women of valor

This Raucous Jewish Stand-Up Comedienne Made Fat Jokes Before They Were In Style

Self-mockery is a staple of stand-up comedy, and few excelled at it as much as Totie Fields. The raspy-voiced Jewish comedienne is mostly forgotten today, but she made her name on late-night TV and in nightclubs in the 1960s and ‘70s for risque jokes about sex, shopping and being fat. Born Sophie Feldman, daughter of […]

By Avishay Artsy

from Jewniverse

Clarice Lispector, Brazil’s Beloved Writer, Was Born in a Russian Shtetl

The modernist Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector is widely hailed as one of the greatest Latin American writers of the 20th century. What you wouldn’t guess from that fact is that she was born Chaya Lispector in a Russian shtetl. The youngest daughter of Pinkhas and Mania, Lispector had come out from the shadow of pogroms, during […]

from Jewniverse

What the Yiddish Diary of a 17th-Century German Woman Can Tell Us Today

The history of women can feel riddled with gaps, especially during times when education was the privilege of men. But one 17th-century Jewish woman, known as Gluckel of Hameln, left us a priceless window onto the lives of women, Jewish daily existence, and religious observance in Germany–in Old Yiddish, no less. Gluckel’s life wasn’t easy – she married […]

from Jewniverse