Activism

Lesbian feminist writer Lesléa Newman made history in 1989 with her controversial children’s book, Heather Has Two Mommies. Inspired by Newman’s friend, a lesbian mother who complained that there were no children’s books with families that looked like hers, the book sparked national controversy. Newman has written countless books for children, adolescents, and adults on homosexuality, Jewish identity, eating disorders, and AIDS.

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.

Jewish women made overwhelming contributions to the creation of the field of Screendance.  Maya Deren, Amy Greenfield, Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and others have created a legacy of socially conscious dance for the screen that collectively exhibits and performs principles of Jewish ritual and practice. Many of these artists share a focus on social justice and a collective approach to what might be called a feminist Jewish art form.

Judith (“Judy”) E. Heumann, a founder of the disability rights movement, is an internationally acclaimed leader of the disability community. Based in Washington, D.C., Heumann has been instrumental in the development and implementation of disability rights legislation.

Writer, translator, and activist Achy Obejas was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1956 and moved to the United States with her parents six years later. She is known for stories with characters and themes related to gender, queer sexuality, Cuban-ness, and Jewishness, as well as migration, displacement, and diaspora.

Rita Arditti was an Argentinian Sephardic scientist, feminist, educator, and activist who spent most of her adult life working for social justice and human rights while living in the United States. She co-founded Science for the People, New Words Bookstore, and the Women’s Community Cancer Project. She co-edited anthologies on science and politics and reproductive technologies and wrote a book about the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.

A leading voice in the United States investment banking and finance industry, Abby Joseph Cohen worked in the Goldman Sachs investment research division for over three decades. She rose to prominence in the 1990s with her accurate predictions of a prolonged economic expanding and durable bull market and has remained one of the top names in the investment industry.

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945-2018) was a lesbian-feminist writer and editor. She made multiple theoretical contributions to understanding Judaism, lesbianism, and feminism as intersectional identities, extended an awareness of class and economic justice through a Jewish lens, and made visible racial differences within Jewish communities. She advocated Radical Diasporism as a progressive alternative to Zionism.

Dr. Judith Herman was a pioneer in identifying the frequency with which sexual abuse of female children occurs within the family, in the treatment of victims of abuse, and in psychotherapeutic confrontations of abusers.

Susan Brownmiller was a radical feminist writer and journalist. She was a leader in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s to 1980s (second-wave feminism). Brownmiller is best known for Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975), the first comprehensive study of sexual violence.

Alix Kates Shulman is a radical feminist writer and activist and a leader in the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s through 1980s.  She is best known as the author of “The Marriage Agreement” (1970) and the best-selling Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972), which was heralded as the “first important novel of the Women’s Liberation movement.” She was honored with a Clara Lemlich Award for a lifetime of social activism in 2018.

Women have been central to the development of Jewish environmentalism in the United States. They founded organizations, wrote books, educated their communities, grew food, and advocated for better policies. These women saw their environmental ideals as directly connected to their Judaism and realized that our future may depend on this work in the face of the climate crisis.

In various parts of Brazil, women have taken on important roles for the Israeli dance establishment as a sociocultural practice within their Jewish communities. The text presents the names of some pioneer women in this process and other ones that have been preserving this traditional Jewish expression of dance for years.

Rivka Carmi is a medical geneticist, neonatologist, pediatrician, the first woman to be appointed president of an Israeli university (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), and a feminist trailblazer who broke the glass ceiling for women in academia.

Marjorie Agosín was an award-winning Chilean Jewish poet, memoirist, novelist, literary critic, editor, educator, and human rights activist. Her work, which she writes in Spanish, is widely translated into English and other languages. She was a professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Wellesley College.