Politics and Government

Blanche Cohen Nirenstein

Descending from a family active in Jewish communal life, Blanche Cohen Nirenstein further developed her leadership abilities in a wide range of social science activities. Nirenstein found a myriad of ways to help Jewish widows and needy children, from founding a kosher summer camp to supporting Holocaust survivors.

Dalia Ofer

Dalia Ofer is an Israeli historian whose work mainly focuses on women’s experiences in the Holocaust and collective memory of the Holocaust in Israeli society. Ofer has published a multitude of books and articles on these topics during her career, and she has held positions at many prestigious universities around the world including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia.

Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Israel, 1948-2000

While the earliest women’s NGOs in Israel focused on contributing their share to nation-building, today’s organizations advocate and practice feminism. Over the past few decades, they have grown in number, modified their strategies, and raised new issues, yet hurdles continue to undermine their influence.

Estelle Newman

Estelle Reiss Newman innovated new programs for aiding the blind, from providing retirement homes for the aged blind to helping younger disabled people navigate independent lives in their communities.

Jewish Women in New Zealand

Although New Zealand’s Jewish community is small, “Kiwi” Jewish women have punched well above their weight and account for a significant number of the country’s “historic firsts” and remarkable achievements.

Modern Netherlands

Like Jewish women everywhere, Dutch Jewish women struggled with issues of assimilation, emancipation, and equality as both Jews and women. This article summarizes the conditions and challenges facing Jewish women in the Netherlands and the paths to progress and change they sought—education, work, activism, and literature, among others—from the nineteenth century to the present, including after the particular decimation of Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust.

Shoshana Netanyahu

Shoshana Netanyahu served as a judge on the Magistrates Court in Haifa from 1969 until 1974 and as a District Court judge in the city from 1974 to 1981. In 1981 she was promoted to the Supreme Court, from which she retired in 1993.

Elsie Margaret Binger Naumburg

Elsie Margaret Binger Naumburg was a researcher of South American avifauna and a gazetteer with the American Geographical Society. She put her research on hold during World War II to aid refugee and unemployed musicians.

Shulamith Nardi

Shulamith Nardi helped shape relations between Jews and gentiles in the fledgling State of Israel through her writing and editing for several Zionist publications, her analysis of Jewish literature, and her work as advisor on Diaspora affairs to four Israeli presidents.

Ora Namir

Ora Namir was an Israeli politician, diplomat, and “dove” whose efforts on behalf of women’s rights, education, and social justice are enjoyed today by all Israeli citizens.

Rachel Natelson

As a young girl, Rachel Natelson corresponded with an uncle who had been studying with Henrietta Szold. From him, she learned about Palestine and the Zionist movement. These exchanges were to lay the foundation for her extraordinary life as a leader on behalf of the Zionist cause—including being one of the founding members of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Miriam Naor

Miriam Naor was widely esteemed for her expertise in criminal law. In her many famous court cases, Naor’s decisions were always based on profound legal knowledge and on rigorous analysis of the facts.

Ruth Muskal

Ruth Muskal’s term as commanding officer of the Women’s Corps (1973–1975) of the Israel Defense Forces saw a distinct increase in women’s role in defending the country. Muskal took great care to preserve women’s rights, as well as the independence and status of the Women’s Corps.

Yocheved [Judith] Herschlag Muffs

After living in Palestine briefly and serving in the War of Independence, Yocheved Herschlag Muffs returned to the United States and began her life’s work at the Anti-Defamation League. Over the course of her 36 years at the ADL, Muffs challenged inaccurate depictions of Jews in dozens of major textbooks and reference books, helping to reshape attitudes towards Jews.

Margarete Muehsam-Edelheim

Margarete Muehsam-Edelheim was a journalist with a doctorate in law. In her native Berlin, she co-founded the organization Women Law Graduates and served as a City Councilor. In the United States, Muehsam-Edelheim was a founding member of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Women Auxiliary, as well as serving in many capacities for various organizations.

Anitta Müller-Cohen

Anitta Müller-Cohen was one of the most famous Jewish women in Vienna in the early twentieth century, earning her fame as a social worker, journalist, and Zionist politician. She started working in Vienna, later moved to London, and finally settled in Tel Aviv in 1934.

Moshavah

Women played important roles in the moshavot (villages), the pioneer settlement form created by the Jews in Palestine at its formative period 1882-1914. Various types of women in the moshava had significant roles in creating the “new Jew” of the second generation and in establishing and consolidating the moshavot.

Bessie Louise Moses

Gynecologist, professor, and contraceptive pioneer Bessie Louise Moses spent a long professional life as a public health advocate and women’s health specialist. She founded the first birth control clinic in Baltimore, organized clinics throughout Maryland, and lectured and wrote a book promoting contraception to the public.

Elinor Morgenthau

Elinor Morgenthau’s accomplishments were largely invisible, as she helped her husband, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., rise to great heights in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. Because of her sharp political and social skills, she often filled in for her husband, and eventually she became Eleanor Roosevelt’s assistant in the Office of Civilian Defense.

Robin Morgan

Poet, activist, journalist, and feminist leader Robin Morgan has dedicated her life to addressing women’s oppression globally and fighting for systemic social, economic, and political change. She has published more than twenty books, including poetry, essays, fiction and non-fiction work; her writings, especially her Sisterhood anthologies, remain central feminist canon and foundational texts and references for feminist thought.

Mizrahi Feminism in Israel

Mizrahi feminism goes beyond the typical western scope of feminism to include the history and issues that concern women in the Middle East in Israel and in Arab and Muslim countries. An intersectional feminism, it is particularly sensitive to issues of race, class division, immigration, and ethnic discrimination.

Mo'ezet Ha-Po'alot (Council of Women Workers)

The Mo’ezet Ha-Poalot was founded in 1921 as the women’s branch of the Histadrut, the General Federation of Workers in mandatory Palestine. In the name of women workers, the organization struggled for many years for equality in the eyes of the Histadrut, though it ultimately came to represent more broadly the interests of Jewish women in Palestine and Israel, including immigrants and housewives.

The Jewish Family in Early Twentieth-Century United States

As poor Jewish immigrant families poured into the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, concerned social workers, rabbis, sisterhood presidents and journalists sounded an alarm about the state of the Jewish family. Women often bore the blame for what was seen as the weakening of the Jewish home, and communal organizations devoted much attention to strengthening the Jewish family.

Eva Violet Mond Isaacs, Second Marchioness of Reading

Lady Eva Violet Mond Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, was born into one remarkable family and married into another. She occupied a unique place in Anglo-Jewry; as Vice President of the World Jewish Congress and President of its British section she was an eloquent and vocal supporter of the Zionist cause and the young state of Israel.

Sarah Gertrude Millin

With a career of over thirty years, Sarah Gertrude Millin was one of South Africa’s most prolific literary figures of the twentieth century. The racism and conservative political attitudes that pervade her work, however, have lowered her status in South African literary history.