Activism

Hannah Bachman Einstein

Hannah Bachman Einstein’s activism and volunteer activities bridged very different worlds, from temple sisterhood leadership to lobbying and helping draft legislation for children’s welfare. She helped draft what became the Child Welfare Law of 1915, was the first female board member of the United Hebrew Charities, and served as president of the New York State Association of Child Welfare Boards.

Eastern European Immigrants in the United States

Forty-four percent of the approximately two million Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1886 and 1914 were women. Although these women were more politically active and autonomous than other immigrant women, dire economic circumstances constricted their lives. The hopes these immigrant women harbored for themselves were often transferred to the younger generation.

Andrea Dworkin

A lightning rod for controversy, American feminist Andrea Dworkin denounced violence against women, advocated women’s self-defense, and drafted groundbreaking legislation claiming that pornography violated women’s civil rights. In 1974, Dworkin and Ricki Abrams co-wrote Woman Hating in which they charged that pornography incited violence towards women and that consensual sex subjugated women.

Rose Dunkelman

Rose Dunkelman was an innovative, industrious Canadian Zionist leader who worked tirelessly for the Jewish national cause. Dunkelman was the founder and long-time vice-president of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO. In 1925 she founded the Toronto Hadassah Bazaar, and that same year she was named to the National Executive of the Zionist Organization of Canada.

Ruth Dreifuss

Ruth Dreifuss was the first Jewish member of the Federal Government of Switzerland and the first female President of the country. When she became President of the Confederation in 1999, she was the first Jew and the first woman to hold the office.

Sophia Dubnow-Erlich

After finishing her education, Sophia Dubnow-Erlich became an active member of both the Social Democratic Labor Party and the Jewish Labor Party and wrote for Bund journals before fleeing Vilna for Warsaw in 1918. After emigrating to America in 1942, she remained politically active and continued her prolific writing career.

Sylvia Goulston Dreyfus

Sylvia Goulston Dreyfus worked to improve Boston both through community activism and through her support of art and music. Along with being president of the Hecht Neighborhood House, she was trustee of the New England Conservatory, worked on the Berkshire Music Festival, and served as honorary chair of the Palestine Orchestra Fund.

Dalia Dorner

Israeli Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner was known for citing non-legal sources in her decisions to illustrate the just society she aspired to live in. With landmark cases impacting gender equality, the right to education for all, and the right to live in dignity, Justice Dorner’s legal and social legacy is deeply rooted in human rights.

Florence Dolowitz

Florence Dolowitz both cofounded the Women’s American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation and Training) and helped lead the organization for decades.

Dorothy Dinnerstein

Dorothy Dinnerstein earned her place as a major feminist thinker with her groundbreaking 1976 book The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. In her later work, she shifted her focus to ecology and nuclear disarmament.

Barbara Dobkin

Barbara Berman Dobkin is the pre-eminent Jewish feminist philanthropist of the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. Her vision, dedication, and philanthropic generosity have transformed the landscape of Jewish women’s organizations and funding in both North America and Israel.

Esther Dischereit

Esther Dischereit, a German-Jewish writer living in Berlin, speaks for the second and third generation of children of Holocaust survivors. Her prolific production covers all genres, including prose, poetry, sound installations, and concept art. She uses her many talents to fight anti-semitism and racism and to give a voice to the persecuted and forgotten.

Die Deborah

Die Deborah was an influential American Jewish newspaper published in German from 1855 until 1902 specifically aimed at German-Jewish middle-class women. The paper’s writers and editors viewed women in high esteem as keepers of moral and spiritual values, and toward the turn of the century they came to support the values of the American feminist movement.

Devar Ha-Po'elet

Devar ha’Po’elet, the magazine of the women worker’s movement, was founded in 1934 by Rahel Katznelson-Shazar, a prominent activist of the Council of Women Workers. The magazine was intended as an educational tool, through which the movement aimed to communicate the essential characteristics of the new Hebrew woman.

Ida Dehmel

Living a privileged existence in the wealthiest circles of German cultural society, Ida Dehmel became involved in circles of patronage of modern art that raised awareness for feminist issues, including women’s suffrage and equality for women’s artists’ associations. In 1916 she co-founded the Women’s Society for the Advancement of German Art.

Natalie Zemon Davis

Natalie Zemon Davis was a pioneering historian of early modern Europe, gender, and religious and cultural life. Focusing primarily on ordinary historical actors and marginal groups, Davis earned a reputation as a scholar who culls the archives to uncover fascinating stories of everyday life.

Frances Allen De Ford

A pioneering physician in the industrial Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Frances Allen de Ford's work led to a decrease in malarial infection. She also supported women's rights, including the right to vote, and was influential in her daughter Miriam's work as a suffragist.

Annette Daum

A deeply religious feminist, Annette Daum dedicated her life to two causes: interfaith dialogue and feminism. Among other leadership positions, she coordinated interreligious affairs at the Union of American Hebrew congregations, edited the journal Interreligious Currents, and organized various task forces focused on gender equality and Jewish-Christian feminist dialogue.

Modern Dance Performance in the United States

Jewish immigrants to the New World brought with them their ritual and celebratory Jewish dances, but these traditional forms of Jewish dance waned in the United States. Working-class and poor Jewish immigrants parents sought out culture and education in the arts for their children, often as a vehicle for assimilation. Jewish women were particularly attracted to the field of modern dance.

Rose Laub Coser

Sociologist Rose Laub Coser redefined major concepts in role theory—the idea that our actions are largely dictated by our roles in society—and applied them to expectations of women’s roles in the family and the workplace.

Creation According to Eve: Beyond Genesis 3

No feminist critic of the Bible has neglected to discuss the story or stories of the creation of woman; yet, despite significant differences in theoretical approach and focus, their readings generally have been confined to Genesis 1–3. Beyond Genesis 3, the matter of creation and femininity is addressed, offering new and complex insights.

Communism in the United States

From the 1920s into the 1950s, the Communist Party USA was the most dynamic sector of the American left, and Jewish women—especially Yiddish-speaking immigrants and their American-born daughters—were a major force within the party and its affiliated organizations. Their numbers included community organizers, labor activists, students, artists and intellectuals. When the communist movement faded in the 1950s, these women carried radical traditions into new movements for social justice and international cooperation.

A "Model Seder" at the University of Maryland, 1948

College Students in the United States

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, Jewish women in America achieved parity with their male counterparts on college campuses, but only after many decades of struggle.

Rose Gollup Cohen

In her short life, Rose Gollup Cohen was a unionized factory worker and a domestic servant, was helped through an illness by Lillian Wald, became educated, and wrote short stories. Her moving 1918 autobiography Out of the Shadow offers a vivid account of her life as an immigrant Jewish woman in the sweatshops of New York.

Felice Cohn

Felice Cohn was one of Nevada’s first women lawyers in the early twentieth century, an author of suffragist legislation in Nevada, and one of the first women allowed to argue before the United States Supreme Court.