Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Henrietta Franklin

Henrietta Franklin (née Montagu) was a leading British educationist and suffragist and a supporter the Liberal Judaism movement, pioneered by her sister Lily Montagu.

Stella Heinsheimer Freiberg helped found the Reform Movement’s National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods and pushed for the major American Reform organizations to join the World Union for Progressive Judaism. As NFTS president in the 1920s, she advocated for women’s greater participation in the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

Lillian Freiman

Lillian Freiman was unquestionably the most prominent Jewish woman in Canada in the interwar period. Freiman was exemplary for her degree of independent social activism and devotion to an array of Jewish and non-Jewish social causes.

Miriam Freund-Rosenthal

Miriam Freund-Rosenthal brought her passion for art and history to her leadership of Hadassah. Among other leadership positions, she served as the national president from 1956 to 1960.

Jaclyn Friedman

Jaclyn Friedman voiced new possibilities for sex-positive feminism and a rejection of rape culture as editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.

Ida Weis Friend

Ida Weis Friend worked to improve the lives of those in her Southern Jewish community on many levels. Her leadership in Jewish organizations, such as Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women, and her political activism, such as her time as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and Commission on Interracial Cooperation, earned her many honors and accolades.

Ruth Bernard Fromenson

Ruth Bernard Fromenson was an early twentieth-century Zionist and Jewish communal worker who volunteered extensively within Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Bird Stein Gans

Bird Stein Gans was among the first generation of women involved in what was then the new field of parent education. She served as president of the Society for the Study of Child Nature for many years, significantly expanding its membership and impact.

Deena Gerber

A seasoned social worker and executive director of Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans, Deena Gerber helped residents put their lives back together in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Gabrielle Giffords

A “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrat with a gift for cultivating friendships and alliances on both sides of the aisle, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fought to recover from a 2011 shooting and became a gun control activist.

Melissa Gilbert

After a highly successful decade as the lead on Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert defied the odds for child actors by becoming a Hollywood power-broker as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001–2005.

Blanche Gilman

A native New Yorker, Blanche Pearl Gilman contributed her energy and resources to a variety of religious, health, social, and activist organizations. Gilman devoted her career to bringing diverse groups together, from her interfaith work to her leadership in the Pro-Falasha (Ethiopian Jewry) Committee.

Rosa Ginossar

Rosa Ginossar’s determined lobbying of the British Authority in Palestine won women the right to practice law in Israel.

Ida Ginsburg

Despite her short life, suffragist Ida Ginsburg made an impact on her community as founding president of the Jewish Women’s Club of Temple Beth El, which became the Detroit chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.

Elizabeth Glaser

Elizabeth Glaser’s fight to save her HIV-positive children led to her creation of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation to save children worldwide from the devastation of AIDS.

Gertrude Glogower

As children were evacuated from Germany on Kindertransports in the 1930s, Gertrude Glogower worked to help them build new lives in America.

Katie Gluckmann

Katie Gluckmann was a prominent leader in South Africa’s Zionist movement of the early to mid-twentieth century. She was elected to the executive board of the Zionist Conference every year from 1928 to 1949, and she helped create the South African Zionist Council when male Zionists fought the creation of a South African branch of the Women’s International Zionist Organization in the 1930s.

Doris Bauman Gold

Doris Bauman Gold was motivated by her long participation in Jewish organizational life to found Biblio Press, dedicated to educating Jewish women about their own history and accomplishments. Through Biblio Press, Gold published more than 27 general audience books that address and illuminate the culture, history, experiences, and spiritual yearnings of Jewish women.

Miri Gold

In a landmark case in 2012, Miri Gold became the first non-Orthodox rabbi to have her salary paid by the Israeli government.

Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber

Throughout a career limited by her gender, her religion, and her marital status, physicist Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber helped ensure other women scientists would not face the same hurdles.

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was a potent voice of anarchism in North America and Europe in the early twentieth century, and her controversial beliefs made her many powerful enemies. Yet even after enduring many contentious interactions with law enforcement, Goldman continued to speak, write, and teach on freedom and individual rights, inspiring her followers to question authority at every turn.

Josephine Clara Goldmark

Josephine Goldmark laid the groundwork for transforming American labor laws by amassing data that forced lawmakers to confront the painful realities of factory work. At the National Consumers’ League, she compiled data on working conditions, wrote articles, led campaigns for legislative reform, and recruited her brother-in-law, Louis D. Brandeis, to argue for those reforms in court.

Henriette Goldschmidt

At a time when women were banned from universities, Henriette Benas Goldschmidt championed women’s education as a crucial building block of a healthy society. She co-founded the General Association of German Women in 1865 and served on the association’s board until 1906, advocating women’s education for the betterment of society. In 1911 she created her crowning achievement, the Leipzig College for Women, Germany’s first women’s college.

Edna Goldsmith

Edna Goldsmith was a driving force in the establishment of the Ohio Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. A founder of the federation, she served as its first president from 1918 to 1923 and then as honorary president until her death. Throughout her life, Goldsmith was active in welfare organizations, concentrating particularly in the educational field.

Rebecca Fischel Goldstein

The quintessential rebbetzin [rabbi’s wife], Rebecca Fischel Goldstein was a prime mover in her husband’s drive to build the Institutional Synagogue and make it a center of Jewish life in Harlem. As a consummate volunteer leader, she strove to make women a dominant force in organized Jewish life.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Politics and Government: Organizations and Institutions