In this presentation, we explore historical perspectives on Jewish women’s life stories in Sweden during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Thereby, we will address oral history as a creative space for making visible women as ‘active agents and makers of history’ (Guberman ed. 2005). This approach also contributes to the historiography on Jewish women and their everyday lives, which has been largely absent in the historiography on the Jewish minority in Sweden (Thor Tureby 2019).

The empirical foundation is part of a larger research project and consists of oral history interviews with approximately thirty women born in the 1950s, 1970s, or 1990s, all of whom self-identify as Jewish and women. The interviews took place during the years 2023- 2024. Employing a dialogical epistemology rooted in intersectionality (Yuval Davies 2023) and shared authority (Frisch 1992), the presentation emphasises both the content of the women’s life stories and the ways they interpret and articulate their experiences during the interviews.

The presentation also includes written excerpts from the interviews, conducted in Swedish, to illustrate the historical perspectives both in the women’s narratives and our analysis, highlighting the ways these interact – and sometimes diverge. Overall, the narratives emphasise historical continuity, with several women actively engaging with history. For instance, one young woman turned to history to reconnect with an alternative Jewish history, one that has not been destroyed by the Holocaust explaining: ‘I want a different story’ (Thor Tureby & Hall 2024).

The presentation will highlight some of the key findings of the study, including the observation that Jewish women’s life stories resemble a tapestry woven from experiences of the present and the past, intertwining their own experience with those of their families and the Jewish community.