As part of JWA’s mission to expand the narrative of Jewish history, we have collected and recorded hundreds of interviews with leaders, activists, and community members across the country, documenting their encounters with major events and movements of the 20th and 21st centuries and the many ways that gender, class, place, and religious and ethnic identities have shaped women’s lives.  

The oral histories were collected over more than two decades. Some are part of larger interview projects; others were recorded as individual interviews. Some are detailed life histories; others focus on a particular theme or experience. Each offers a window into the ordinary and extraordinary lives lived by Jewish women.   

JWA is grateful to Nicki Newman Tanner, Mass Humanities, and the  National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous support of the oral history collection.

Oral historian Jayne K. Guberman and oral historian and archivist Molly A. Graham managed the preservation and processing of the interviews. 

Using the Collection

JWA’s Oral History Collection can be explored in multiple ways. You can search for narrators or topics of interest by keyword or dive into various projects by clicking on the project name below. Using the left sidebar, you can refine your search by sorting by project, interview location, media type, interviewer name, and narrator place of birth. 

All entries contain transcripts. Where narrator permissions allow, entries also contain audio or video recordings.  

Projects

• The Adult Bat Mitzvah Oral History Project preserves the experiences of selected women in the Boston area who participated in an adult bat mitzvah ceremony. In documenting their unique stories, the project reveals and celebrates the journeys that led these women to participate in the bat mitzvah ceremony (usually conducted at age twelve or thirteen) later in life; examines the impact of the adult bat mitzvah experience on their personal growth, spiritual connection, and cultural identity; and explores the broader societal and cultural factors that have influenced the rising trend of adult bat mitzvah celebrations. These interviews were conducted by Shayna Rhodes, then a rabbinical student and now a rabbi, as part of her rabbinic internship at JWA in 2005.
• Barnard: Jewish Women Changing America explores the profound impact Jewish women have had on feminism and social change in the United States. Conducted by Jayne Guberman and Judith Rosenbaum at the Jewish Women Changing America conference, held in 2005 at Barnard College, the brief interviews span multiple generations, from second-wave feminists through early 21st-century activists. Contributors to this collection include scholars, artists, activists, and leaders who have dedicated themselves to understanding the complex intersection of sex, gender, and sexuality within Judaism. 
• The Boston Women Rabbis Oral History Collection is part of a larger project, The Story Archive of Women Rabbis, aimed at preserving and celebrating women rabbis’ invaluable contributions to the Jewish community. Co-directors Ronda Spinak and Lynne Himelstein conducted these interviews, documenting the challenges, triumphs, and unique perspectives of trailblazing women who have broken barriers and paved the way for gender equality within religious leadership. This project creates an enduring legacy that inspires future generations and enhances our understanding of the role of women in religious leadership. The Boston interviews were conducted in partnership with JWA in 2014. Excerpts of some also appear in JWA’s Women Rabbis collection.
• In 2004, Ann Buffum and Sandy Gartner, inspired by JWA’s oral history work, founded DAVAR: The Vermont Jewish Women's History Project. Over a five-year period, they conducted oral history interviews with Jewish women living in rural and urban Vermont—the first project of its kind. The women’s stories reflect a wide variety of interests, beliefs, and occupations, including government, education, political and social advocacy, farming, business, the arts, homemaking, and religion. Some of the women’s roots go back to the state’s early Jewish settlers; others are more recent migrants. The topics they discuss reflect their times: escaping the Holocaust, coping with gender discrimination, breaking into politics and medicine, converting to Judaism from another faith, and making contributions to the arts and culture.
• JWA’s Katrina’s Jewish Voices was conducted in collaboration with the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. Launched in August 2006, almost a year after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the project collected oral histories and digital artifacts to create a comprehensive record of the Jewish community’s experiences of Katrina. 
  
