persona of the abrasive late-night comic with the misogynist barbs?

Free Ida Nudel!

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Lilith launches a Women's Appeal to Raissa Gorbachev for the release of longtime refusenik and human rights activist Ida Nudel, isolated in the town of Bendery, Moldavia after four brutal years of Siberian exile.

Fagel Speaks

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Maternity Ward–1936* When I first came to New York        everything was brown, no trees.       I saw the concrete courtyards       of the Bronx. Still,... Read more »

Something Critical For My Mother

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Years before my grandmother died I’d ask her gentlyto stop with the stories of who went swimming,who was at the latest Hadassah meeting, who ate what.Tell me about Aunt Lizzie,... Read more »

Familiar Cruelties: A Nightmare Journey Through South Africa

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Researching her film "Maids and Madams," a study of black women and their white employers in South Africa, a Holocaust survivor has a personal encounter with apartheid, and tells here how its racism is inextricably linked with an equally corrosive but less frequently documented sexism. The cruelties of both are jarringly familiar to Hamermesh, resonating with her childhood memories of Nazi persecution.

Lines of Communication

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Rape Findings Skewed?Dear LILITH:I found myself feeling very uncomfortable with the conclusions in the article on “Why Jewish Women Get Raped” (Interview with Pauline Bart, #15). Here was yet another... Read more »

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