The first woman on the financial desk of a big-city newspaper and the first woman to break into the world of writing about finance, Sylvia Field Porter was a pioneering economist, columnist, and best-selling author. For over half a century, she educated the American consumer about money matters, empowering women to achieve economic independence.

Crowned “the Poetess of Jerusalem” by Sholem Asch, Rikudah Potash wrote in Yiddish about the landscape of her beloved city and its diverse ethnic communities. She brought to Yiddish readers the rarely seen Middle Eastern Jewish woman. Potash’s Jerusalem, both the heavenly and the earthly, was a capacious universe that she inhabited, body and soul, for thirty years.

Hortense Powdermaker explored the balance of involvement and detachment necessary for participant-observer fieldwork in cultural anthropology, stressing the ability to “step in and out of society.” Her secular Jewish identity was apparently a factor in learning this skill, exemplified in an academic career that included thirty years of college teaching and the writing of five major books based on widely diverse fieldwork studies.

One of California’s first Jewish educators, Mary Goldsmith Prag came to San Francisco as a young child during the Gold Rush. She became a religious and secular teacher, an administrator, a fighter for equal rights for women, and the mother of the first Jewish congresswoman, Florence Prag Kahn.

Female Yishuv writers have often been ignored in discussions of Jewish literature from the period. As the sometimes-melancholy tone and escapist themes of their writing show, these women struggled to escape the margins in pre-state Palestine. Nonetheless, the works of these female writers offer important insights into the lives of Yishuv women and paved the way for contemporary women writers.

Nehamah Pukhachewsky’s writings advocated for Jewish women with a feminist confidence that resonates with readers to this day. Pukhachewsky immigrated from Lithuania to Palestine in 1889, actively participating in agriculture and women’s rights movements along with writing articles for Hebrew journals. She is remembered as one of the first modern Hebrew women prose writers.

The "founding mother" of modern Hebrew poetry by women, Rahel Bluwstein achieved in death the status of a national cultural icon. Rahel’s affiliation with the avant-garde group of Second Aliyah pioneers to pre-state Palestine, her dedication to Zionist ideals, and her agonizing death made her a beloved pioneering figure in Israel.

Puah Rakovsky dedicated her life to working towards the empowerment of Jews, particularly of Jewish women. She was a revolutionary woman, taking on important roles as an educator, translator, organizer of women, and an early socialist Zionist.

Lydia Rapoport was a social worker, professor, caseworker, and advocate of social change. Her contributions to crisis theory transformed how social workers and therapists handle crisis intervention.

Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005) is one of the most significant figures in modern Hebrew literature and poetry, best known for her ground-breaking feminist poetry and for her political involvement.

Cecilia Razovsky was a remarkably active woman who spent her life striving to assist immigrants in adapting to life in the United States and other countries. Razovsky found countless ways to help Jewish refugees in particular, from writing plays and pamphlets to running committees and organizations for immigrant aid.