Can We Talk?

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.

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 and accompanying card game Fair Play. For decades, feminists have tried to address the unfair burden placed on women in the home. The pandemic has laid bare the injustices in our current system—but could this be a moment to re-examine and "re-deal the deck" as we rebuild our society? In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks to Eve about the personal and societal dynamics around caregiving and domestic labor, how to make sure responsibility for household tasks is shared fairly, and how to value women's and men's time equally.

"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 change, how their identities influence their activism, and what inspires them to keep going. Isha Clarke is an activist with Youth vs. Coal and Youth vs. Apocalypse; Noa Gordon-Guterman is an Avodah Service-Corps member working with Interfaith Power and Light; and Tali Deaner is the campaigns director at Jewish Youth Climate Movement.

"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 fighters in World War II who "blew up Nazi supply trains and shot and killed Gestapo men." She's also co-writing the screenplay for a Steven Spielberg movie based on the book. In this episode of Can We Talk?, we talk with Judy about what made some women well suited to certain roles in the resistance and why their stories aren't better known today.

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 many reasons—hard on working parents with kids in remote school, hard on people who have lost jobs, human contact, and loved ones. In this podcast episode, Judith Rosenbaum and Nahanni Rous—and our podcast listeners—get a breathing lesson from Janice Stieber Rous, founder of Body Dialogue (and Nahanni's aunt). They'll also talk about liberation, well-being, and how stress and exhaustion impact our ability to breathe.

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 a tribute to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to Jewish women's voting stories, a mini-series on creativity in pandemic times, and more—and gives a sneak peak at some of what's to come in the spring.