Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Jacqueline Koch Ellenson

A rabbi and community leader, Jacqueline Koch Ellenson has balanced her concern for both Israeli and American women as chair of the Hadassah Foundation and director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network.

Dr. Shulamith Reich Elster was known as the dean of Jewish education in America. She put Jewish day school education on the map during her ten-year tenure as Headmaster of the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School of Greater Washington. She then joined the prestigious Council for Initiatives in Jewish Education and concluded her long career as executive director of Hillel of Greater Washington.

Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs

The Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, or ELF, was a women's group inspired by the humanistic spirit of poet Emma Lazarus. The clubs worked through education and outreach to promote a progressive, secular Jewish heritage, as well as causes such as women's rights and the elimination of antisemitism and racism.

Emunah

Emunah was founded in 1935 under the leadership of Tova Sanhedrai-Goldreich. With its headquarters in Jerusalem, the organization aims to strengthen various sectors of the Israeli community. World Emunah aims to strengthen global commitment to Israel in communities abroad.

Katharine Engel

Katherine Engel helped the massive wave of European Jewish émigrés after World War II resettle and adjust to life in the United States. A renowned emigré expert and Jewish communal leader, Engel was also an outspoken critic of McCarthyism and a tireless advocate of immigration reform.

Judith G. Epstein

Judith Epstein led Hadassah through the tumultuous years of World War II, shifting its mission from building infrastructure in Palestine to establishing an internationally recognized Jewish state. During her tenure, Hadassah became the largest Zionist organization in the world.

Sara Riwka B’raz Erlich

An exemplar of the amalgamation of cultures in the Diaspora, Sara Riwka Erlich was a Brazilian-Jewish woman author and scientist whose writings drew from her work in psychiatry, her Jewish heritage, and her experiences in Brazil and Israel. The daughter of Polish immigrants, Erlich was born in Recife, Brazil, in 1935 and published memoirs, stories, poems, and essays in Portuguese until the early twenty-first century.

Tamar Eshel

A lifelong diplomat with a strong record of defending women’s rights and human rights, Tamar Eshel capped her career with two terms as a member of the Knesset from 1977 to 1984. In 1990 she was made an honorary citizen of Jerusalem in recognition of her service to Israel.

Ethiopian Jewish Women

Jewish women in Ethiopian villages were traditionally inactive in public and were in charge of the domestic sphere. After immigration to Israel, their lives changed dramatically, with some young women acquiring higher education and becoming high-profile career women.

Blanche Goldman Etra

Blanche Goldman Etra opened doors to independence and education for other women by founding women’s divisions of medical schools and women’s seminars on financial planning. A woman of high intelligence and great energy, characterized by a strong sense of integrity and morality, Etra set out to use her considerable talents for the betterment of the Jewish and general communities.

Jane Evans

Although she never became a rabbi, Jane Evans, Executive Director of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, became a powerful voice for women’s ordination within the Reform Movement.

Sara N. Evans

Sara Nachamson Evans served as the “first lady” of Durham, North Carolina, from 1951 to 1963. Known affectionately as “Miz Evans” by her friends and family, she was a prominent local, regional, and national leader of Hadassah.

Ruth Lewis Farkas

Ruth Lewis Farkas’ remarkable and varied career ranged from creating a retail chain that survived the Great Depression, to teaching sociology, to running international education initiatives. Her impressive and full life spanned many occupations: educator, sociologist, businesswoman, philanthropist, inventor, wife, and mother.

Sara Rivka Feder-Keyfitz

A childhood friend of Golda Meir, Sara Feder-Keyfitz grew up to be a significant Zionist and feminist leader in her own right. From 1951 to 1955, she served as the national president of Pioneer Women

Jessica Feingold

Jessica Feingold devoted more than forty-five years of her life to carrying out the goals of the Jewish Theological Seminary. She edited fifty books that originated at the institution, while also serving in many different administrative positions.

Marcia Marker Feld

The first woman to earn a PhD in urban planning from Harvard University, Marcia Marker Feld dedicated her career to teaching the next generation of urban planners to base their work on the needs and desires of a community instead of imposing their own visions on neighborhoods.

Sandra Feldman

Sandra Feldman dedicated her career to protecting the rights of educators as the first woman president of both New York City’s Union Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Mary Arbitman Fellman

Mary Arbitman Fellman was the first woman editor of the Omaha Jewish Press, led multiple Jewish organizations, and cofounded the Nebraska Jewish Historical Society. As a historian, a journalist, a community leader, and a matchmaker, she cared for the past, present, and future of the Jewish community in Omaha.

Ariel Sharon and Michal Modai, December 10, 2001

Feminism in Contemporary Israel

The first Israeli radical women’s movement was established in 1972. The 1973 Yom Kippur War then created an awareness of the meaning of the gendered role division between men and women, and soon after the war, a choir of voices, organizations, and movements began to fight for feminist causes. In the twenty-first century, the feminist landscape expanded, but the feminist field remained highly divided.

Sheila Finestone

Senator Sheila Finestone was an important figure in Canadian parliamentary history, founding the Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians for the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She took up issues including human rights and served as president of the Quebec Federation of Women. A cornerstone of Canadian Jewish history, Finestone dedicated her life to advocacy and activism.

Telephone Switchboard Operators, circa 1914

Rose Finkelstein

A lifelong labor activist, Rose Finkelstein organized pay raises and better hours for women workers throughout New England.

Shulamith Firestone

Shulamith Firestone was one of the founders of radical feminism in the United States. At age 25, she published The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, which brought together the dialectical materialism of Marx and the psychoanalytic insights of Freud in an effort to develop an analysis of women’s oppression that was inclusive of the dimensions of class and race.

Edith Fisch

With great courage and dogged determination, Edith Lond Fisch became a lawyer, legal writer, and law professor despite severe physical limitations, educational prejudices, and sexual discrimination. Edith Fisch wrote an important book on evidence which became regularly cited by judges and used in law schools throughout New York.

Jane Brass Fischel

An outstanding communal leader in New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community in the early twentieth century, Jane Brass Fischel was a generous philanthropist and active participant in Jewish communal activities.

Modern France

From the French Revolution to the twenty-first century, Jewish women in France have undergone radical legal, political, cultural, and religious transformations. Seizing upon the increasing number of opportunities available to them, both as Jews and as women, Jewish women have left their marks on all areas of French society.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Politics and Government: Organizations and Institutions