by Callie Magrone '01

Judith Helfand, activist and award-winning independent filmmaker, was the guest at the latest event in the College's Faith and the Environment series. Helfand spoke on the topic of experiential Jewish environmental education to a group of faculty, students, and staff at an April 3 Soup, Salad, and Social Change luncheon held at Eliot House and sponsored by the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life and the Center for Environmental Literacy. That evening, Helfand's 1996 film A Healthy Baby Girl, a documentary about her experiences as a DES daughter (women are known as DES daughters if their mothers took diethylstilbestrol, the world's first synthetic female hormone) was screened at the Willits-Hallowell Center.

Helfand talked about her film's focus on the mother/daughter relationship, discussing longtime Jewish traditions and the concept of l'dor v'dor, a Hebrew phrase embracing the traditional passing on of legacy from one generation to the next. “Toxic exposure is discussed in terms of statistics, but these statistics each have a legacy,” Helfand said. “I made this film because what was happening to me and my mom, and what was challenging and changing the course of my future is something we don't only share with DES-exposed people. I want everyone who sees this film to remember that we are all vulnerable to toxic exposure, whether you get it in pill form or you live near a medical waste incinerator or are working with cancer-causing chemicals on the shop floor.”

Helfand is committed to spreading awareness of the adverse affects of DES, a drug prescribed to millions of pregnant women from the 1940s through the early 1970s. She is also involved in community organizing concerning the chemical industry's impact on physical and environmental health. In connection with A Healthy Baby, she is working with the National Health Care without Harm campaign to end medical-waste incineration and rid the healthcare industry of PVC use. This effort brought rabbis, members of the Jewish community, and medical students together to spread awareness of the issue. Says Helfand, "We've been trained to wait for the risk to turn into an inevitable thing."

A Healthy Baby Girl was broadcast on PBS, competed at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and won a 1997 George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in journalism and public education. Helfand's current film, Blue Vinyl, a sequel to A Healthy Baby Girl, explores industry-sponsored science through her family's quest to find an ecologically friendly replacement for the vinyl siding on their house. It will be released this year on HBO/Cinemax and will be followed up with an aggressive consumer activism campaign called My House Is Your House. Judith Helfand is an adjunct professor at New York University's undergraduate film and television program.