Jessie Sampter was an important Zionist activist, writer, and educator. As an influential member of Hadassah, the woman’s Zionist organization, she advocated for an inclusive vision of Zionism. Putting her ideas into practice, she moved to Palestine in 1919. Although Sampter’s disability and non-normative family structure did not align with Zionist ideals of strong, healthy bodies, she championed Zionism, though not always uncritically.

Literature by American Jewish women reflects historical trends in American Jewish life and indicates the changing issues facing writers who worked to position themselves as Americans, Jews, and women.

Forty-four percent of the approximately two million Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1886 and 1914 were women. Although these women were more politically active and autonomous than other immigrant women, dire economic circumstances constricted their lives. The hopes these immigrant women harbored for themselves were often transferred to the younger generation.

As the status and roles of women in American and Jewish life changed over the twentieth century, more and more American Jewish women turned to autobiographical writing as a means of documenting these changes and addressing questions of American, Jewish, and female identity. Jewish women created accounts of the immigrant experience, feminist or activist involvement, political and literary involvement, Holocaust survival narratives, as well as coming-of-age memoirs.