Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Mollie Slott

During a 56-year tenure with the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate, Mollie Slott guided the daily operation of a nationwide news distribution service that, in addition to the comics, included columns of advice, sports, politics, and serialized fiction.

Chava Slucka-Kesten

Chava Slucka-Kesten started teaching in Warsaw before World War II and continued her career through the war in Moscow. After the war she became an author and sustained her political involvement. Writing from the perspective of a politically engaged woman, Slucka-Kesten offers a unique glimpse into pre- and post-war Jewish life in Poland’s cities and villages, as well as into the early years of the State of Israel.

Michal Smoira-Cohn

One of Israel’s best-known musicologists, Michal Smoira-Cohn was involved in innumerable musical features and events and was a leading figure in Israel’s cultural life.

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.

Emily Solis-Cohen

Emily Solis-Cohen was a prominent poet, historian, and philanthropist. As a community leader, she conducted American Jewish historical research and used this knowledge to publish both poetic and nonfiction works that celebrated the lives of Jewish Americans, and especially Jewish women.

Judith Solis-Cohen

Judith Solis-Cohen had a prolific literary career that covered a wide range of topics, from clothing to education to women’s suffrage. She was also active in Philadelphia’s Jewish intellectual circles and introduced Jewish literature to the blind.

Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit’s experiences of sexism became the inspiration for both her 2014 book Men Explain Things to Me and the popular term “mansplaining.”

Rosa Sonneschein

Rosa Sonneschein created and edited the American Jewess, the first English-language magazine for Jewish women in the United States, where she advocated for the expansion of women’s roles in the synagogue and the Jewish community and expressed her strong support for Zionism.

Alice Hyneman Sotheran

Alice Hyneman Sotheran, author, lecturer, and reviewer for a variety of magazines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wrote about women’s work and women’s issues.

Bertha Kaplan Spector

Born in a Russian shtetl, Bertha Kaplan Spector became a bacteriologist whose authoritative research helped to control an epidemic of amebic dysentery during the Chicago Century of Progress World’s Fair. Her work contributed to a better understanding of the disease, as well as to new standards of hygiene.

Bella Spewack

Bella Spewack, in collaboration with her husband Sam, is known for writing some of the most memorable works of musical theater history, including Leave It to Me (1938) and Kiss Me Kate (1948). The Spewacks also wrote screenplays for several 1940s Hollywood hits, such as Weekend at the Waldorf. The couple contributed to many Jewish organizations and founded the Spewack Sports Club for the Handicapped in Ramat Gan, Israel.

Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Spielrein, a pioneer in the early years of psychoanalysis who made significant contributions to the field, was the first person to propose the thesis about instinctual life, which Freud later adapted. Until recently, Spielrein’s accomplishments and contributions were overlooked and forgotten.

Susan Stamberg

Susan Stamberg, the first full-time woman anchor of a national nightly news broadcast, played an important role in making National Public Radio (NPR) a news organization that offered pioneering opportunities to women journalists. Her half-century career at NPR opened the way for other women by demonstrating competence, originality, and compassion in reporting and interviewing.

Alicia Steimberg

Fiction writer Alicia Steimberg (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1933-2012) garnered important literary prizes. Her work as a translator was awarded by the Konex Foundation and she served the government as Director of Books of the Secretariat of Culture.

Mollie Steimer

Mollie Steimer earned nationwide attention for her refusal to compromise her anarchist beliefs during the widely publicized 1918 trial in which she was sentenced to prison under the Sedition Act. Later deported to Russia and then to Germany, Steimer continued her anarchist activities throughout her life.

Hannah Stein

Hannah Stein’s life was devoted to advocating for the rights of disadvantaged women and their children. She served for 14 years as the executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women and worked in cooperation with other advocacy groups such as the National Council of Negro Women and the United Church Women to establish the Women in Community Service (WICS) coalition.

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem was a leader of second-wave feminism and the co-founder of Ms. Magazine, the first feminist periodical with a national readership. As a journalist and spokesperson, she mobilized a generation of women to advance the cause of women’s liberation. Steinem has worked tirelessly all her life as an advocate for change.

Jewish Gender Stereotypes in the United States

Stereotypes of Jews have existed from their arrival in the New World to the present. Jews were portrayed as greedy, unscrupulous, and unrefined. However, Jews also created stereotypes about one another based on class, gender, and religion. Specifically, the Ghetto Girl, Jewish Mother, JAP, and others reflected tensions between genders about the place of Jews in the economy and culture.

Lina Stern and Members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

Lina Solomonovna Stern (Shtern)

Lina Shtern, biochemist and physician, was the first woman professor at the University of Geneva and the first woman named to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Born in Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, she returned to the Soviet Union out of political idealism. A member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, she was a victim of postwar repressions that targeted both scientists and Jews.

Edith Mendel Stern

A prolific writer as well as an activist in the mental health field, Edith Stern authored four novels and many guides for laypeople on the subjects of mental illness, aging, and differently abled children.

Elizabeth Stern

Elizabeth Stern was an American-Jewish writer, essayist, and journalist. She achieved success within a number of realms and balanced a number of competing roles: fiction writer, journalist, social worker, wife, mother, and an American woman leading a secular life who examined the importance of cultural heritage.

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.

Rose Pastor Stokes

Rose Pastor Stokes was called the “Cinderella of the sweatshops” when, as a young reporter, she met and married millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes. Stokes became increasingly radical, adopting antiwar and pro-abortion stands, becoming a union organizer, and joining the Communist Party.

Tavy Stone

Fashion writer Tavy Stone reached the pinnacle of her career when she was chosen as one of only seven American reporters allowed to cover the wedding of Lady Diana and Prince Charles.

Manya Gordon Strunsky

Manya Gordon Strunsky was a socialist activist and a respected writer on political and social issues. Strunsky was also instrumental in bringing Jewish immigrants from czarist Russia to America and helping them to become settled.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Media: Journalism