Biographic/Background Information

• Grew up in Detroit, Jewish neighborhood
• She was raised in a Reform synagogue – Temple Israel
• Parents were both Holocaust survivors from Vienna, and considered themselves to be cultural Jews
• Very active in Temple youth group

Education

• University of Michigan, started studying dance and switched to Women’s Studies after introductory course

Career

• Currently director of Womencenter at Oakland Community College
• Union organizing — women in hospital clerical work
• Board of National Council of Jewish Women
• Board of Workman’s Circle

Issues/Activism

• Reproductive choice and media images/ gender stereotypes are most important issues.
• Worked on “Girls Matter” conference for adolescent girls.
• Worked with NCJW on Teen Dating Abuse project in Jewish and public schools.
• Detroit Women’s Forum and participation in feminist Seder ceremonies

Quotes

• On Childbirth: “My dilemma within myself was I knew pretty much as I was giving birth that I wanted to stay home and raise my son and make that possible, and I had not really thought I would do that. … And it was really, really hard to explain that to people, on either end of it”
• On Images and Stereotypes: “Really look critically and what’s out there – who women are, and what women can be and do.”
• On “The Vagina Monologues”: “Honestly, next to giving birth, it was the best experience I’ve ever had in my life … it was the most empowering, fabulous experience”
• On the impact of Feminism:
  “Feminism saved me from the pressures of society and the effects they could have had on me”
  “I really opted not to act on what I decided were negative images of women and distorted images of beauty … feminism ended up being a supportive force for my decisions”
  “in the end it was being a feminist that helped me figure out what was going on, even though I never heard anything about abusive relationships, no one ever talked to me about that. Feminism really saved me.”

Advice
“Really look to all the options out there, trust your gut instinct and be true to what you think is right for you. You don’t have to go along with what the status quo is, you can decide what works for you and what doesn’t.”

Definition of Feminism
“Feminism is choosing how you want to live your life, that’s what it’s meant for me. Beyond that it means looking at life from a very particular viewpoint, how women and men and children and families are affected by social constructs, the legal system, political issues, human rights issues. So it’s always having that kind of lens in looking at the world and understanding and describing what’s going on in the world. More conscious and observant of things.”

Arlene Frank – Interview Summary
Interview conducted on 10 February 2008

Background

• Grew up in Reform Jewish community – Temple Israel
• Parents were Holocaust survivors — not religious Jews, lived in Vienna
• Raised us wanting to make some connection to the Jewish community
• Active in Sunday school at temple
• Secular-cultural involvement
• First girl elected as president of youth group — social issues
• President of Michigan Workman’s Circle — as well as national executive board
• Dance major at University of Michigan, changed to Women’s Studies after taking introductory course

Feminist movement

• 1970 — high school — consciously understanding that I stood for and believed in something different than what was the status quo for women
• HS integration — racial issues — human relations club — human rights and civil rights — more conscious of movements and struggles
• I’m interested in the women’s movement, there are things I can learn from it, and this is how I am going to identify myself
• Race relations — continued to be involved in civil rights and human rights political activism, anti-war, LGBT activism, union organizing — after college, women in hospital clerical work (6:23)

Role Models

• I really found myself drawn to Bella Abzug, and in terms of art, to Judy Chicago, and Barbra Streisand — that’s sort of my goofy one. They’re also in the Jewish community as well. Shulamith Firestone — read, got ideas from her. Sally Priesand, first woman rabbi. In college, already becoming secular (6:55)
• Talk at temple — women were absent from Jewish community life and weren’t looked at in positions of authority or being empowered to do things but that it was Jewish women who really did everything to make things happen within the communities (8:47)
• Board of NCJW Detroit section (9:32) so I do see being a feminist and belonging to an organization like NCJW that shares my progressive values and puts it out there and makes that happen

Feminist Seder

• Chair of Detroit Women’s Forum (initially started out of American Jewish Committee)
• Many years doing the Feminist Seder — started after Esther Broner did hers, she was from the area and knew people
• It feels very personal and it feels very much like taking the struggle of liberation and freedom personally as a woman and communally as women sitting together doing that (11:38)
• Feminist Seder ritual: “There are particular things that we do that are very meaningful, one example is everybody writes down something that the want to be rid of in their life, whether its personal or worldwide or whatever, and then we drown it in water—it’s one of the plagues, we drown the plagues.”

Issues

• “I think reproductive choice is one of the most important issues to me. And also as an activist one of the most important issues is media images and gender stereotyping for girls and boys growing up.”

• Media Images:

“Particularly in terms of the media images, I feel there’s been limited success, especially lately, I feel things were better in the 70s and 80s and that things have horribly moved backwards, and I feel sometimes like we’ve had no impact at all as a feminist movement — I feel really disturbed by that.”
“For five years I’ve put on a conference for adolescent girls around a lot of issues, and one of the things we did try to present was about media images and the kinds of stereotyping, and how negative it is and how it limits the choices for girls and young women. It was called the Girls Matter conference.”

