Politics and Government

Lonka Korzybrodska

Lonka Korzybrodska was an active member of He-Haluz, a resistance movement during World War II. She participated in missions until her capture and died imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1943.

Although he credited women for their emotions and intuition and valued them for their essential position in the family, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook generally regarded women as inferior to men. He believed women should not be educated but rather should be limited to the home and to serving as their husband and family’s housekeeper.

Marcia Koven

Marcia Koven was the founding curator of the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum, one of a number of museums dedicated to Jewish history in Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Her work inspired other Jewish museum projects in Atlantic Canada, and she held a number of other leadership roles related to Jewish life and history.

Gisela Peiper Konopka

Berlin-born Gisela Konopka built an international reputation as a group social worker and expert on youth issues. Lauded for her involvement in the rebuilding of social services and education in post-war Germany and beloved by her students at the University of Minnesota, Konopka received more than 42 awards in her lifetime.

Rozka Korczak-Marla

Rozka Korczak-Marla was active in underground resistance during World War II, serving in the United Partisan Organization to smuggle weapons into the Vilna Ghetto and help Jews escape. After the war she immigrated to Palestine and settled into kibbutz life.

Julia Koschitzky

An activist, philanthropist, and leader of Canadian and world Jewry, Julia Koschitzky was born in Cardiff, Wales, the daughter of Max Podolski and Elli (Moses) Podolsk. The family relocated to Canada in 1949, eventually settling in Toronto in 1956. Julia and her husband Henry Koschitzky became involved in communal leadership and philanthropy, specifically in Jewish education and social welfare, and she took on active roles in Jewish affairs both in Toronto and around the globe.

Rebekah Bettelheim Kohut

Rebekah Bettelheim Kohut made her mark on the American Jewish community in the areas of education, social welfare, and the organization of Jewish women. Grounded in her Jewish identity as the daughter and wife of rabbis, Kohut had a public career that paralleled the beginnings of Jewish women’s activism in the United States.

Malka Kolodny

Malka Fisz Kolodny served as one of the first teachers in pre-State Palestine. She taught subjects ranging from basic literacy to chemistry and biology and encouraged, counselled, and supported her students, staying in touch with them for years.

Kolech: Religious Women's Forum

Kolech (Hebrew for Your Voice): Religious Women’s Forum was founded in Jerusalem in 1998 with the aim of raising the standing of women in Jewish religious Orthodoxy. Among its achievements are a monthly pamphlet discussing the weekly Torah portion, halakhic issues, homiletics, and various Torah subjects; international conferences; and a guide for rabbis and communal workers on how to act when approached by women. Kolech is also active in the work of the Israeli Parliament, concerning certain laws which affect women.

Esther Loeb Kohn

Esther Loeb Kohn helped bridge the gap between Chicago’s volunteer and professional social workers and spent thirty years running the Hull House settlement whenever founder Jane Addams was away on her frequent travels.

Irene Caroline Diner Koenigsberger

A distinguished chemist credited with discovering the molecular structure of rubber, Irene Caroline Koenigsberger refused to patent her work, making her discovery available to all. She was also an important figure in the Washington, D.C. Jewish community, cofounding Temple Sinai and the B’nai B’rith Hillel at George Washington University.

C. Marian Kohn

A product of the Progressive Era and conservative Philadelphia German Jewish society, C. Marian Kohn was a social worker and tireless advocate for working women in the early twentieth century.

Margot Klausner

Margot Klausner was co-founder and president of Israel’s major film and television studio and co-manager of the Habima Theater. She was an author, film producer, founder of the Israeli Parapsychology Society, publisher of the monthly magazine Mysterious Worlds: A Journal of Parapsychology, and a popular public speaker on theater, film, and the occult in Israel.

Chajka Klinger

Chajka Klinger, a member of Ha-Shomer ha-Za’ir, was active in the resistance against the Nazis in Bedzin and Warsaw. Her mission was to live, so that she could keep the flame and memory of resistance alive. Her diaries were the first written evidence about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to escape Nazi Europe.

Gerda Weissmann Klein

Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein has used her experiences to educate countless people through her books, television appearances, and motivational speaking. Among numerous other awards for her work, Klein was appointed to the United States Holocaust Commission by President Clinton in 1997, and in 2011 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

Rosa Grena Kliass

Rosa Kliass is a trailblazer in the field of Brazilian landscape architecture. After graduating from university, Kliass established the first landscape office run by a woman in Brazil. Kliass’ extensive experience in public works, combined with a broad interdisciplinary approach, led her to serve as a consultant to several governmental institutions.

Carol Weiss King

Carol Weiss King was one of the outstanding practitioners of immigration law during the period bounded by the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy era. In her thirty-year career, she represented hundreds of foreign-born radicals threatened with deportation in administrative proceedings in the lower courts and in the Supreme Court.

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.

Ida Klaus

Ida Klaus was an influential labor lawyer, advocating tirelessly for the rights of workers. She was solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board under Harry Truman, head of the New York Labor Department, and an arbitrator in the Long Island Railroad Strike.

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 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.

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.

Agnes Keleti

In 1944, when the Germans invaded Hungary, gymnast Agnes Keleti bought fake identification papers and carried the bodies of the dead to mass graves during the battle of Budapest. After the war, she returned to gymnastics; her career highlight was the 1956 Olympics, where 35-year-old Keleti won many medals, including four gold for uneven parallel bars, balance beam, floor exercise and combined exercise-team.

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.

Vitka Kempner-Kovner

Vita Kempner-Kovner was a heroic fighter on the front lines of the underground resistance to the Nazis.