Biography

My Profile

Alice Rothchild

Boston, Mass

physician, author, activist, film maker

Tags: Archival Footage  Docs about the Holocaust  Docs about War  documentary history  Health and Healthcare Issues  history documentaries  interviews  Jewish issues  Jewish Themes  Middle East  Middle East  personal documentaries  political/social issue documentaries  women in documentary  Writing  writing  

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Supplementary Information

Title/Occupation:  Other 

Gender: Female

Race: Caucasian/White

Citizenship: US

Languages Spoken: English

Brief Message to Members: 

I am working on a documentary film exploring my personal journey as a Jewish American, initially grounded in the Holocaust and a belief in the goodness of the founding of Israel, who becomes aware of the untold narratives of Palestinians in Israel, the occupied territories and the diaspora. Through interviews and historical photos and footage, I tell the story of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as seen through the eyes of Palestinians who experienced 1948, 1967 and the ongoing consequences of expulsion, loss, statelessness, military occupation, and immigration. The film ends with an exploration of how we can move forward.

Biography: 

Alice Rothchild is an obstetrician-gynecologist who has worked in the
health care reform and women’s movements for many years.
She was born in Boston in 1948 and grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, moving to Brookline, Mass. for her last year of high school. Alice’s family joined the local conservative synagogue, Temple Israel, where she attended Hebrew School and participated in an early version of a Bat Mitzvah. Her mother was very involved in teaching and writing about Jewish issues and the family made frequent pilgrimages to Brooklyn, New York, to visit family and observe Jewish holidays with her Orthodox grandparents.

Alice graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1970 with a BA in psychology and subsequently attended Boston University School of Medicine, 1974, followed by a medical internship at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and an obstetrics and gynecology residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. She was also Medical Director of the Women’s Community Health Center in Cambridge, Mass. from 1977-1979. After completing her residency, she co-founded Urban Woman and Child Health, Inc. in Jamaica Plain, Mass. and worked in this non-profit organization of physicians, midwives, and nurse-practitioners from 1979 to 1988. They provided ob-gyn and pediatric care to a unique mix of urban poor, a number of neighborhood and women’s health centers, as well as to the general population. She also joined the staff of Beth Israel Hospital, now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In 1988 she became a member of the staff of Harvard Community Health Plan which subsequently became Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. Presently, she is also an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Alice developed an interest in progressive politics in the 1960s and 70s starting with campus opposition to the Vietnam War and moving on to her discovery of feminism and health reform movements while in medical school and residency. She contributed to the first edition of Our Bodies, Our Selves, joined women’s consciousness raising activities, and worked for health care reform on the grassroots level. Political analysis thus increasingly informed her understanding of the world. She also became active in a number of social justice organizations and began speaking and writing on topics ranging from childbirth to menopause to caring for undeserved populations.

In 1997, through her involvement in the Boston Workmen’s Circle, a progressive secular Jewish organization, Alice turned much of her non-medical focus to understanding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and its relationship to US foreign policy and American Jewry. She co-founded and co-chairs Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine, now American Jews for a Just Peace – Boston and co-organized the AJJP Health and Human Rights Project and is also active with Jewish Voice for Peace and the Gaza Mental Health Program.

Alice has co-organized annual health and human rights delegations to the region since 2004,
coalitioning with Physicians for Human Rights - Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society
and a growing list of other NGOs and organizations in Israel and Palestine. In 2007 Pluto Press Published her book, Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma
and Resilience. A second edition was published in 2010 and the book was translated into German
and Hebrew. She also is a contributor to Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, 2010, and writes for the blog, Mondoweiss.

She is now working on a documentary film, Voices Across the Divide. The documentary is co-produced with Sharon Mullally, an Emmy Award winning independent producer-director and editor whose work regularly appears on local and national public television. Most recently, Sharon produced a series of short videos on peace and social justice for the American Friends Service Committee. Sharon is a founder of extendedPLAY, a non-profit educational media group begun in 1998.

Honors and awards:
2006
named in “Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975″ edited by Barbara Love, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago
2004
Community Service Award, Harvard Medical School Office for Diversity and Community Partnership, awarded for work with the Jewish American Medical Project
2001
Best of Boston’s Women Doctors Award, Boston Magazine
1998
Named one of ten “Jewish Women to Watch” by Jewish Women International
1996
Honorary Co-Chairwoman, Our Bodies Ourselves 25th Anniversary

for more information please see: www.alicerothchild.com and www.voicesacrossthedivide