Politics and Government

Golda Meir

A direct, no-nonsense politician who participated in Israel’s governance from its independence onward, Golda Meir served as Israel’s first female Prime Minister through the turbulent period of the Yom Kippur War.

Lenore Guinzburg Marshall

Lenore Guinzburg Marshall, novelist, poet, activist, and literary editor, pushed her publishing company to publish William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury after it had been rejected by twelve other publishers. She published her first novel, Only the Fear, in 1935 and her first poetry collection, No Boundary, in 1943, going on to write poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and a memoir.

Nita M. Lowey

Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey used her position to fight for women’s health, public broadcasting, and support for Israel. In 2001, she became the first woman to chair the Democratic Congressional Committee.

Minnie Low

Known as the “Jane Addams of the Jews,” Minnie Low was a leader in the Jewish social service community. At a time when social work usually meant wealthy people donating to the poor, Low pushed for new kinds of aid such as vocational training and loans that made the needy self–sufficient.

Paula E. Hyman

Distinguished historian Paula Hyman was engaged deeply in Jewish feminism and wrote extensively on the history of Jewish women in an effort to integrate their experience into the Jewish historical narrative. A role model for many, she challenged sacrosanct beliefs and stereotypes with vigor and knowledge and left behind a myriad of scholarly contributions and a profound vision for Jewish women.

Fannie Hurst

Fannie Hurst was among the most popular and sought-after writers of the post-World War I era. In her heyday, Hurst commanded huge sums from the motion picture magnates who acquired the rights to her works, 29 of which have been made into movies. Back Street (1932, 1941, 1961), Imitation of Life (1934, 1959), and Humoresque (1920, 1946) are the best known.

Fanny E. Holtzmann

Fanny E. Holtzmann made waves as a lawyer for stars of Broadway and Hollywood as well as luminaries of world politics such as the Romanoffs.

Hunter College

Hunter College of the City University of New York was founded as a public, tuition-free secondary and teacher-training school for women that admitted students solely on the basis of academic merit, at a time when many institutions of higher education were implementing policies of selective admissions designed specifically to deflect disadvantaged students.

Elizabeth Holtzman

Elizabeth Holtzman pursued a public career epitomizing some of the most important trends in postwar American and Jewish life. In her successive roles as a congresswoman, Brooklyn district attorney, comptroller of New York City, and political commentator, she emerged as an effective and activist public servant, a forceful campaigner, and a champion of liberal and feminist causes.

Holocaust Survivors: Rescue and Resettlement in the United States

Immediately after the Holocaust, the American Jewish community assisted in the postwar rehabilitation and resettlement of survivors who arrived in the United States. Families sponsored European relatives and communal agencies organized to help survivors’ adjustment. While the contemporary media described a warm welcome by American communities and survivors’ rapid acclimation, this triumphant narrative belied the fraught reality of survivors’ early years in the United States.

Gertrude Himmelfarb

Gertrude Himmefarb (1922-2019) was an American historian and public intellectual who published more than fifteen books mostly dedicated to nineteenth-century British intellectual life. She made significant contributions to the intellectual foundation of the neoconservative movement, arguing that social policy should follow the Victorian example of deep moralism.

Histadrut

Histadrut (the General Federation of Workers) was founded in 1920 to bring together Jewish workers who had recently arrived in Palestine. Though the organization proclaimed equal treatment and opportunities for women and men workers, the reality was not so simple.

Anna Braude Heller

A brilliant pediatrician used to working in difficult circumstances, Anna Braude Heller struggled to keep children’s hospitals open through both World War I and World War II, even as the Nazis occupied Poland and placed Jews in ghettos. Although she evaded deportation in 1943, she was killed shortly afterwards when German soldiers raided the Warsaw Ghetto.

Lillian Hellman

Controversial both during and after her life, Lillian Hellman was one of the leading women of letters of mid-century America and a pioneer woman playwright. Hellman displayed courage not only in writing powerful plays like The Children’s Hour but also in her public refusal to name colleagues to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Lillian Herstein

Lillian Herstein was an early twentieth-century teacher and a nationally known labor leader. She spent her career advocating for worker education and served as the advisor on child labor legislation to the International Labor Organization in Geneva in 1937.

Our Bodies Ourselves Collective circa 1970s

Health Activism, American Feminist

American women have been the “perennial health care reformers.” Women’s health activism has often coincided with other social reform movements. Since the late 1960s, Jewish women have helped create and sustain the women’s health movement through decades of substantial social, political, medical, and technological change.

Jane Harman

The child of a refugee from Nazi Germany, Jane Harman began her career in law. After being elected in 1992, she spent 20 years as a vocal advocate of Israel, pro-choice legislation, and women’s issues as a Representative for California’s 36th Congressional District. After leaving Congress for the private sector, Harman held leadership positions in several prominent political organizations.

Rose Luria Halprin

Rose Luria Halprin helped lead Zionist organizations through the tumultuous period of Israeli independence and helped shape international opinions of Zionism. She served twice as the national president of Hadassah.

Haganah

Women played many different roles in the operations of the Haganah. Though their stories are frequently excluded from the story of the Jewish paramilitary organization in British Mandate Palestine, women served as caretakers and nurses, as well as fighters and commanders.

Aliza Greenblatt

Deep love for the Jewish people informed the life of Aliza Greenblatt, an American Yiddish poet and Zionist leader in women’s organizations. Greenblatt was among the first to organize the American Jewish community and raise funds toward the establishment of a Jewish national home. Many of her poems, widely published in the Yiddish press, were also set to music.

Hadassah in the United States

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, has been the largest Zionist organization in the world, one of the largest American women’s volunteer organizations, American Jews’ largest mass-membership organization, and probably the most active Jewish women’s organization ever.

Deborah stands before a group, praising Jael.

Deborah 2: Midrash and Aggadah

Deborah, one of the most extraordinary women in the Bible, is presented as an extremely righteous and praiseworthy woman in rabbinic literature. Though some traditions criticize her pride, perhaps wary of how she transgressed gender norms, most of the rabbinic texts about Deborah are filled with praise.

Deborah: Bible

Deborah is one of the major judges (meaning charismatic military leaders, rather than juridical figures) in the story of how Israel takes the land of Canaan. The only female judge, the only one to be called a prophet, and the only one described as performing a judicial function, she is a decisive figure in the defeat of the Canaanites.

Miriam Shomer Zunser

Miriam Shomer Zunser, journalist, playwright, and artist, was an important promoter of Jewish culture in America during the period before World War II. Born in Odessa in 1882, Zunser left a strong legacy in the Yiddish literary world and in the world of Jewish activism and organization.

Elsa Zylberstein

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, French cinema displayed an extraordinary wealth of young Jewish talents, such as Elsa Zylberstein. Zylberstein is an internationally acclaimed French film and stage actress with a strong commitment to humanitarian awareness and advocating for women’s welfare.