Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Eugenia Goodkind Meyer

A prominent civic leader in Westchester County, New York, Eugenia Goodkind Meyer was a longtime advocate of civil rights. She and her husband founded an urban welfare league offering services to African Americans in White Plains, New York.

Bette Midler

Bette Midler went from canning pineapples at a factory in Honolulu to starring in over 20 films, releasing two dozen records, and touring the world with record-breaking live concert performances. Midler got her start at a gay bathhouse in New York, where she developed the campy and confident persona “The Divine Miss M.” Her career in show business spans decades, old and new media, and musical genres.

Fania Mindell

Fania Mindell was a feminist activist and co-founder of a birth control clinic. She was arrested and fined for her work, which helped bring America’s attention to women’s health. She also worked on Broadway as a translator and costume and set designer.

Martha Minow

Martha Louise Minow has shaped laws to help the disempowered, and as dean of Harvard Law School, has also shaped the next generation of lawmakers.

Mizrahi Feminism in Israel

Mizrahi feminism goes beyond the typical western scope of feminism to include the history and issues that concern women in the Middle East in Israel and in Arab and Muslim countries. An intersectional feminism, it is particularly sensitive to issues of race, class division, immigration, and ethnic discrimination.

Mo'ezet Ha-Po'alot (Council of Women Workers)

The Mo’ezet Ha-Poalot was founded in 1921 as the women’s branch of the Histadrut, the General Federation of Workers in mandatory Palestine. In the name of women workers, the organization struggled for many years for equality in the eyes of the Histadrut, though it ultimately came to represent more broadly the interests of Jewish women in Palestine and Israel, including immigrants and housewives.

Cheryl Moch

Long before gay marriage became a reality, Cheryl Moch dared to dream a gay marriage fairy tale.

Ellen Moers

Ellen Moers’ Literary Women (1976), the third and last book of her career, is a benchmark of feminist criticism. While early critics attacked Literary Women for its exclusive focus on women writers, her analysis of Mary Shelley and other women writers reshaped our understanding of their work.

Goapele

Determined to have fuller control over her burgeoning music career, R&B singer Goapele Mohlabane formed her own independent music label, Skyblaze Recordings, in 2001.

Aurora Levins Morales

Aurora Levins Morales is an author, artist, activist, and historian whose work as been critical to third-wave feminism, Puerto Rican and Latinx feminism, disability justice, radical Judaism, climate change activism, and grassroots. organizing.

Robin Morgan

Poet, activist, journalist, and feminist leader Robin Morgan has dedicated her life to addressing women’s oppression globally and fighting for systemic social, economic, and political change. She has published more than twenty books, including poetry, essays, fiction and non-fiction work; her writings, especially her Sisterhood anthologies, remain central feminist canon and foundational texts and references for feminist thought.

Lina Morgenstern

In the face of formidable anti-Semitic opposition, Lina Morgenstern was a highly successful feminist author, educator, and peace activist who was supported by many, including the Prussian Empress Augusta. In 1896 she organized the first International Congress of Women in Germany, which was attended by feminist leaders from all over the world.

Laura Moser

After the 2016 election, journalist Laura Moser created Daily Action to mobilize and coordinate people who wanted to become active in resisting problematic policies of the Trump administration.

Bessie Louise Moses

Gynecologist, professor, and contraceptive pioneer Bessie Louise Moses spent a long professional life as a public health advocate and women’s health specialist. She founded the first birth control clinic in Baltimore, organized clinics throughout Maryland, and lectured and wrote a book promoting contraception to the public.

Belle Moskowitz

Belle Moskowitz served for two decades as a settlement worker, social and civic reformer, and labor mediator. In the early 1920s she became one of New York governor Alfred E. Smith’s closest advisers.

Yocheved [Judith] Herschlag Muffs

After living in Palestine briefly and serving in the War of Independence, Yocheved Herschlag Muffs returned to the United States and began her life’s work at the Anti-Defamation League. Over the course of her 36 years at the ADL, Muffs challenged inaccurate depictions of Jews in dozens of major textbooks and reference books, helping to reshape attitudes towards Jews.

Ruth Muskal

Ruth Muskal’s term as commanding officer of the Women’s Corps (1973–1975) of the Israel Defense Forces saw a distinct increase in women’s role in defending the country. Muskal took great care to preserve women’s rights, as well as the independence and status of the Women’s Corps.

Carol Nadelson

Carol C. Nadelson is a ground-breaking female psychiatrist whose work has changed how medical practice addresses women’s medical care and encouraged women to break the glass-ceiling. She as the first woman president of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society and the American Psychiatric Association. Under Nadelson’s editorial leadership, the American Psychiatric Press became a leader in the field of psychiatry.

Lazarus, Nahida Ruth

Nahida Ruth Lazarus was a German-Jewish cultural and literary critic, author, journalist, and essayist who was born in Berlin to a German-Christian family and converted to Judaism in 1895. She is best known for her published source book, The Jewish Woman (1891), a product of her fundamental interest in both feminism and Judaism that remains an important text for women’s and gender studies.

Ora Namir

Ora Namir was an Israeli politician, diplomat, and “dove” whose efforts on behalf of women’s rights, education, and social justice are enjoyed today by all Israeli citizens.

Doña Gracia Nasi

Doña Gracia Nasi was the embodiment of passionate solidarity among exiles. As a young woman she inherited her husband’s fortune, and fled from Lisbon to Venice to Ferrara, where her family lived openly as Jews for the first time. In Constantinople, she assumed a role of leadership in the Sephardi world of the Ottoman Empire.

Maud Nathan

After her daughter’s death, Maud Nathan battled grief by throwing herself into social justice work, transforming herself from a society wife into an influential social reformer. She devoted her life to leading organizations that worked to expose poor working conditions for women and children and was a tireless advocate for women’s suffrage.

National Council of Jewish Women

In its early years, the National Council of Jewish Women concentrated on combating assimilation by educating Jewish women about Judaism. In contemporary times, the Council continues to play an important role as a bridge between traditional motherhood and political activity, between the Jewish community and other women’s organizations, between Judaism and politics, and between diverse segments of the Jewish community itself.

National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods

Founded in 1913 as the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods and officially renamed Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) in 1993, the WRJ has for more than a century galvanized hundreds of thousands of Jewish women to support and advance Reform Judaism, the Jewish people, and Jewish values in their home communities, around the country, and around the world.

Hari Nef

Hari Nef, the first trans woman model to be signed to the prestigious IMG modeling agency, has used her public platform to speak out on issues that affect other transgender people.

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

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