With Wisdom She Builds Her House

An interview with Shoshanna Keats Jaskol

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in the Jewish world so is the lack of a picture. Although Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll is probably most well known for her organization, Chochmat Nashim’s campaign to stop the erasure of women’s pictures in the Orthodox community, she says it’s actually not about pictures at all.

Shoshanna grew up in a secular home in Lakewood, NJ – back in the days when Lakewood had a modest Orthodox community with “The Yeshiva”, but had a sizable non-Orthodox population as well. And although her family was not religious, she went to an Orthodox day school and had a Torah-based education. As a result, Shoshanna became religious and has a very strong relationship with God and Torah. In fact, she thanks God that she grew up when she did because she feels that had she grown up today, given where “Orthodoxy” is, there is a good chance she would have left Judaism. She credits the upbringing she had with giving her an understanding that there is beauty and joy in Judaism. It’s that picture of Judaism that she works to get back to as she fights against the extremism that seems to have taken over the Orthodox world.