Education

Group photo of kindergarteners, with woman teacher at left

Kindergartens in Palestine: First and Second Aliyah (1882-1914)

Hebrew-language education of the youngest Jewish residents of Palestine was considered key to the continued success of the Zionist movement. The women who taught in these kindergartens, established during the First and Second Aliyah, demonstrated their dedication to the movement and became essential to its success.

Helene Khatskels

As a member of the General Jewish Workers’ Bund, Helene Khatskels fought to realize socialist ideals about autonomy and liberation. As a Yiddish teacher and writer in Tsarist Russia and later the Soviet Union, she demonstrated a commitment to spreading and inspiring pride in Yiddish culture.

A smiling woman stands behind a planter box watering flowers

Kibbutz Ha-Dati Movement (1929-1948)

Beginning in 1929, the religious kibbutz (Kibbutz Ha-Dati) movement represented the confluence of progressive ideals of equality and collectivism and traditional customs of Judaism. As a result, women in the movement lived at a crossroads.

A woman washes laundry by hand with a tin tub and washboard.

Kibbutz

Although the kibbutz was intended as an equalitarian, democratic utopia, attempts to achieve gender equality have been limited by traditional masculinities and male-controlled spheres and gender inequalities have persisted.

Lena Kenin

Lena Nemerovsky Kenin made major contributions to both gynecology and psychology with her successful medical practice and her groundbreaking work on postpartum depression.

Lillian Ruth Kessler

Lillian Ruth Kessler created a major export company for automobile parts and heavy industrial and military equipment, making her a pioneer in a business that had been exclusively male territory. In 1982, she retired from the presidency of Kessler International Corporation, the company she had founded in 1946.

Allegra Kent

During ballerina Allegra Kent’s long career with the New York City Ballet, she starred in many of George Balanchine’s most famous ballets, originating several principal roles created specifically for her.

Joyce Jacobson Kaufman

A pioneer in the field of physical chemistry, Joyce Jacobson Kaufman did groundbreaking work in the fields of jet propulsion fuels used in the space program, psychotropic pharmacology, and drug design. Kaufman also discovered a novel strategy for using computers to predict drug reactions and the trajectory of a significant number of carcinogens.

Chaile Raphael Kaulla

Chaile Raphael Kaulla was the most influential Jewish woman entrepreneur and one of the last Court Jews in eighteenth-century Germany. A devout Jew, Kaulla supported both Jewish and Christian poor people, founded a hostel for Jewish travelers, and in 1803 donated a bet midrash, library, and funding for three rabbis to her town of Hechingen. The Austrian Emperor honored Kaulla in 1807 and she and her family were allowed to live in Stuttgart with rights equal to those of Christian citizens.

Bel Kaufman

Bel Kaufman was the author of Up the Down Staircase, a novel that gently parodied the public school system in New York City. Published in 1964, the book went on to sell six million copies, spent 64 weeks on the best-seller list, and inspired a film adaptation in 1967 and a popular school play. She was also the granddaughter of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, whose stories formed the musical Fiddler on the Roof.

Rahel Katznelson

A thinker and teacher, Rahel Katznelson was one of the early activists in the Labor Movement and Mo’ezet ha-Po’alot in the Yishuv and Israel. She contributed greatly to the country’s emerging cultural life, laying stress on women’s participation within it.

Shulamith Katznelson

Shulamith Katznelson helped make Israel a home for a wider range of people as both a pioneer of Hebrew-immersion programs and an advocate for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.

Ilona Karmel

Ilona Karmel transformed details of her experiences as a Polish-Jewish prisoner in Nazi work camps and as a patient undergoing a prolonged convalescence into two compelling and memorable novels. Karmel was a distinguished writer, winning a fiction contest from Mademoiselle and teaching awards from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ada Karmi-Melamede

Ada Karmi-Melamede (b. 1936) is a prominent Israeli architect. Her work includes a variety of public and private projects, among them the Supreme Court Building in Jerusalem and The Open University campus in Ra’anana. In 2007, she received the Israel Prize in architecture, the second woman to have ever received this prize.

Hannah Karminski

During the mid-1920s and the 1930s in Germany, Hannah Karminski served as secretary of the League of Jewish Women and, from 1924 to 1938, as editor of its newsletter. After the forced liquidation of the League in 1938, Karminski remained in Germany and continued her work in the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, assisting with the kindertransports and welfare. She was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in 1942.

Fay Berger Karpf

Fay Berger Karpf made major contributions to social science with her analysis of the history of social psychology and specifically with her support of the psychoanalyst Otto Rank. She taught for many years and wrote several books about the profound influence Rankian theories had on American psychoanalysis.

Regina Kaplan

Regina “Kappy” Kaplan was nurse, teacher, hospital administrator, and health care innovator. Most notably, Kaplan helped break down gender barriers in medicine by creating the first nursing school in the South that admitted male students.

Rose Kaplan

Rose Kaplan was a trained nurse who worked with Hadassah to help establish its first visiting nurse program. During World War I, she worked with Hadassah to care for Jews in Palestine and refugees in Egypt and inspired others to follow her example.

Dorothy C. Kahn

During the Great Depression, Dorothy C. Kahn helped pioneer social work as a service provided by the government to all who needed it. Kahn developed, implemented, and advocated for social welfare programs and policies whose underlying principles upheld her deepest beliefs about what social welfare could mean in a democracy.

Margarete Kahn

German mathematician Margarete Kahn worked with fellow Jewish woman Klara Löbenstein and their essential contribution to a famed problem was cited in the publications of several others. Despite earning her doctorate and having a significant impact in her field, Kahn was unable to earn a post-doctoral degree due to discrimination against women, and she worked as a teacher until she was deported by the Nazis.

Healing Service Published by Central Synagogue

JWRC: Eleanor Leff Jewish Women's Resource Center

The Eleanor Leff Jewish Women’s Resource Center (JWRC) of the National Council of Jewish Women, New York Section, maintains an extensive collection of materials by and about Jewish women and creates Jewish programming with a feminist focus. The JWRC was founded in 1976 to document and advance the modern Jewish women’s movement.

Esther Jungreis

Esther Jungreis, a leading Jewish public orator from the 1970s to the 1990s, was a pioneer in the Orthodox Jewish outreach movement. Her lectures and educational programs encouraged many previously unaffiliated young Jews to explore their heritage.

Hagar Kadima

Composer and visual artist Hagar Kadima was the first Israeli woman composer to earn a PhD in composition. She was also the founder and first chair of the Israeli Women Composers Forum.

Gurit Kadman

Gurit Kadman earned fame as a pioneer of Israeli folk dancing. In Germany, she joined the Wandervogel, a youth movement that focused on German folk culture, and after she moved to Palestine she continued to learn, teach, and preserve Israeli folk dance.

Irma Rothschild Jung

Irma Rothschild Jung, a native of Randegg, Baden, Germany, was born on July 1, 1897, and until her death close to a century later, dedicated her substantial energies to pioneering Jewish communal programs in aid of the needy. Her leadership and influence were deeply felt in the broader Jewish community by the countless individuals, young and old, who benefited from her generous spirit.