This is the first edition of the Our Bodies, Ourselves coursebook produced by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective in 1971. Of the 12 women who worked on the project, nine were Jewish, including Esther Rome, Joan Ditzion, Nancy Miriam Hawley, who is featured in JWA’s web exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, and Paula Doress-Waters who contributed a scan of the cover to the exhibit.

This framed image hangs in the office of Judith Rosenbaum, JWA’s Director of Public History. JWA presented it to Judith in September of 2005 in recognition of her work on the Feminism exhibit. Judith says she loves the image because it captures so beautifully how Our Bodies, Ourselves evolved.

“At some point in these early printings, we realized that the title ‘Women and Their Bodies’ was itself a sign of our alienation from our bodies,” Nancy Miriam Hawley told JWA. “We changed the title to ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’ because that was what we were really talking about.”