Now is the time to act as our foremothers did

March is Women's History Month, a time to pay respects, to celebrate, and to learn from the Jewish women in our lives.

One way we can do this is to look back at the brave and intelligent women in our Jewish history, and the important lessons they offer us for our current times.

The recent Torah portion, the episode of the Golden Calf, offers one of those lessons. In the passage, the Jews are waiting for Moses to return from the top of Mount Sinai. They have made camp at the base of the mountain, and they wait and wait, but in their loneliness and in their fear, they begin to act with mob mentality.

They ask Aaron to make them a new god, any god that will stand before them. Some of the men remove their jewellery, take their children's gold and use it to make a golden calf to pray to. The women, however, do not. They are not complicit in praying to false idols, they do not lose faith in the foundations of their society – even when those foundations are questioned, when the masses scream that there are cracks appearing.

We can learn something from the earliest of our Jewish ancestors, these courageous women who stood up to public pressure.

All over the world, in the US, Europe, Australia, and Israel, we are seeing the rise of populist leaders. Men who proclaim to be the “one” who can fix it all. Idols, who are attempting to raise themselves above the rule of law, who are questioning the foundations of our democracies.

In the US, Donald Trump has been re-elected after spreading doubt regarding the validity of elections. There have been insurrections in the US and in Brazil over the past four years. In the latest elections in France and Germany, the far-right have made a resurgence and won a record number of seats. In Australia, similar rhetoric has created rising tension and hostility surrounding protests and national holidays.