Beate Sirota Gordon was a Jewish woman who co-authored the Japanese constitution and helped enshrine equal rights for women.
Join us for a retelling of her life through film clips sparking a conversation about the power of representation with State Senator Becca Rausch and Rabbi Lila Kagedan, the first ordained female Orthodox rabbi, moderated by Dr. Judith Rosenbaum, CEO of Jewish Women’s Archive.
Printed and Stitched in Time: Stories of Undaunted Women, a gallery show by JArts/CJP Community Creative Fellow Sandra Mayo, also opens with this event. Sandra’s exhibit tells the story of two Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Argentina, only to experience further loss in Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Join Sandra in exploring this show and its many connections to female leadership and innovation.
Exhibit tours and light reception to follow with an additional special guest Dr. Noa Lea Cohn, art lecturer at Efrata College in Jerusalem.
This program is part of a series in honor of Women’s History Month 2025. Join us in raising up the stories of Jewish women who have made significant contributions to our world. Prompted by the book The Only Woman in The Room, the story of Beata Sirota Gordon, the Jewish woman who co-authored the Japanese constitution, this series features literature, art, music, film and more to illuminate the lives and innovations of these women.
Co-sponsored by Jewish Women’s Archive
Judith Rosenbaum (she/her) is CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive, a pioneering digital archive that documents Jewish women’s stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change. Judith earned a PhD in American Studies from Brown University, with a focus on women, gender, and social movements. As a Fulbright Fellow, she studied women’s collective communities in Israel. An educator, historian, and writer, she teaches, lectures, and publishes widely on Jewish studies and women’s studies.
Becca Rausch is the Massachusetts State Senator representing the Norfolk, Worcester and Middlesex District. She is the third woman, the second Democrat, and the first Jewish person to hold her seat. Senator Rausch was elected in November 2018 and sworn into office on January 2, 2019. Prior to her election to the Legislature, Senator Rausch worked for over a decade as a practicing attorney.
Her work spanned both the private and public sectors, including several years at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, where she earned a Citation for Outstanding Performance. Senator Rausch is also a former elected local legislator, union steward, and law professor. Her areas of expertise include health law and policy, information governance and knowledge management, and data privacy and security.
The granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Senator Rausch lives in Needham with her husband and their two young children.
Rabbi Lila Kagedan is a former faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds degrees and certificates from Midreshet Lindenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The University of Toronto, Harvard University, The Medstar Washington Hospital Center and Massachusetts General Hospital and is a Shalom Hartman Institute rabbinic senior fellow. She is also a Hadassah Brandeis Institute-Gender, Culture, Religion and Law Research Associate.
Lila was ordained in 2015 by Yeshivat Maharat and served until recently as the senior rabbi of the Walnut Street Synagogue in Chelsea, MA. She was also the founder of the Sulam School in Brookline, MA. She is a professor of bioethics in the faculty of medicine of New York Medical College and is also an ethicist at Boston Children’s Hospital as well as a clinical ethicist and a chaplain in hospitals and hospice settings nationally and internationally.
Enabled by her background as educator and utilizing printmaking and embroidery as her main tool, Sandra has developed a unique visual language using genograms to follow and probe the emotional history of families, including trauma and human rights abuses. Her art aims to provoke profound emotional and intellectual bonds with the viewer’s mind connecting them with current sociopolitical events. In 2022 her interactive exhibition Beyond Trauma; Roots and Routes was the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Festival for the Creative Arts award at Brandeis University. In 2023 Sandra was the recipient of two Mass Cultural Council grants and the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Movement in NYC.
Special Guest! Dr. Noa Lea Cohn is an Art lecturer at Efrata College in Jerusalem where she specializes in creative education for women. She is also a postdoctoral candidate at the Mofet Institute, researching the use of visual art among Ultra-Orthodox women teachers and their influential roles within their communities.
Noa is also the director and curator of Art Shelter Gallery in Israel, the only gallery in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood. If that sounds familiar, it's beacuse this gallery was the inspiration for Netflix's Shtisel.
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