Jewish History: Israel
Second Aliyah: Women's Experience and Their Role in the Yishuv
Ada Ascarelli Sereni
Ada Ascarelli Sereni helped thousands of Jews emigrate to Palestine during and after World War II following the death of her husband, a Jewish volunteer for the British army who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe.
Gabriela Shalev
Alice Hildegard Shalvi
Israel Prize Laureate Professor Alice Shalvi was a leading Israeli feminist activist and scholar. Founder of the Israel Women’s Network and the Ben Gurion University English Department and longtime principal of the iconic religious feminist high school Pelech, Professor Shalvi was instrumental in advancing gender issues in Israeli education, society and politics.
Anita Shapira
Anita Shapira is one of the most important and influential contemporary historians in the field of twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history. She played important roles in laying the foundations of Israeli historiography and launching the research discipline known today as Israel Studies.
She'erit ha-Peletah: Women in DP Camps in Germany
Family played an important role in the lives of Holocaust survivors in DP (displaced persons) camps – in 1947, the birth rate in DP camps was one of the highest in the world. Women served as teachers and eager students, and they were active in the effort to open immigration to Palestine.
Shelamziyyon Alexandra
Naomi Shemer
Naomi Shemer was a prolific singer and composer who built a unified Israeli cultural consciousness through her beautiful melodies. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Shemer wrote music that was performed throughout the country, including “Jerusalem of Gold” and “Lu Yehi.” In 1983, she was awarded the Israel Prize, and she continued to write new music until her death in 2004.
Vicki Shiran
Vicki Shiran was an Egyptian-born Israeli social activist dedicated to feminism, anti-occupation activism, and fighting discrimination against Mizrahim in Israel, all of which she viewed as interconnected. In 1999 she helped found Ahoti, For Women in Israel, which promoted the labor rights of lower-class women in Israel, and in 1981 she led a fierce fight against the Israel Broadcasting Authority for its exclusion of Mizrahim in its telling of the history of the Israeli state.
Sarah Shmukler
Sarah Shmukler was a nurse and midwife who emigrated to Palestine from the Russian Empire during the Second Aliyah period. Her short life was characterized by providing medical assistance to migrant workers in Palestine and by close friendships with her fellow pioneers.
Sarah Shner-Nishmit
Polish author and historian Sarah Shner-Nishmit traveled constantly to evade capture during World War II, working at a labor camp and joining a partisan group. Shner made aliyah in 1947 and subsequently began her writing career, which included children’s books and historical research. She also helped found Kibbutz Lohamei ha-Getta’ot, where she lived until her death.
Mania Wilbushewitch Shochat
Zionist and socialist, radical and revolutionary, Mania Shochat left behind her labor activism in Russia to come to Palestine, where she initiated the country's first collective settlement and helped to establish the Jewish defense group Ha-Shomer.
Chana Shpitzer
Berta Singerman
Berta Singerman (1901-1998) was an Argentine actress and reciter of poetry, famous throughout the Ibero-American cultural world. Born in Russia to a family of traditional singers (chazanim), she immigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina, when she was four years old.
Michal Smoira-Cohn
Virginia Snitow
Virginia Levitt Snitow was a multifaceted woman who was a teacher, political activist, pre-Second Wave feminist, poet, writer and founder of US/Israel Women to Women. Ahead of her time in the fight for both civil and women’s rights, Snitow was unafraid to take unpopular stances when fighting for others.
Sociodemography
Over the last several decades, Jewish women attained significant achievement in the socio-economic sphere and played a leading role in maintaining Jewish continuity. In general, Jewish women are educated and participate in the labor force at higher rates than their non-Jewish counterparts.
Sport in Israel: Yishuv to the Early 21st Century
Women have been involved in sports in Israel since the Yishuv period, participating as teams, as individuals, and as coaches. Though more women are now participating in competitive sports, the field still reflects a masculine culture of power struggle and a desire to defeat the enemy. More recent political efforts in Israel have attempted to achieve women's equality in athletics.
Judith Steiner-Freud
As a Holocaust survivor, Judith Steiner-Freud fulfilled her faithful and influential mission. From the 1940s to the 2010s, she devoted herself to the calling of transforming nursing into an academic profession, raising the status of Israeli nurses, and promoting the welfare of Israeli society and other diverse population groups.
Eva Michaelis Stern
Eva Michaelis Stern was co-founder and director of the fundraising arm of the Youth Aliyah in Germany, and later the director of the Youth Aliyah office in London. Over the course of WWII, she helped more than 1000 children from countries all over Europe immigrate to Palestine.
Rivka Sturman
Suffrage in Palestine
Marie Syrkin
Marie Syrkin is best known as a polemicist for the State of Israel, whose keen arguments appeared in a wide range of publications for a period of almost seventy years. Her life touched almost every significant aspect of Jewish life in America and Europe in the twentieth century.
Hannah Szenes (Senesh)
Hannah Szenes has attained legendary status in the pantheon of Zionist history. After immigrating to Israel, Szenes agreed to participate in a military operation as a paratrooper. Hungarian authorities captured her and tortured her, but Szenes refused to talk. She was killed by a firing squad in 1944. Szenes mother published her daughter’s diary, poetry, and plays posthumously.