Politics and Government

Tzipi Livni is a politician, lawyer, and diplomat who has held the more government roles than any other woman in Israeli history. Widely respected for being judicious and resolute, Livni is most known for her long tenure in the Israeli Knesset with the Likud, Kadima, Hatunah, and Zionist Union parties, for her role as a leader in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and for her longstanding commitment to advancing international diplomacy.

Cecylia Klaften, a pedagogue and a civic activist from Lvov (Galicia/Eastern Lesser Poland), implemented social reform projects and especially promoted the founding of vocational schools for women in interwar Poland. In the 1920s she was one of the founders of the Jewish Women’s Association and the WIZO Jewish Women’s Organization for Pro-Palestinian Work in Lvov. In the 1930s she was politically active for Lvov’s City Council.

Róża Pomeranc Melcer was a social reformer, feminist, and Zionist active in Galicia and later in Eastern Lesser Poland. She was the first and only Jewish Member of Parliament in the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939) and championed the goals of modern Zionist women's politics.

Leslie Feinberg was a self-described “anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist.” She worked at the nexus of trans, feminist, lesbian, critical race, Jewish, and class politics. A speaker and author, Feinberg was a gifted activist and political organizer.

Judith Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and the Program in Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Butler’s work treats gender, hate speech, the precarity of life, the precarity of one’s position as a Jewish thinker in light of Israeli policy towards Palestinians, alternative kinship structures, non-violence, vulnerability, and other, equally complex and important aspects of human existence.

Bruria Benbassat de Elnecavé was an ardent activist who dedicated her life to educate Jewish Argentines in general and Jewish Argentine women in particular about Zionism and the State of Israel. 

Berta Blejman de Drucaroff was a prominent activist of the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (YKUF/ICUF) and a communist militant in anti-fascist organizations. She was president of the YKUF Women's Organization (OFI) and the main promoter of the reading circle network (leien kraizn) in Argentina.