Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Bunny Sandler and Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Bernice Sandler

Bernice (Bunny) Sandler was an activist and education expert who theorized Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the federal law that mandates sexual equality in educational institutions that receive federal funding. As such, Sandler was an architect of the 1970s feminist “women’s liberation” movement. She continued to fight sex discrimination in education in the following decades, especially on issues of racial inequity and sexual assault.

Sandra Bernhard

Sandra Bernhard is an American actor, stand-up comedian, singer, memoirist, and talk show host. She has been a high-profile LGBTQ+ presence over a career that has spanned five decades. Bernhard’s work amalgamates the three perspectives that she has said define her: “the feminist, the social commentator, the Jewess.”

Elli Tikvah Sarah

As both one of the first women and one of the first openly gay rabbis to be ordained in Britain, Elli Tikvah Sarah has profoundly reshaped the liberal Jewish community of Britain.

Margherita Sarfatti

Born into a wealthy Venetian Jewish family, Margherita Sarfatti joined the Socialist Party and became the art critic for the newspaper Avanti!, where she met Benito Mussolini. The two became lovers, and she followed Mussolini into the Fascist movement and helped plan the rise of the Fascists, only abandoning his cause when Mussolini embraced antisemitism in 1938.

Angiola Sartorio

Angiola Sartorio was a prolific dancer, teacher, and choreographer who subverted fascism in her artistic choices. Sartorio had a company and school, and her company was widely well-received in Italy until it performed for Hitler in Vienna and she had to flee to the United States.

Jan Schakowsky

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has earned a reputation as a liberal progressive for her stances on issues ranging from health care to marijuana legalization.

Rosa Schapire

Rosa Schapire was one of the few women to pursue art history studies at a time when the discipline itself was still in its infancy. Her foray into this male-dominated profession was indicative of her allegiance to feminist aspirations to equal opportunity and adult suffrage.

Miriam Schapiro

Miriam Schapiro helped pioneer the feminist art movement, both through her own pushing of creative boundaries and by creating opportunities for other women artists. Starting in 1970, Schapiro raised women’s consciousness through her writing, painting, printmaking, teaching and sculpture. She lectured extensively on feminist issues to professional conferences, university audiences, art classes and women’s groups.

Madalyn Schenk

Madalyn Shenk drove significant political change both in Louisiana and in the nation as a whole.

Therese Loeb Schiff

Therese Loeb Schiff used her wealth to address a wide range of needs in the American Jewish community. She was a paradigm of the intellectual, religious, and cultural activities and also the social service of upper-middle-class German Jewish women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sonja Schlesin

Sonja Schlesin was one of Gandhi's most trusted and important associates during the period when he was a young lawyer in South Africa. She rose from becoming his secretary in 1906 to playing a major role in the large nonviolent demonstrations and protest marches of 1913, which he organized on behalf of the immigrant Indian community.

Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein

Therese Schlesinger’s life was characterized by her lifelong passion for learning and her endeavor to improve the plight of working-class women. She was a dedicated feminist who was inspired by the ideals of socialism, struggling to combine both of these political passions within the Austrian Social Democratic Party.

Ruth Schloss

Through her socio-political artworks, Israeli painter Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) directed the viewer's attention to the human conditions of the downtrodden and marginalized in Israeli society from the 1940s through the early 2000s. She depicted figures and images people usually prefer to ignore, such as the poor and the unprivileged, the working class, newcomers, Mizrahi Jews, Palestinian refugees, the disastrous ruins of the wars in Israel, the Intifada in the occupied territories, women and children, newborns, and the elderly.

Dominique Schnapper

Dominique Schnapper is a French sociologist who has devoted an important part of her work to an analysis of French Jews and Judaism, in particular in connection with the French model of citizenship, nation, and the republic.

Susan Weidman Schneider

Author and editor Susan Weidman Schneider has agitated for feminist progress in the Jewish community, as an activist and then as a founder and editor-in-chief of Lilith magazine. She has helped galvanize change with her writings on Jewish women’s leadership; domestic abuse; Orthodoxy and feminism; ordination of women; LGBTQ issues; the treatment of converts to Judaism, and more.

Rose Schneiderman

For nearly half a century, Rose Schneiderman worked tirelessly to improve wages, hours, and safety standards for American working women. She saw those things as “bread,” the very basic human rights to which working women were entitled. But she also worked for such “roses” as schools, recreational facilities, and professional networks for trade union women, because she believed that working women deserved much more than a grim subsistence.

Ottilie Schönewald

Deeply involved in several women’s and Jewish organizations, Ottilie Schönewald was an activist who became a politician to advance her causes. She worked with the League of Jewish Women and helped Jews emigrate from Nazi Germany. After Schönewald and her family fled in 1939, she continued her social work during and after the war.

Florence Schornstein

Florence Schornstein spent a lifetime making New Orleans a better place to live, and Hurricane Katrina only strengthened her resolve.

Adeline Schulberg

Adeline Schulberg’s long and winding career path led her from socialist activist, to child welfare advocate, to Hollywood agent. During World War II, she moved to London and returned to activist work, helping rescue refugees from Nazi Europe.

Deborah Wasserman Schultz

An outspoken Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was entrusted with great responsibility for the party both in the US House of Representatives and as chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Debra L. Schultz

Debra Schultz served as an advisor to the Jewish Women’s Archive in creating the Living the Legacy curriculum based on research she had done on the history of Jewish women in the civil rights movement.

Amy Schumer

Amy Schumer is one of America’s most loved and successful comedians. Her career is built on a true riches-to-rags-to-riches story and is firmly centered on growing up in an unconventional Jewish upbringing.

Lynn Schusterman

Billionaire philanthropist Lynn Schusterman changed the landscape of the American Jewish community through her advocacy for Israel, engagement with young Jews, and pioneering funding of inclusion and equality. As Chair of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, her bold vision and commitment to repairing the world extended from Tulsa, OK, across the American Jewish community, to Israel and the Former Soviet Union.

Laurie Schwab Zabin

Laurie Schwab Zabin’s work in reproductive health changed how Americans approach sex education and teen pregnancy.

Ethel Baskin Schwartz

From Depression-era protests to twenty-first century marches, Ethel Baskin Schwartz dedicated her life to organizing and fighting for unions and civil rights.

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Activism