Martha Schlamme was an internationally known singer who rose to prominence after the Second World War due to her phenomenally large repertoire and ability to sing in multiple languages. Schlamme studied piano in Austria before the war and had a successful post-war career in England, singing on BBC radio, before immigrating to the United States and singing in nightclubs and concert halls across the country.

Ernestine Schumann-Heink was a prominent opera singer whose career spanned from the time she was seventeen into her 70s. Born in Lieben in 1861, Schumann-Heink rose to fame at the Hamburg Opera, and became a Metropolitan Opera star with a repertory of 150 roles. She was known as “The Nation’s Beloved Mother” for singing on weekly radio programs, while raising 7 children. 

A talented singer/actor and superb comedian, Vivienne Segal enjoyed a lengthy career. She was best known for her role as Vera Simpson, the older woman in love with the “heel,” Joey (played by Gene Kelly), in the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey.

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.

Beverly Sills was a trailblazing opera singer who, after a robust singing career at the New York City Opera Company (NYCO) and the Metropolitan Opera House, became the first female director of the NYCO, and the first female chair of the Lincoln Center board. Sills defied the odds in her career accomplishments while raising two children with disabilities and being actively involved with several charitable organizations.

Novelist and Hollywood screenwriter Tess Slesinger was born in New York on July 16, 1905. She published several works, including: The Unpossessedand Time: The Present. Slesinger died of cancer at age thirty-nine before the premiere of one of her final works, the acclaimed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Johanna Spector was an influential ethnomusicologist whose writings, recordings, and film projects documented the music of little-studied Jewish communities from around the world. After surviving the Holocaust, Spector earned her doctorate, founded the ethnomusicology department at the Jewish Theological Seminary, established the Society for the Preservation of Samaritan Culture, and served as president of the Asian Music Society. 

Florine Stettheimer's paintings are lively, diarylike accounts of her life and acute examinations of upper-class ways in New York between the wars. Her decorative style offered an alternative to prevailing modes of contemporary modernist painting. Through her work, she criticized the high-mindedness of modern art and the course of modern life. 

Sylvia Blagman Syms was a gifted jazz singer who earned praise from Billie Holliday, Frank Sinatra, and Duke Ellington. In 1949, she was discovered by Mae West, who became a significant teacher and influence on Syms’s intimate storytelling performing style. Sym’s went on to record fifteen major albums and tour the United States and World before dying of a heart attack. 

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.

Vaudeville legend and Broadway star Sophie Tucker defied convention with her saucy comic banter and music. Tucker became famous internationally for her singing performances and delighted audiences throughout America and Europe with her rendition of “My Yiddishe Momme.” Tucker was proud of her Jewish identity and created the Sophie Tucker Foundation, which supported various actors’ guilds, hospitals, synagogues, and Israeli youth villages.

Pianist Rosalyn Tureck toured the world as a consummate interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Tureck made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1935 before touring in Europe, South America, Israel, Turkey, South Africa, and Australia. In 1994 she founded the Oxford-based Tureck Bach Research Institute.

Jewish women in vaudeville helped to cultivate a unique American Jewish identity. Headliners Sophie Tucker, Belle Baker, and Fanny Brice were prominent, as were performers such as Nan Halperin and Nora Bayes. Molly Picon was a star of Yiddish theater, and Sarah Bernhardt a star of the stage. The reign of Jewish female vaudevillians ended in the 1930s, but their voices continue to be heard.