  The 85 oral history interviews draw on the personal experiences of American Jews whose lives were touched by one of the most devastating humanitarian and natural disasters in American history. Collectively, they reveal the values underlying American Jewish life at the turn of the 21st century, the fragility of Jews’ sense of security and well-being, and the connectedness of our lives–across boundaries of race, religion, and culture, as well as geographic distance and generational divides. From the struggles of individuals in the New Orleans and Gulf Coast Jewish communities to rebuild their lives and the efforts of people across the country to provide support and relief, Katrina’s Jewish Voices provides eloquent and intimate testimony to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of community in the face of daunting challenges.
• In February 2015, New York City’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun hosted Meet Me At Sinai, a conference commemorating the 25th anniversary off the publication of Judith Plaskow’s groundbreaking work of Jewish feminist theology, Standing Again at Sinai. JWA conducted seven interviews at the conference to gather stories about the impact of Jewish feminism on contemporary women’s lives.
• From the mid-1960s through the early 1990s, the movement for Soviet Jewry was an international campaign to secure two basic human rights for Jews–their rights to live openly as Jews within the Soviet Union and to emigrate freely if they wished to do so. In 2016, inspired by a sense of urgency to capture these stories before they were lost, JWA organized a collecting project to document the experiences of Soviet Jews and American Jewish activists living in the Boston area.  JWA partnered with Brandeis University professor Jonathan Krasner, whose students conducted these interviews under his supervision.
• Washington DC Stories comprises interviews with nine Washington, DC, women who share stories of their childhood homes, their personal struggles, and their transformative careers. Deborah Ross conducted these interviews in 2010 and 2011.
• For the Weaving Women’s Words project, JWA conducted oral histories with 60 Jewish women living in Baltimore and Seattle in 2001 and 2002. Born in the early decades of the 20th century, these women lived through political, social, and economic upheaval, as well as dramatic changes in expectations for women and Jews. Doctors and lawyers, teachers and saleswomen, politicians and government workers, homemakers and community volunteers, the narrators reflect the diverse range of backgrounds, affiliations, and choices made by Jewish women who grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the struggle for a Jewish state. Their life stories inspired exhibitions in Seattle and Baltimore that combined excerpts from the interviews, ethnographic portraits by photographer Joan Roth, and works of contemporary art in a variety of media.
  
  The Weaving Women’s Words oral history project was made possible in part by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Brenda Brown Lipitz Rever Foundation, and the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, Inc.
• JWA’s Women Who Dared project documents the stories of contemporary Jewish women activists who fought for social justice in their own communities, across the country, and around the world. From 2000 to 2007, we recorded oral history interviews with dozens of women of diverse backgrounds and generations in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and New Orleans. Each woman committed to finding solutions to problems ranging from civil rights to the plight of Soviet Jewry, women’s disempowerment to domestic violence, discrimination against the disabled to nuclear disarmament. The project chronicles the often untold story of Jewish women’s activism, highlighting the role of gender and Jewish values in the fight for social justice. 
  
  The Women Who Dared oral history interviews were funded in part by a major grant from the Dorot Foundation.
• Women Whose Lives Span the Century was JWA’s inaugural effort to work collaboratively with communal institutions across the country to document women’s experiences and accomplishments. The project consisted of oral histories conducted in the late 1990s with 32 women congregants of Temple Israel, Boston, all in their 80s and 90s. JWA trained Temple Israel volunteers in oral history theory and methodology before they conducted the interviews. 
  
  These women’s life stories were the basis for two interpretive exhibitions. “Reflections,” at Temple Israel’s Wyner Museum (curated by Susan Porter and Barbara Levy), used old photographs, family memorabilia, and the women’s words to explore major themes in their lives. “Contemporary Artistic Interpretations,” at the Starr Gallery at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center (curated by Jayne Guberman, Frances Putnoi, and Almitra Stanley), featured works of art in diverse media inspired by the narrators’ life journeys.
  
  Transcription of the oral history interviews was made possible by a generous grant from Muriel Hurovitz. 

About Nicki Newman Tanner

The Oral History Collection is named in honor of Nicki Newman Tanner, a groundbreaking philanthropist, accomplished oral historian, founding board member of JWA, and JWA board chair from 2004 to 2007.   

A 1957 alumna of Wellesley College, Newman Tanner earned a master’s degree in oral history from Columbia University in 1980. The following year, she became founding director of the UJA–Federation of Jewish Philanthropies Oral History Project. Across more than 20 years, she interviewed and preserved the stories of hundreds of leading figures in the American Jewish community. She also conducted interviews for Columbia’s Oral History Archive and as an independent oral historian.   

Through her work as an oral historian and philanthropist, Nicki Newman Tanner has empowered generations of women, Jews, and Jewish women. JWA is grateful for her leadership and support.