Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Joey Soloway

Activist, director, and creator of groundbreaking and critically acclaimed series such as Transparent, I Love Dick, and others (and writer for series such as Six Feet Under and United States of Tara), Joey Soloway (previously known as Jill) is also a social activist, considered one of the strongest advocates for women, queer, and nonbinary identities in Hollywood. Soloway identifies as nonbinary, and Judaism, feminism, and modern Jewish culture are resonant themes in their work.

Judy Somberg

Judy Somberg’s work with the Sister Cities Project in El Salvador helped locals return to their villages after the military takeover in 1987 and freed eleven people who had been “disappeared.”

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.

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Her work across cultural criticism, fiction, drama, and film, as well as her public persona, made her an icon of the New York intelligentsia whose writing on photography, illness, and art continually inspire engagement and debate.

Gil Marcus, Nelson Mandela, and Michael Katz, December 1990

South Africa

Over time, Jewish women’s status and achievements have risen within the South African Jewish community and the wider society. White Jewish women used their historically privileged position (unprecedented for Jews) to assist those suffering from the oppressions of apartheid, notwithstanding democratization since 1994. Women have been prominent in more recent innovations and initiatives, so that even in the face of demographic decline, the community exhibits paradoxical vitality and resilience.

Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero was a figurative artist concerned with difference and the representation of the body. Rejecting postwar trends towards Pop art and abstract impressionism, Spero co-founded the AIR (Artists in Residence) Gallery in 1972, the first cooperative gallery of women artists. Spero also created a mosaic for the Lincoln Center subway station called “Artemis, Acrobats, Divas, and Dancers.”

Marcia Cohn Spiegel

Marcia Cohn Spiegel was one of the first to speak out about alcoholism and domestic violence in the Jewish community, using her own experience to help others.

Flora Langerman Spiegelberg

Flora Langerman Spiegelberg made substantial innovative contributions to civic welfare and Jewish life. She was a nineteenth-century settler of New Mexico and a twentieth-century progressive reformer in New York City who fought for public sanitation regulations and better working conditions for garbage collectors.

Spirituality in the United States

Jewish women’s spirituality developed historically within the confines of a patriarchal tradition. Over time, feminists have developed rituals and created spaces that honor the unique experiences of women.

Toba Spitzer

Toba Spitzer became the first openly gay head of a rabbinic organization in 2007 when she became president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.

Constance Amberg Sporborg

Constance Amberg Sporborg was a career clubwoman who dedicated her life to the advancement of women’s rights, immigrant settlement, international organizations, and world peace. Working in New York City in the early twentieth century, Sporborg aided both Jews and gentiles.

Emmy Eisenberg, arms linked with two men, all wearing boots, stockings, and short pants/a shorter skirt

Sports in Austria 1918-1938

This article gives an overview of the participation of Jewish women in Austrian sport from the Habsburg monarchy to the present day. Drawing on selected biographies of sportswomen and functionaries, and with a regional focus on the capital city of Vienna, it explores the double relationship between female emancipation and Jewish self-assertion in an environment that had long been male-dominated and anti-Semitic.

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.

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American modernist writer, an international celebrity, and an artistic iconoclast. With her companion Alice B. Toklas, she lived in Paris for most of her life. An impressive modern art collection hung on the walls of their home. Besides poetry and plays, Stein wrote innovative fiction, essays on writing and art, and two memoirs, The Biography of Alice B. Toklas and Everybody’s Autobiography, that chronicled her life, career, and famous friends.

Linda Stein

In crafting sculptures that incorporate concepts of weaponry, armor, and the female form, Linda Stein has found new ways to consider issues of power, violence, and protection.

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.

Pauline Perlmutter Steinem

Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, like her granddaughter Gloria Steinem, was an ardent activist for women’s rights, especially suffrage. She was also involved in Jewish activism, serving many local Jewish organizations and devoting a considerable amount of her income to send Jews to Israel just before World War II began.

Catherine Steiner-Adair

Catherine Steiner-Adair has worked with girls on eating disorders and self-esteem to transform their beliefs that their value comes only from their appearance, instead helping them develop pride in their whole selves.

Bessie Cleveland Stern

Bessie Cleveland Stern is most recognized for her work as statistician for the Maryland Board of Education. She collected and interpreted data about the Maryland school system from 1921 through 1948, and school officials turned to her for information to support appropriations measures and proposed changes in state laws relating to the schools.

Edith Rosenwald Stern

Edith Rosewald Stern used her family’s wealth for her community’s good. In New Orleans, she helped fund schools to offer her children and their peers a progressive education. Stern also fought to clean up voting rights in the city, organizing voter registration, auditing voter rolls, and bringing voting machines into high schools to educate future voters.

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.

Debbie Stoller

Debbie Stoller has been hailed as a pioneer of “girlie feminism” for reviving interest in traditionally feminine activities like knitting through Bust and Stitch ‘n Bitch.

Hannah Mayer Stone

A pioneering physician and advocate of birth control, Hannah Stone defied both New York City police and the federal government in her efforts to make contraception legal and available to American women in the early twentieth century.

Tova Strasberg-Cohen

During her tenure as a justice on the Israeli Supreme Court, Tova Strasberg-Cohen became known for her groundbreaking decisions regarding civil law and women's equality.

Dorothy Straus

Over the course of her life, Dorothy Straus was active as a lawyer, college lecturer, Democrat, and member of the League of Women Voters and several municipal and state government committees. Straus demonstrated a commitment to efficient, socially active government policies, especially regarding the protection and advancement of women.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Activism