Education: Teachers
Ethiopian Jewish Women
Claire Fagin
Claire Fagin was a distinguished nursing educator, scholar, and dean, as well as the first woman interim president of the University of Pennsylvania and the first female to achieve this position in any Ivy League university. Her groundbreaking studies on parents and children changed hospital practices around the country.
Minna Regina Falk
Minna Regina Falk was a historian, writer, and professor who is remembered for her work on German history. She became the first female full professor in New York University’s history department in 1963.
Ruth Lewis Farkas
Ruth Lewis Farkas’ remarkable and varied career ranged from creating a retail chain that survived the Great Depression, to teaching sociology, to running international education initiatives. Her impressive and full life spanned many occupations: educator, sociologist, businesswoman, philanthropist, inventor, wife, and mother.
Sara Rivka Feder-Keyfitz
Nina Fefferman
Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan
Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan helped pioneer the scientific analysis of native Israeli flora and establish the study of botany and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Elaine Feinstein
Sandra Feldman
Sandra Feldman dedicated her career to protecting the rights of educators as the first woman president of both New York City’s Union Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Ruth First
Ruth First was a prolific writer and her penetrating investigative journalism exposed many of the harsh conditions under which the majority of South Africans lived. As various restrictions prevented her from continuing her work as a journalist Ruth First became more and more involved with the underground movement that was changing its tactics from protest to sabotage.
Edith Fisch
With great courage and dogged determination, Edith Lond Fisch became a lawyer, legal writer, and law professor despite severe physical limitations, educational prejudices, and sexual discrimination. Edith Fisch wrote an important book on evidence which became regularly cited by judges and used in law schools throughout New York.
Janette Fishenfeld
Janette Fishenfeld was a Brazilian author, columnist, and Zionist. In her works, she portrayed a nuanced, complex view of the Brazilian Jewish community and advocated for the Zionist cause.
Ruth E. Fizdale
Ruth E. Fizdale is credited with making modern social work a profession. Fizdale helped transform social work from a charitable volunteer activity to a paid profession, through her development of a fee-for-service, nonprofit counseling firm.
Vera Fonaroff
Vera Fonaroff was an extraordinary violinist and member of the all-female Olive Mead Quartet. Fonaroff immigrated to America from Kiev at age seven and debuted as a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra at age nine. She toured the world performing with the Olive Mead Quartet and as a soloist and eventually became the director of the violin at the New York Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School).
Sarah Feiga Meinkin Foner
Born into a family that encouraged her love of Jewish learning, Sarah Foner asked to learn Hebrew when she was only five years old and published her first novel in her twenties. During her lengthy writing career, Foner’s publications often reflected her interest in Jewish and women’s issues and centered notably independent female characters.
Selma Fraiberg
Selma Fraiberg was a psychoanalyst, author, and pioneer in the field of infant psychiatry. Her classic parenting book The Magic Years was the result of her years of research in the field of social work and her experiences as a stay-at-home mother.
Ray Frank
While her career was short-lived, Ray Frank remains significant as the first Jewish woman to preach from a pulpit in the United States. Her speeches often encouraged communal cooperation and tried to heal congregational disputes, and she notably gave an address at the first Jewish Women’s Congress in 1893.
Ellen Frankel
Myra Ava Freeman
The first Jew to be appointed lieutenant governor of a Canadian province and the first woman to hold the office in Nova Scotia, Myra Freeman was born in St. John, New Brunswick. Serving as Lieutenant Governor from 2000 until 2006, Freeman made her mandate the redefinition and democratization of the largely ceremonial office. In 2003 she was named First Honorary Captain (Navy) of Maritime Forces Atlantic, Her Majesty’s Canadian Forces.
Bernice Sains Freid
Recha Freier
German-born Recha Freier founded Youth Aliyah in 1933, which assisted in sending Jewish European teenagers to Palestine prior to World War II to be trained as agricultural pioneers on kibbutzim. Although she was responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jewish youth, Freier’s efforts were not officially acknowledged until 1975, when she was eighty-three years old.
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Else Frenkel-Brunswik was a social psychologist who is best known as a coauthor of The Authoritarian Personality.
Anna Freud
Miriam Freund-Rosenthal
