The Chochmat Nashim Podcast: Women Talk Judaism · Jewish Coffee House

Clarity of Purpose: Laura Ben-David, Chochmat Nashim's Guiding Light (Season 8 Episode 12)

·24 min·1 clip

The Jewish Life Photobank is being renamed the Laura Ben-David Jewish Life Photobank.

Anne opens with Laura as a very special guest. She and Shoshana frame her through friendship, memory, and years of shared work. Anne remembers reading Laura's aliyah book before they ever met, and that memory becomes the doorway into the work that followed. Shoshana then shifts the conversation to the photo bank work that grew after COVID. The point is not only that women should be in the picture, but that editors and writers need images they can actually use. Laura explains how the team began by choosing specific areas to cover. They looked at religious women in suburbia, working women, and Haredi women in London, along with the families and units around them. It is treated as more than one generic category. The discussion keeps coming back to realism, because a photo bank only matters if it can meet a wide range of uses. The hosts then dig into the practical side. A single shoot has to yield pensive, happy, angry, and other usable expressions, which means much more than taking one good portrait. Laura then describes the less glamorous work. Every image has to be cataloged, archived, and made searchable so the right picture can actually be found later. From there, the conversation widens from process to purpose. It asks what changes when women are treated as people in the frame instead of decoration at the edge of the story. By the end, the episode turns Laura's work into a challenge. The challenge is to decide how the community picks up the baton and makes the world better for men, women, and children who need visible role models. The tone stays warm and invested throughout. It feels like a thoughtful conversation about responsibility, representation, and what comes next.

As heard by us

A practical conversation about turning women’s visibility into something the community can actually use.

The conversation centers on the gap between saying women should be visible and doing the work that makes that visibility useful. Anne Gordon and Shoshana Keats-Jaskol bring Laura Ben-David into a familiar, affectionate setting, then move from friendship and memory to the…

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You want a candid look at how Orthodox Jewish women move from being talked about to being in the picture.

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