JWOW

jewish women of wisdom

A Laborious Journey Births a Website

By Miriam Hendeles

Much has been written about our brand new JWOW! website, Jewishwomen ofwisdom.org, that launched February 2022 ,1. We’ve had press releases and ads; social media posts and flyers; and email newsletters sent to our list. Some of us (that would be me!) have blogged, bragged, and boasted, going on and on about it. But it’s kind of like our baby. My friends and I who are behind the organization of Jewish Women of Wisdom have had true labor pains in the almost nine months since we conceived of this website.

Now, many of you are probably thinking, “How ridiculous – this is just a website,” but actually it’s not unusual. When people write books, create films, or produce any piece of creativity, they feel that they’ve gone through labor pains and thankfully have come out with a bouncing beautiful baby. And they’re not being overly dramatic, because birthing a book or a website is huge.

So what was so laborious about the building of our website? I’d like to tell you our labor story. If you’re bored, then so be it – consider how many of my fellow Lamaze classmates back when I had my first child regaled long and detailed labor and birth stories complete with details about Epidurals not working to relieve back labor and water breaking and other details that would qualify as TMI these days. Or was TMI a thing back in the day? Or

was a thing such a thing back in the day? I don’t think so.

But, I digress. Our JWOW! website. Our cute, adorable website. What does it do already? Does it smile at you? Giggle? Talk baby talk? No, it does much more. It’s a place for midlife women to experience high quality content that is relevant to their age and stage. It’s a place for women to gather on forums and talk about what’s on their mind, exchanging ideas, thoughts, and experiences on various topics.

Our organization, JWOW!, has been around for more than two years, but the website is brand new and it opens up a whole new world of opportunity to women of our age. Women

who may be home more due to Covid or women who want to get opinions and ideas from like-minded women of their age and stage.

We are thrilled to share this website with you as we recall the adventures we experienced during the journey. From picking colors, designs, fonts, photos, and text, we had our share of discussions and indecision. From keeping up with our schedule, but then falling behind because life gets in the way, we had our share of disappointments. From needing to write and rewrite, revise and review, approve and give feedback and make decisions at every step, we had our share of frustration. From late night talks, early morning Zoom meetings, myriad emails and texts and WhatsApps and message boards and phone calls, we had our share of all kinds of communication. From glitches and snafus and bugs and bytes and code and software and edits and pixels, we had our share of dizzying technology.

And we had our joy, our laughter, our fun meetings, our joking on text, emails and WhatsApp. And now, we look forward to our many members interacting on the unique membership forum on our website. On that curated forum that’s full of relevant categories, women can share insights with each other...let’s all join. Become a member.

And now that we’ve given birth to this website, let’s hope for a long life of bringing joy to frum women of midlife.

From glitches and snafus and bugs and bytes and code and software and edits and pixels, we had our share of dizzying technology.

Join the conversation and email list of JWOW! by writing to hello @jewishwomenofwisdom.org.