Activism: LGBTQIA Rights
Alicia Garza
Gluck (b. Hannah Gluckstein)
A self-proclaimed individualist, Gluck painted outside abstract contemporary trends. Instead, Gluck naturalistically painted subjects reflecting her personal life and social circle, making her a unique character in the modern British art scene. Gluck was also proud of her queer, androgynous identity, which she infused into her artwork.
Jane Harman
The child of a refugee from Nazi Germany, Jane Harman began her career in law. After being elected in 1992, she spent 20 years as a vocal advocate of Israel, pro-choice legislation, and women’s issues as a Representative for California’s 36th Congressional District. After leaving Congress for the private sector, Harman held leadership positions in several prominent political organizations.
Susan Harris
Pearl Hart
Pearl M. Hart was a pioneering attorney, activist, and educator. She devoted her life to defending the legal rights of the vulnerable and oppressed, especially women, children, immigrants, and gay men and lesbians. Her work in Chicago was instrumental in the development of the LGBTQ community there in the middle of the twentieth century.
Elizabeth Slade Hirschfeld
Shulamit Izen
Jazz Jennings
Joan Nestle
Joan Nestle is an activist, writer, and educator known for her work on lesbian identity, sexuality, culture, and history, among other topics. Nestle also co-founded the New York-based Lesbian Herstory Archives, the largest lesbian-focused archive in the world, in 1975. Her essays and stories, which she began writing in the late 1970s, have been published in three anthologies.
Ilana Kaufman
Clare Kinberg
Idit Klein
Sharon Kleinbaum
Irena Klepfisz
Irena Klepfisz is a poet whose legacy is key to the history of Jewish, American and lesbian literature. Klepfisz is also a pioneer of the recovery of Jewish and Yiddish women’s writing, to which she has dedicated translations, research, teaching, and activism.
Ellen Kushner
Joy Ladin
Joy Ladin is the Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College, a prolific poet, and a central figure in transgender theology. Her numerous written works reframe classical Jewish theological questions from a transfeminist perspective.
Margaret Lazarus
Lesbianism
Lesbians and women’s same gender-loving has a long history in Jewish life, dating back to ancient times. Since the 1980s, particularly in the United States, Jewish lesbian thinking and activism has become a part of all facets of Jewish life.
Judith Light
Jeanne Manford
Martha Ackelsberg
Martha Ackelsberg is a Jewish feminist lesbian anarchist activist, community leader, and academic. She is a leading scholar of anarchism and of anarchist women’s organizations of the Spanish Civil War. A founder and/or early leading visionary in pivotal United States Jewish developments, Ackelsberg has been a key voice shaping feminist, lesbian, and havurah contributions to twentieth- and twenty-first century Jewish life.
Nicolette Mason
Idina Menzel
Bette Midler
Bette Midler went from canning pineapples at a factory in Honolulu to starring in over 20 films, releasing two dozen records, and touring the world with record-breaking live concert performances. Midler got her start at a gay bathhouse in New York, where she developed the campy and confident persona “The Divine Miss M.” Her career in show business spans decades, old and new media, and musical genres.