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Theater in the United States

For over a hundred years, Jewish women have been involved in the American theater as writers, actors, directors, designers and producers. The vitality of the Yiddish theater, the splendor of Broadway, the rich tapestry of the regional theater, and everything in between, all owe a debt to the Jewish women who have given of their talents, their energy, their drive, and their dreams.

Bessie Thomashefsky

With suffragist spirit and comedic skill, Bessie Thomashefsky adapted great American and British plays for Yiddish-speaking audiences. Thomashefsky performed Yiddish adaptations of plays by Chekov, Wilde, and Shakespeare, as well as modern Yiddish creations at the People’s Theater in New York, playing many strong female characters. From 1915 to 1919, she ran the People’s Theater and renamed it for herself.

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson was a twentieth-century American philosopher who made major contributions to ethical discussions both within and beyond the walls of the university. In her four-decade career, Thomson published important papers in ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of law, including the widely anthologized essays “A Defense of Abortion” (1971) and “The Trolley Problem” (1985), both of which apply the techniques of analytic philosophy to questions of morality.

Hannah Thon

Hannah (Helena) Thon was a social worker, journalist and editor, a student of Israel’s ethnic communities, and one of the leading figures in the women’s voluntary social-welfare organizations during the Yishuv (pre-State) period in Israel.

Sarah Thon

Sarah Thon was born in Lvov, Galicia. She married Yaakov Thon and they settled in Ottoman Palestine at the end of 1907. She became the representative of the Women’s Association for Cultural Work in Palestine and established five workshops for girls. She was also influential in the establishment of the girls’ farm at Kinneret and in the fight for Jewish women’s suffrage.

Anna Ticho

From the moment she arrived in the city in 1912 until the day she died in 1980, Anna Ticho lovingly portrayed Jerusalem in paint, pen and ink, charcoal, pastel, and pencil. Her works have been shown around Israel and abroad, and she has received numerous honorary titles and awards. She bequeathed her home, Ticho House, to the Israel Museum to be used as a site for exhibitions and cultural events.

Rivke Bas Me’ir Tiktiner

Rivke bas Me’ir Tiktiner, a preacher and teacher for women, was the first woman author of a Yiddish book, the moral homiletic Meineket Rivkah (Meinekes Rivke, Rebekah’s Nurse, 1609). In the book, which comprised thirty-six folios, Rivah bas Me’ir formulated the ideal of a religious woman and her social circumstances within the confines of her domestic world.

Timna, concubine of Eliphaz: Midrash and Aggadah

After being denied conversion by the men of Abraham’s household, Timna becomes the concubine of Eliphaz. The Rabbis portray this action as proof of her genuine desire to convert, and Israel is punished for the Patriarch’s actions. Another midrash uses Timna to clarify an issue of lineage, ultimately showing that Esau’s descendants were born of adultery.

Cover of the Tkhine of the Matriarchs for the New Moon of Elul, a personal prayerbook in Yiddish.

Tkhines

Tkhines were collections of prayers published in Yiddish, often specifically for women, across Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The prayers addressed many themes of domestic and family life, although some also suggested women ought to be allowed into traditionally male spaces.

Ethel Tobach

Born in the Ukraine, Ethel Tobach spent most of her life in New York City as a professor, museum curator, and above all, a prolific researcher. She also held several leadership positions in prominent scientific associations, often combining her scientific abilities with her passion for social activism. However, her accomplishments are often overlooked by the psychological community.

Mahinarangi Tocker

New Zealand singer-songwriter Mahinaarangi Tocker (1955-2008) was best known as a Maori musician, but her Jewish heritage was an essential component of her identity and her music.

Alice Babette Toklas

Alice Babette Toklas, cookbook author and memoirist, along with her companion Gertrude Stein, served as host to one of the liveliest literary and artistic salons in Paris, from 1907 until Stein’s death in 1946. In the last decades of her life, Toklas was sought after for her many stories about her famous friends and acquaintances—and enemies—including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Thornton Wilder, and scores of other writers, artists, and musicians.

Dvora Tomer

Dvora Tomer had a career in the Israeli military for three decades, during which time she worked to expand women’s opportunities in the Israel Defense Forces to include a wider range of roles and fairer treatment.

Mina Tomkiewicz

Mina Tomkiewicz was a Polish author who wrote two books based on her personal experience growing up in Warsaw, Poland, and her deportation to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Re-dedication Ceremony of Sarah Schenirer's Gavestone, 2005

Torah Study

Although the obligation of Torah study is one of the most important Jewish commandments, women have long been exempted, or even excluded, from it. Over time, scholars mitigated women’s exclusion by rendering it inapplicable to all content, to all women, or both. Regardless of halakhic rulings, some women have studied Torah in all time periods.

Jaya Torenberg

Jaya Torenberg (born Elena Rodov) was a pioneering Mexican Jewish educator. After working as a Yiddish teacher, in 1972 she became the first woman to become director of a Jewish school As an author and an educator in several prestigious institutions, she was a well-known figure in the Mexican Jewish community.

Dara Torres

An athlete of remarkable endurance and drive, twelve-time Olympic medalist Dara Torres is the only American swimmer to have competed in five Olympics.

Nina Totenberg

Nina Totenberg has broken important stories on the United States Supreme Court during more than four decades of covering legal affairs for National Public Radio. She helped bring to public attention the previously hidden issue of sexual harassment during the controversial confirmation hearing of Justice Clarence Thomas and has received numerous accolades as a path-breaker in the male-dominated world of Washington journalism.

Jennie Tourel

Opera singer Jennie Tourel’s subtle and expressive performances made each song she sang into a miniature tone drama that she shaped as closely as possible to the composer’s intention.

Rebecca Traister

In her book All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister investigates why so many women are choosing to remain single, and the impact single women can have on society.

Sarah Treem

Television writer Sarah Treem’s work with Hagai Levi, adapting In Treatment for an American audience, led to their collaboration on the Golden Globe-winning The Affair.

Zelda Nisanilevich Treger

Zelda Treger was born in Vilna, Lithuania, which was occupied by the Germans beginning in June 1941. Treger soon joined the United Partisan Organization (FPO) and was tasked with smuggling groups of residents and supplies out of the ghetto and labor camp. Escaping capture several times, she aided in the liberation of Vilna and ultimately settled in Tel Aviv, where she remained until her death.

Alina Treiger

As the first woman rabbi to be ordained in Germany since the Holocaust, Alina Treiger has cultivated the kind of progressive Judaism that had been the pride of German Jews before World War II.

Triangle Factory Fire in the Oklahoma State Capital, March 26, 1911

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

On March 25, 1911, a fire erupted at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, resulting in 146 deaths and many injuries, most of them young, recently immigrated Jewish women. To the Jewish community, the unprecedented scope of the tragedy and its horrors were evocative of the pogroms that had been to date the greatest disaster to befall Jewry in modern times.

Diana Trilling

Although Diana Trilling did not begin her career as a writer and critic until her mid-thirties, she quickly became a formidable literary critic. Her prominence amongst other critics and opinionated reviews pushed against the narrative that intellectualism could only be cultivated in universities.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women