A member of the English Rothschild family who married the Earl of Rosebery, a future Prime Minister of England, Hannah was a devoted wife, mother, and philanthropist.

Lady Louise Rothschild came from a distinguished line of Anglo-Jewish aristocracy. Using her unrivaled social status, she founded the first independent Jewish women’s philanthropic associations in 1840, inspiring upper- and middle-class Anglo-Jewish women to venture outside the home and into public life for the first time.

Constance Rothschild Lady Battersea was a link between English and Jewish feminism, as she convinced upper- and middle-class Anglo-Jewish women to join English feminist groups such as the National Union of Women Workers and encouraged them to create Jewish women’s organizations, such as the Union of Jewish Women and the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and women, which allied themselves with the women’s movement.

Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft played an instrumental role in saving the lives of fellow concentration camp inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau and then at Bergen-Belsen. Rosensaft was later involved in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

An influential philanthropist and social activist, Etta Lasker Rosensohn focused most of her energy on Jewish and Zionist affairs in New York City. Her great passion was Hadassah, where she served on the national board for more than two decades and as the national president.

Esther Leah Medalie Ritz defended human rights throughout the myriad conflicts of the twentieth century, from speaking out against fascism in the 1930s to participating in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in the 1980s.

Elise Richter could not pursue a university degree until she was in her 30s, when she became part of the first group of women to study at the University of Vienna. She received doctoral and post-doctoral degrees and subsequently taught classes on various Romance languages while publishing extensively, making important contributions to the field of historical and comparative linguistics.

Despite the fact that women did not hold a high status in prewar French society, Jewish women played a disproportionately large role in the French resistance against the Nazis. Hundreds of women protected their fellow Jews, especially Jewish children, from the Nazis.

A life-long Montreal resident, Dorothy Reitman is a distinguished community volunteer involved with organizations dedicated to women and Canadian Jews. She has received numerous awards honoring her as an advocate for women’s equality and empowerment, and in 1986 she became the first woman president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Religious Zionism, distinguished from the secular Zionists by its religious nature and from the ultra-Orthodox community by its Zionism, consisted of two major movements in the Yishuv: the Mizrachi and the Ha-Po’el ha-Mizrachi, a trade union. Women created their own organizations within these movements but distinguished themselves from the men through their support of women and their interests.

Puah Rakovsky dedicated her life to working towards the empowerment of Jews, particularly of Jewish women. She was a revolutionary woman, taking on important roles as an educator, translator, organizer of women, and an early socialist Zionist.

Hortense Powdermaker explored the balance of involvement and detachment necessary for participant-observer fieldwork in cultural anthropology, stressing the ability to “step in and out of society.” Her secular Jewish identity was apparently a factor in learning this skill, exemplified in an academic career that included thirty years of college teaching and the writing of five major books based on widely diverse fieldwork studies.

A Communist activist before and during World War II, Olga Benário Prestes’ political activities led her to the highest ranks of the Communist Youth International. Her relationship with Brazilian Communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes, who was part of a failed coup, led to her deportation to Germany, where she was gassed at Bernburg in 1942. Although her name is not well known in the United States, Olga is famous in Brazil and was considered a great heroine in the German Democratic Republic.

Josephine Wertheim Pomerance spearheaded efforts for nuclear arms control as founder and head of the Committee for World Development and World Disarmament (CWDWD). She co-founded the CWDWD in 1950, helped to finance the organization, and led its efforts to convince Americans to support global development and oppose nuclear weapons.