"What would it be like if we could daven and engage in Jewish life without having to endure racism?" says Ilana Kaufman, Executive Director of the Jews of Color Initiative. In a recent survey of Jews of Color by Ilana's organization, most respondents report facing racism and discrimination in majority white Jewish communal settings, and they don't think Jewish leadership is doing enough about it. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Nahanni Rous talks with Ilana about the survey and its implications, and Kasandra Housley, Mirushe Zylali, Gage Gorsky, and SooJi Min-Maranda share personal experiences.  

It's a bird...it's a plane...it's Willow Zimmerman! Willow is a social justice-minded Jewish teenager. She loves a hot salty reuben, bakes her own rugelach, and enjoys hanging out with a stray dog named Leibowitz. She’s also the latest Gotham City superhero. In this episode of Can We Talk?, producer Jen Richler talks with novelist E. Lockhart about creating Willow for DC Comics.

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, your apartment, even your kids— if people knew you were gay. Joan published her first book Eye To Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, in 1979, and the book was reissued this year. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks with Joan about her photography and the way her Jewish, lesbian, and feminist identities have intersected throughout her life.

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 Torah, Yael has switched the genders of each character.  The result is a familiar text that resonates very differently, with a new set of matriarchs and patriarchs, and stories that draw new connections and pose new questions.

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 efforts around the world to ensure that menstruating people are not denied access to education, work, and full participation in society. Anita, whose 1997 best seller The Red Tent imagined a special retreat where the Biblical matriarchs went when they were having their periods, says in the modern day, menstrual justice has become "part of the justice language."

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 forced out of places where Jewish communities had existed for over 2,000 years. The San Francisco-based organization JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) works to preserve the cultural memory and heritage of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, and ensure that this history is part of the record of Jewish life. In this episode, producer Asal Ehsanipour and JIMENA's Executive Director Sarah Levin share highlights from some of the oral stories preserved in JIMENA's archive and talk about their own family histories.

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 community on the outskirts of Bayonne, France. Brandeau was the first documented Jew to have set foot on Canadian soil, but she didn’t stay long. Historian and performing artist Heather Hermant tells the story for Can We Talk? and for JWA's revised and updated edition of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

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 at the World Bank and State Department. Judy is committed to removing the barriers that prevent disabled people from fully participating in society, a topic she explores in-depth in her memoir, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist. She tells her story for Can We Talk? and for JWA's revised and updated edition of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

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 of the "disappeared" began weekly protests in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires demanding to know what had happened to their sons and daughters. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo kept up their protests for over four decades and became a powerful movement for justice and human rights. Many of them were Jewish. Anthropologist Natasha Zaretsky tells their story for Can We Talk? and for JWA's revised and updated edition of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

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 record labels and performed regularly for the king in Rabat. When she moved to Israel in 1962, her career took a hit, but she sought out smaller venues and was soon rediscovered by younger Moroccan Israeli artists. Zohra El Fassia died in 1994. Writer and ethnomusicologist Tamar Sella tells her story for Can We Talk? and for JWA's revised and updated edition of the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

Zohra El Fassia's 1950s recordings are digitized by Chris Silver at Gharamophone. Also visit Abiadi, Neta Elkayam, and Amit Hai Cohen's musical tribute to Zohra El Fassia.