• “Through NCJW I am currently chairing the committee on the teen dating abuse project, so I go into both the Jewish schools and into public schools to talk about teen dating abuse and do a presentation on that. And again, it’s really important to me to do that, it’s not really talked about and people still think it’s other people and never me, so that’s one thing I’ve been very involved in that’s very near and dear to my heart.” (15:08)

Current Involvement

• Director of Womencenter at Oakland Community College — “Helping women to see what they’re capable of and what they can accomplish and that they’re not stuck in boxes and holes and the very tight spaces they’ve either been put in or convince themselves they’re stuck in.”
• Detroit Women’s Forum — monthly luncheon with women speakers on topics of interests — group of dynamic, educated, thoughtful, progressive, activist women who hear these things and bring these issues up. We’ve talked about women entrepreneurs in Detroit, the state of women in the legislature of Michigan, public health issues, arts related readings on theatre and social justice
• Influence of Jewish identity on activism —”throughout time, Jews have been involved in progressive movements and in social justice issues, and I took that really seriously and took that to heart.”
• “My Jewish identity was also that of being a child of Holocaust survivors, that also kind of directed me to activism” (19:58).
• Conscious of and concerned with the issues of Orthodox women getting gets and also the issue of domestic violence within the Jewish community, which has been absolutely not talked about and denied for years (20:48)
• It was a long road to get there, but years later I am working at a resource center for women.
  That’s where I wanted to express my political and social activism
• “Feminism is choosing how you want to live your life, that’s what it’s meant for me. Beyond that it means looking at life from a very particular viewpoint, how women and men and children and families are affected by social constructs, the legal system, political issues, human rights issues. So it’s always having that kind of lens in looking at the world and understanding and describing what’s going on in the world. More conscious and observant of things.”
• My husband is not Jewish, I think had I been a more religious person it would have been more important, but what was most important was someone who shared my values, including understanding feminism (25:15).
• “I have one son, who’s 21 now, and absolutely being a feminist had an effect on how I chose to birth him, how I chose to raise him, very conscious not to raise him as a typical boy, but gave him as many opportunities to be who he was going to be as possible… really opened him up to being someone who is conscious of what the struggles are that women have and have had, to look at media a particular way, to be conscious and a critical thinker of the images of women that are out there.”

• Betty Friedan — “I certainly saw her as being part of that Jewish progressive group. She was an intellectual and somebody who saw things in a particular way I think because of the upbringing and some of the concepts Jewish culture has around education and social justice.”
• “There is a tendency to want to make the movement mainstream as possible—sense of the founders that we had to focus on one thing, not understanding that all of these things were connected. It was an opportunity to kind of delve into all of the “-isms” and connect them up, and it was handled very poorly.”

University level — experiences of feminism and Judaism

• Beginning of women’s studies at U of M: “We had to prove ourselves, that it was a worthy major”
• “The feminist movement got pegged as a rich white woman’s movement and I, to my last breath, would say that this is where the media started determining what a movement was rather than the movement determining that itself. … So I think that sense that all women couldn’t be feminists and couldn’t identify really got put out there deliberately, by the media and other organizations… and many women who were white, middle-class women involved, didn’t have experience with other races or other classes in an egalitarian way”
• “It can be hard for second-wave feminists to be open-minded about what kinds of issues, or how young feminists dress, or act, whatever kinds of things that people tend to focus on. …Also, I think that third-wave feminism suffers from some of the same things that second-wave feminism did, people wanting to identify who the actual leaders are, and if somebody’s loud enough or in your face enough they may be seen as the actual leader but really there is a whole movement behind, and its inclusive of young women who look different, act different than each other, there’s a huge diversity in it and I think that’s part of what makes it really strong.”

Backlash

• “I do think there’s a huge backlash against feminism”
• “it can really unfortunately alter the issues that get dealt with”
• “in some ways strengthened feminism, made it in some ways difficult to be seen as normal people working in a movement that’s meaningful to them”
• “there are lots of young women who I talk with who would never describe themselves as being feminist, but if I ask them about what they think about things and all that they absolutely would be feminist”
• “talk openly in public—take the word back for what it really means”

Advice

• “Really look to all the options out there, trust your gut instinct and be true to what you think is right for you. You don’t have to go along with what the status quo is, you can decide what works for you and what doesn’t.”

Definition

• “Feminism is choosing how you want to live your life”

Quotes

• On Childbirth: “My dilemma within myself was I knew pretty much as I was giving birth that I wanted to stay home and raise my son and make that possible, and I had not really thought I would do that. … And it was really, really hard to explain that to people, on either end of it”
• On Images and Stereotypes: “Really look critically and what’s out there — who women are, and what women can be and do.”
• On “The Vagina Monologues”: Honestly, next to giving birth, it was the best experience I’ve ever had in my life… it was the most empowering, fabulous experience”
• On the impact of Feminism: “Feminism saved me from the pressures of society and the effects they could have had on me”
  “I really opted not to act on what I decided were negative images of women and distorted images of beauty… feminism ended up being a supportive force for my decisions”
  “in the end it was being a feminist that helped me figure out what was going on, even though I never heard anything about abusive relationships, no one ever talked to me about that. Feminism really saved me.”

Audio 1 (mp3)
Audio 2 (mp3)