Performing Arts

A transformational leader, Shoshana Pakciarz helped build nonprofit social service and arts organizations across the Boston area. As executive director of Project Bread, she expanded the Walk for Hunger into a major annual fundraiser with over 40,000 participants, raising millions to fight hunger. A longtime board president of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, she helped it grow into a beloved and internationally recognized cultural institution.

Bertha Klausner was an influential literary agent in New York and Los Angeles. One of the earliest female literary agents, she represented major writers and cultural figures throughout the twentieth century.

Madame Goldye Steiner was the first known African-American woman singer of khazones, or Ashkenazi Jewish liturgical music. She was the only known African-American woman in the khaznte artistic movement in which non-synagogue audiences experienced khazones, sung by women in concert halls, on the radio, and on gramophone recordings.

Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun lived their life in a spirit of rebellion and defiance. From their precocious teenage years, defying conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with their shaven head and male attire, to their direct resistance of German occupying forces, they active worked against the suppression of liberty and freedom—a life of resistance. 

Charlotte Charlaque was a transgender trailblazer, actress, and translator in Weimer Berlin and post-Shoah New York City.