Browse by Category | Jewish Women's Archive

Fritzi Massary

Fritzi Massary was a prominent singer in Berlin prior to the onset of World War II. She reigned over the Berlin stage, singing the title role in Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow and Adele in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. Among the works created especially for her was the operetta Die Kaiserin by Leo Fall.

Etta Wedell Mastbaum

Etta Wedell Mastbaum was the scion of a prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century Philadelphia family. A philanthropist, department store executive, art collector, and director of a national chain of motion picture theaters, Mastbaum donated a collection of Rodin sculptures and ephemera to the city of Philadelphia.

Watercolor illustration of four sad children and a man in a pinstripe suit sitting around a table, eating

Ronit Matalon

Ronit Matalon was an Israeli writer of Egyptian heritage who wrote and published in Hebrew. She was the author of numerous works of fiction and essays and worked for many years as a journalist. Her work touches on Mizrahi identity, family, gender, and politics, and incorporates visual elements as well as cultural criticism.

Marlee Matlin

Marlee Matlin’s Oscar-winning film debut in 1986’s Children of a Lesser God made history on multiple fronts. At 21, not only was Matlin the youngest-ever Best Actress winner, she was also the first Deaf actress to be recognized by the Academy. Her subsequent career in film and television, as an author, and as an activist for the Deaf community, has paved the way for inclusive, nuanced storytelling that showcases Deaf culture to hearing audiences.

Matriarchs: A Liturgical and Theological Category

Among egalitarian religious congregations throughout the world, the most popular addition to the traditional liturgy is the mention of the Matriarchs in birkat avot (the blessing of the ancestors), the opening blessing of the Amidah.

Pearl Bernstein Max

Pearl Bernstein Max, as the first administrative director of New York City’s Board of Higher Education, directed the staggering work of fusing four different colleges—City, Hunter, Brooklyn, and Queens—into the unified system of City University of New York (CUNY). Later, she became the founding coordinator of CUNY’s Office of Institutional Research.

Elaine May

Elaine May broke down barriers for women in comedy, first as half of the celebrated comic duo Nichols and May, then as one of the few women screenwriters and directors in Hollywood. Some of her notable works include The Heartbreak Kid (director), Heaven Can Wait, and Tootsie (screenwriter).

Henriette May

Henriette May was committed to the upbringing of children and care for needy adults. She was active as a board member and editor for Jewish newspaper Jüdischer Frauenbund starting in 1907, established a home for Jewish women teachers in Berlin, and was a prominent member of numerous welfare institutions.

Irma May

During the economic devastation of the 1920s, Irma May traveled throughout Eastern Europe to report directly on the crisis of antisemitism occurring in the region. While she disappeared from public record during the American Great Depression, May’s work over a decade helped avert disaster for Jewish communities throughout Europe.

Ida Maze

Ida Maze was a “communitarian-proletarian” Yiddish writer who turned her Montreal home into a magnet for Yiddish writers and culture. After emigrating from Belarus to North America at age twelve in 1905, Maze began writing lyrical poems that were original and inspiring to young people.

Susan Maze-Rothstein

Susan Maze-Rothstein’s childhood experiences of injustice led her to help create a more just world for her children and her students.

Ellen Lehman Mccluskey

Ellen Lehman McCluskey, a firm believer that quality design is a result of close communication between architect and interior designer, built her own design firm into a business with national, international, and professional respect.

Yavilah McCoy

Yavilah McCoy is the founder of Ayecha, a nonprofit Jewish organization that provided Jewish diversity education and advocacy for Jews of color in the United States.

Portrayals of Women in Israeli Media

Representations of women in a variety of Israeli media, such as advertising, news, and entertainment, reflect and perpetuate the marginality of women in Israeli society. While representations have diversified over the years, showing Israeli women in more varied professional roles and enjoying sexual freedom and independence, overall the gender inequity remains and women are still marginalized in Israeli media.

Medieval Ashkenaz (1096-1348)

The Jews of medieval Ashkenaz are known for their prolific rabbis and for the Ashkenazic customs that became characteristic of many European Jewish communities. During the High Middle Ages, the women in these communities had many important roles women within the family and in the communal, economic, and religious life.

Medieval Hebrew Literature: Portrayal of Women

Stereotypes of women, “good” and “bad,” are found throughout the medieval Hebrew canon. The love poetry cultivated during the Golden Age in Muslim Spain seems to glorify and idealize women, but the female “beloved” is subject to the power of the male “gaze” and male rhetoric.

Leandra Medine

Through her fashion blog, Man Repeller, Leandra Medine argued that fashion should be about what women find interesting and exciting to wear, not just attracting a man.

Medium of Endor: Bible

The story of Saul’s visit to the medium at Endor suggests that various types of divination were well established in Israel. Notably, the story does not imply that the medium’s identity as a woman is significant, illustrating that being a medium was a chance for women to have a professional role in ancient Israel.

Martha Tamara Schuch Mednick

Both through her psychological research and through her collaboration with a diverse group of women scholars, Martha Tamara Schuch Mednick helped long–silenced minorities express their experiences. Her accomplishments included a paper that debunked the myth of Israeli settlers’ gender equality and the organization of the first international interdisciplinary conference on women, bringing together American, Israeli, and Arab women scholars.

Vladka Meed

Vladka Meed was an underground courier who smuggled weapons to the Jewish Fighting Organization inside the Warsaw Ghetto while passing as a Christian outside its walls. In 1948 she published a memoir about her experiences, On Both Sides of the Wall. Meed received many awards for her work in Holocaust education and memorialization.

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.

Erika Meitner

Erika Meitner’s poetry plays with the idea of overlooked but vital spaces, from malls and suburban developments to women’s bodies.

Lise Meitner

Lise Meitner’s influential work concerning radioactivity in the early 20th century made her a target of the Nazis. She fled to Sweden in 1938, and it was there that she discovered the power of the fission reaction. Even though Meitner never worked on nuclear weapons, her 1939 research was essential in the research of nuclear power.

Deborah Marcus Melamed

Deborah Marcus Melamed encouraged Jewish women to form their own relationship with Jewish practice through her 1927 book The Three Pillars, an interpretive guide to rituals and customs. Melamed also served as vice president of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism from 1920 to 1930 or 1932.

Florence Zacks Melton

A philanthropist and visionary innovator and a lay leader for over fifty years, Florence Zacks Melton helped build institutions that improved the quality and broadened the scope of Jewish education throughout North America.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women