By Judy Batalion - Lilith
April 7, 2026

Just weeks after submitting my laboriously-conceived dissertation on women’s collaborative art stemming from California in the 1970s, I stumbled on my next obsession and a new understanding of feminist history–one that would take me back to pre-war Poland.

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By Judy Batal­ion - Jewish Book Council
March 30, 2026

There was a prob­lem. The ghet­to bench law — the rule forc­ing Jew­ish stu­dents to sit in a seg­re­gat­ed bench in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms that was increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in Poland in the 1930s — was insti­tut­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw in the fall of 1937. But in my newest draft of my his­tor­i­cal nov­el, I’d shift­ed parts of the sto­ry around, and the ghet­to bench­es were sud­den­ly hap­pen­ing in the spring. (Les­son learned: always write fic­tion in a place with lim­it­ed sea­sons so you can chop and change bits with­out hav­ing to end­less­ly rewrite weath­er.) But could I moral­ly alter the date of this dis­crim­i­na­to­ry rule’s imple­men­ta­tion from fall 1937 to spring 1938? I was rid­dled with worry.

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