Israel

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Founding of Hadassah: The Women's Zionist Organization of America

February 24, 1912

On February 24, 1912, 38 women gathered at Temple Emanu-El in New York City to create a new organization called Daughters of Zion.

Death of Henrietta Szold

February 13, 1945

Failing health had brought Henrietta Szold, in July 1943, to the Henrietta Szold Nursing School on the grounds of the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

Henrietta Szold

Henrietta Szold was an educator, essayist, editor, social and communal worker, Zionist organizer, and politician. She was the founder of Hadassah, which became the largest and most powerful Zionist group in the United States. Szold played important roles in organizing the Yishuv’s infrastructure and Israel’s modern medical services. She created Hadassah, the women’s organization devoted to aiding Israel, which oversaw organizing and fundraising efforts in America for the Yishuv, and served as a member of the early Knesset, organizing the Yishuv’s infrastructure and organizing Israel’s modern medical services.

Marie Syrkin

Marie Syrkin is best known as a polemicist for the State of Israel, whose keen arguments appeared in a wide range of publications for a period of almost seventy years. Her life touched almost every significant aspect of Jewish life in America and Europe in the twentieth century.

Bertha Singer Schoolman

Bertha Singer Schoolman gave a lifetime of service to the betterment of Jewish education and the cause of Youth Aliyah, the movement to bring Jewish youth out of Germany to live in children’s villages in Israel. Schoolman risked her life under fire to help bring convoys to and from kibbutzim.

Gail Rubin

In her photos of Israeli nature, Rubin focused her attention on diverse objects, including birds, water buffalo, butterflies, mountains, and bodies of water. Her career ended tragically at age 39 when she was murdered by terrorists on a beach near Ma’agan Michael.

Peace Movement in the United States

Throughout the twentieth century, Jewish women played a major role in American peace organizations and movements. Jewish women have also been in prominent roles advocating for peace between Israel and Palestine, both in the Knesset and with private organizations.

Nursing as a Female Profession in Palestine (1918-1948)

Nursing was a well-respected profession for Jewish women in Palestine, until doctors and nurses clashed about the proper level of education for nurses in the 1930s. Despite the challenges women faced in the medical field, they contributed greatly during times of war and violence before the founding of Israel.

Golda Meir

A direct, no-nonsense politician who participated in Israel’s governance from its independence onward, Golda Meir served as Israel’s first female Prime Minister through the turbulent period of the Yom Kippur War.

Fanny E. Holtzmann

Fanny E. Holtzmann made waves as a lawyer for stars of Broadway and Hollywood as well as luminaries of world politics such as the Romanoffs.

Histadrut

Histadrut (the General Federation of Workers) was founded in 1920 to bring together Jewish workers who had recently arrived in Palestine. Though the organization proclaimed equal treatment and opportunities for women and men workers, the reality was not so simple.

Haganah

Women played many different roles in the operations of the Haganah. Though their stories are frequently excluded from the story of the Jewish paramilitary organization in British Mandate Palestine, women served as caretakers and nurses, as well as fighters and commanders.

Rose Luria Halprin

Rose Luria Halprin helped lead Zionist organizations through the tumultuous period of Israeli independence and helped shape international opinions of Zionism. She served twice as the national president of Hadassah.

Hadassah in the United States

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, has been the largest Zionist organization in the world, one of the largest American women’s volunteer organizations, American Jews’ largest mass-membership organization, and probably the most active Jewish women’s organization ever.

Aliza Greenblatt

Deep love for the Jewish people informed the life of Aliza Greenblatt, an American Yiddish poet and Zionist leader in women’s organizations. Greenblatt was among the first to organize the American Jewish community and raise funds toward the establishment of a Jewish national home. Many of her poems, widely published in the Yiddish press, were also set to music.

Aviva Uri

Among art lovers in Israel and in the inner circles of artists, Aviva Uri is considered a legend who shaped generations of artists in Israel. Born in Safed, Uri was known for her abstract scribbles that expressed anxiety and distress, as well as her later depictions of mourning, death, and destruction. In 1952, she received the Dizengoff Prize and in 1957 she exhibited her work at the Tel Aviv Museum. 

Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Erez Israel

The Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Erez Israel was founded in 1919 by a nonpartisan group of Jewish women who perceived women’s rights as being fundamentally entwined with the Zionist vision. After a long battle with the Orthodox parties, the Union won the support of the National Assembly in 1926 when the Assembly declared that women would have equal voting and participation rights.

Dvora Tomer

Dvora Tomer had a career in the Israeli military for three decades, during which time she worked to expand women’s opportunities in the Israel Defense Forces to include a wider range of roles and fairer treatment.

Jennie Tourel

Opera singer Jennie Tourel’s subtle and expressive performances made each song she sang into a miniature tone drama that she shaped as closely as possible to the composer’s intention.

Sarah Thon

Sarah Thon was born in Lvov, Galicia. She married Yaakov Thon and they settled in Ottoman Palestine at the end of 1907. She became the representative of the Women’s Association for Cultural Work in Palestine and established five workshops for girls. She was also influential in the establishment of the girls’ farm at Kinneret and in the fight for Jewish women’s suffrage.

Hannah Thon

Hannah (Helena) Thon was a social worker, journalist and editor, a student of Israel’s ethnic communities, and one of the leading figures in the women’s voluntary social-welfare organizations during the Yishuv (pre-State) period in Israel.

Anna Ticho

From the moment she arrived in the city in 1912 until the day she died in 1980, Anna Ticho lovingly portrayed Jerusalem in paint, pen and ink, charcoal, pastel, and pencil. Her works have been shown around Israel and abroad, and she has received numerous honorary titles and awards. She bequeathed her home, Ticho House, to the Israel Museum to be used as a site for exhibitions and cultural events.

Yemima Tchernovitz-Avidar

Yemima Tchernovitz-Avidar was a passionate educator and author of Hebrew literature. Her creative works became classics of modern Hebrew children’s literature, and she has been awarded numerous accolades for her contributions to Jewish literature.

Hannah Szenes (Senesh)

Hannah Szenes has attained legendary status in the pantheon of Zionist history. After immigrating to Israel, Szenes agreed to participate in a military operation as a paratrooper. Hungarian authorities captured her and tortured her, but Szenes refused to talk. She was killed by a firing squad in 1944. Szenes mother published her daughter’s diary, poetry, and plays posthumously.

Suffrage in Palestine

The fight for women’s suffrage in Palestine was a fierce one, pitting determined women activists with international support against the obstinance of ultra-Orthodox groups from the Old Yishuv. In 1920, fourteen women were elected to the National Assembly, and after years of thwarted efforts to revoke women’s suffrage, the 1926 Assembly decreed full equal rights for women in all areas of civil, economic, and political life.

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