Politics and Government: Civil Service
Janet Jagan
Geri M. Joseph
Geri M. Joseph, a pioneer in the acceptance of women in journalism and politics, was a prize-winning newspaper reporter, an American Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Carter administration, and the first woman to be elected to several business boards in Minnesota.
Senta Josephthal
Senta Josephthal was German-born Zionist activist who was particularly influential in the kibbutz movement. She trained and recruited young Germans to the movement and represented the kibbutz movement in national organizations and political arenas after emigrating to Palestine.
Rachel Kagan (Cohen)
Helena Kagan
Helena Kagan, a pioneer of pediatric medicine in pre-State Palestine, is known to this day as the children’s doctor of Jerusalem, the city where she settled following her aliyah in 1914. Kagan tended to generations of children—Jews, Muslims, and Christians—saving many of them from sickness and death.
Dorothy C. Kahn
During the Great Depression, Dorothy C. Kahn helped pioneer social work as a service provided by the government to all who needed it. Kahn developed, implemented, and advocated for social welfare programs and policies whose underlying principles upheld her deepest beliefs about what social welfare could mean in a democracy.
Florence Prag Kahn
Ita Kalish
Ita Kalish was a Zionist activist, Jewish Agency employee, Israeli civil servant, journalist, and memoir writer. Born into the Warka Hasidic dynasty, Kalish rejected her upbringing and went on to write nuanced portrayals and female-centered literature about the Hasidic community. Kalish’s memoirs are a rich source on the inner life of the Hasidic courts of Poland at the turn of the twentieth century and center around her own and her friends’ journey to leave what they considered the stifling atmosphere of the Hasidic world.
Yehudit Karp
Rahel Katznelson
Rhoda Kaufman
Judith S. Kaye
Judith S. Kaye was the first woman to serve as chief judge of the state of New York and chief judge of the Court of Appeals of the state of New York.
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.
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.
Ida Klaus
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.
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.
Rebekah Bettelheim Kohut
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook
Phyllis A. Kravitch
Phyllis A. Kravitch was the third woman circuit court judge in the United States. One of the first female trial lawyers in the South, Kravitch became the first woman president of the Savannah Bar Association in 1973 and served as the first woman superior court judge in Georgia. She also established a rape crisis center and shelter for women survivors of domestic violence.