Alice Rothchild

Early life and education

Alice Rothchild was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1948. She grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, where she attended Hebrew School at Temple Israel, the local synagogue.

She earned a Bachelors of the Arts in psychology from Bryn Mawr College in 1970, and thereafter attended Boston University School of Medicine, from which she graduated in 1974. She interned at Lincoln Hospital in the south Bronx, and was an obstetrics and gynecology resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, formerly Beth Israel Hospital, in Boston.

Career

From 1977–1979, she was Medical Director of the Women’s Community Health Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while completing her residency. In 1979, she founded Urban Woman and Child Health, a non-profit organization of physicians, midwives, and nurse-practitioners, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where she worked until 1988, when she joined Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, formerly Harvard Community Health Plan. She served as an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School until November 2013, when she retired from clinical medicine. She now serves as a Corresponding Member of the Faculty of the medical school.

In 2001, she received the Best of Boston’s Women Doctor’s Award from Boston Magazine, and in 2004, she received Harvard Medical School’s Office for Diversity and Community Partnership Community Service Award.

In the wake of Vietnam War protests, she developed an interest in progressive politics. She contributed to the first edition of Our Bodies, Our Selves and worked for healthcare reform. She also sang in A Besere Velt, the Yiddish chorus of the Boston Workmen’s Circle, a progressive secular Jewish organization, which led her to study and write about Israel and Palestine, as well as US foreign policy and American Jewry. In 2013 , she directed the documentary “Voices Across the Divide,” for which she won the Making a Difference Award at the COMMFEST Global Community Film Festival. At present, she is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council, and she sits on the boards of the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Just World Educational, and We Are Note Numbers.

In 1998, she was named one of ten “Jewish Women to Watch” by Jewish Women International. In 2006, she was cited in Feminists Who Changed America 1963–1975. In 2015, she won the Jack Backman Social Justice Award for her work on Israel and Palestine. In 2016, she was named Peace Pioneer by the American Jewish Peace Archive.

Books

Old Enough to Know Cune Press, 2023.

Finding Melody Sullivan Cune Press, 2023.

Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/Palestine Just World Books, 2017.

On the Brink: Israel and Palestine on the Eve of the 2014 Gaza Invasion Just World Books 2014.

Broken Promises, Broken Dreams (translated into Hebrew and German) Pluto Press 2007, second edition 2010.

Films

"Voices Across the Divide."

Anthologies

What Jerusalem Means to Us: Jewish Reflections and Perspectives Holy Land Books, 2023.

Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation Interlink, 2019.

Extraordinary Rendition: (American)Writers on Palestine OR Books, 2015.

Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation Whole World Press, 2010.

Women and Health: Power, Technology, Inequality, and Conflict in a Gendered World Allyn and Bacon, 2002 .

Personal Life

Alice currently lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, Dan Klein, and her two daughters, Emma and Sasha.