Politics and Government

Nurse and Patients at National Jewish Hospital

Seraphine Eppstein Pisko

Like many middle-class Jewish women at the turn of the twentieth century, Seraphine Eppstein Pisko used her experience in volunteer work to move into the realm of the professional workplace. As executive secretary and vice president of the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives in Denver, Pisko was one of the first women to lead a national Jewish institution.

Harriet Fleischl Pilpel

Harriet Fleischl Pilpel was a prominent participant and strategist in women’s rights, birth control, and reproductive freedom litigation for over half a century.

Grete Stern Portrait by Ellen Auerbach, 1929

Photography in Palestine and Israel: 1900-Present Day

Although women photographers long struggled for recognition and appreciation in Palestine and Israel, in recent years awareness of their roles and contributions to photograph has increased. The activity of women photographers who focus on gender issues has increased dramatically, while female curators and academics are gaining new perspectives on Jewish female photographers, re-evaluating their role in the development of photography in Israel.

Ellen Phillips

Ellen Phillips influenced generations of young Jewish girls and boys in nineteenth-century Philadelphia. One of the founding members of the Hebrew Sunday School Society in 1838, Phillips donated her time, family wealth, and religious convictions to several Jewish and sectarian philanthropic organizations.

Rebecca Machado Phillips

Rebecca Machado Phillips tended her community by founding soup kitchens and aid societies for the poor and sick. She helped raised money for her synagogue for ritual objects and served as the first directress of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society of Philadelphia.

Marion Phillips

As Chief Women’s Officer of the Labour Party, Marion Phillips was one of the most important figures in the campaign to free women from domestic drudgery at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her work brought a quarter of a million women into the Labour Party.

Alice S. Petluck

Alice S. Petluck was one of the first women in the United States to attend law school and to practice in New York. She was a prominent social reformer in the early twentieth century who, through her example, was able to open the door for generations of future female lawyers.

Rivkah Perelis

Rivkah Perelis was a Polish-born historian whose research focused on the Holocaust and the Zionist youth movement during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Florence Perlman

Florence Bierman Perlman was one of the women responsible for shaping Hadassah into its role of national prominence. A national board member of Hadassah from 1938 until her death in 1975, Perlman also held many other important positions within the organization.

Shoshana Persitz

Born in Russia to wealthy parents, Shoshana Persitz was a passionate Zionist and a leader in education reform. She operated a Hebrew-language publishing house in Russia before making Aliyah to Israel, where she continued in publishing and served three terms in the Knesset.

Peace Movements in Israel

Though Israel has been involved in a state of protracted conflict and in a cycle of wars since well before its establishment in 1948, a massive peace movement emerged only in 1978. Throughout the years, the various Israeli peace movements and organizations have focused on anti-militarism and electoral politics, as well as on broader cultural shifts within Israeli society.

Bracha Peli

Bracha Peli was unique among the literary community of pre-state Palestine, creating what was probably the most successful and dynamic publishing house in the country at the time. Born Bronya Kutzenok in Tsarist Russia, Peli had an expansive and highly successful career.

Jessica Blanche Peixotto

Jessica Blanche Peixotto defied convention and her family to become a respected authority in the field of economics. Through her education, professorship, and departmental leadership at the University of California at Berkeley, she broke down barriers for women in education.

Ana Pauker

Born to an impoverished Orthodox family in Bucharest, Ana Pauker joined the Romanian communist movement in 1915. She rose through the ranks, becoming one of the most powerful Communist leaders in Romania after World War II and, according to Time magazine, “the most powerful woman alive.”

Mollie Parnis

Mollie Parnis’s wit and fashion-savvy made her clothing designs a must during her tenure as a fashion legend. Parnis was equally famed for her New York salons that welcomed literary and political giants and for her fashion designs that adorned first ladies.

Erna Patak

Erna (Ernestine) Patak was a social worker and one of the Zionist veterans in Vienna in the early twentieth century, serving as the first president of WIZO Austria in the early 1920s. After surviving Theresienstadt, she returned to Vienna and later moved to London and finally to Tel Aviv.

Thirteen young women stand, smiling and laughing, and pose with hands on each others' shoulders for a photo

Palmah

The Palmah was the elite fighting brigades of the underground paramilitary force Haganah, active between 1941 and Israel’s founding in 1948. Women were active in the Palmah, but were they considered equal to men?

Paula Padani

Paula Padani was an influential choreographer, performer, and teacher who explored Jewish themes in her work as she danced throughout Israel, the United States, and Europe. Her work was inspired by the landscapes of Israel and biblical themes, and she was celebrated in post World War Two Paris for her talent and vitality as a Jewish artist.

Sylvia Ostry

Sylvia Ostry, born in Winnipeg, Canada, was a distinguished economist, academic, and government leader. She taught at universities across Canada, served in numerous government posts, and authored over eighty publications, mostly on policy analysis.

Vera Paktor

In her too-short life, Vera Paktor reached unprecedented heights for a woman in maritime law, forging regulations for new developments in the shipping industry.

Israela Oron

Israela Oron is a retired Brigadier-General in the Israel Defense Forces who worked to reform the IDF’s Women’s Corps and redefine women’s role in the Israeli military. As OC (Officer Commander) of the IDF’s Women’s Corps, she balanced extending more opportunities for women in positions traditionally held by men with the need to retain an infrastructure that would care for the specific needs of women in the IDF.

Yehudit Ornstein

Dancer and choreographer Yehudit Ornstein followed her mother, Israeli dance pioneer Margalit Ornstein, in expanding Israeli modern and folk dance. Known for her dance duo with her twin sister, Ornstein was a prolific choreographer and dance teacher and was among the founders of the Dancers Union.

Margalit Ornstein

Choreographer and dance teacher Margalit Ornstein is perceived as the “founding mother” of Israeli dance and a pioneer of modern dance in Erez Israel. In 1922, she founded the first Israeli dance school in Tel Aviv and helped create two important dance theaters in the 1920s.

Shoshana Ornstein

After emigrating to Palestine with her mother and twin sister at the age of ten, the Ornstein sisters formed a celebrated dancing duo. In addition to years of performing dances in the style of German “Free Dance” and influenced by her pioneer status in Erez Israel, she taught for sixty years at the Ornstein Studio in Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s most prominent schools.

Old Yishuv, People Praying at the Western Wall

Old Yishuv: Palestine at the End of the Ottoman Period

Women of the Old Yishuv saw their immigration to the Holy Land as serving spiritual sanctification at the expense of material suffering. Jewish women lived restricted lives as the result of child marriage, high infant mortality rates, and being confined to the domestic sphere in the Old Yishuv.