Marcia Judith Prince Freedman, the American-Israeli feminist philosopher and writer, Lit. "assembly." The 120-member parliament of the State of Israel.Knesset member, and life-long activist for women's rights and peace, was born in Newark, New Jersey, on May 17, 1938, to Phillip and Anne Prince. Her brother Carl Prince, who later earned a Fulbright to teach in Israel and became a distinguished historian at New York University, had been born four years earlier. 

During her K-12 years, Freedman was an excellent student. She graduated from Newark’s then prestigious public Weequahic High School, surrounded in part by students who later would become prominent in the American women's movement. Marcia adopted the passionate working-class ideology of her union organizer father, whom she adored; by contrast, she rejected the home-making focus of her mother, although later Marcia reveled in making a “beautiful comfortable home” for her feminist friends in Haifa. In 1970, when Freedman was 32, her father committed suicide, which she attributed to depression tied to his precarious financial situation. Twenty years after his death, Freedman opened her memoir, Exile in the Promised Land, with the words: "This book is dedicated to my father, Phillip Prince, whose example I have largely followed." 

In the 1950s, Freedman’s teenage years, the vibrant Jewish neighborhoods in and around Newark were home to approximately 60,000 Jews and 40 synagogues. It is no surprise that Freedman developed a strong Jewish identity. According to anthropologist and fellow Weequahic alumna Sherry Ortner, many members of these Jewish families were Holocaust survivors “who wanted to find safety and solidarity among fellow Jews” (Ortner, 8). Simultaneously, the question of where Israel fit into the picture of post-Holocaust safety began to preoccupy Freedman (Ortner, 55).

Freedman’s higher education took place in proto-feminist environments starting with Douglass College, the women's college connected with the all-male Rutgers University of New Jersey. She soon transferred to Bennington College, a private liberal arts women's institution in Vermont, where she earned a BA in English. Next, she earned an MA in philosophy from Brooklyn College and began a PhD at Stanford University, with a thesis analyzing the works of Wittgenstein and Kant. In the turbulent 1960s, Freedman, like many Jewish students, became an active participant in the American civil rights movement, bent on improving the lives of what she called the “invisible” segments of society.

In 1961, at age 23, Marcia married Bill Freedman, whom she had known in high school. (In newspaper articles, her name is frequently misspelled “Friedman.”) The couple had one child, a daughter, Jennifer. Early in her marriage, Freedman discovered the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, Charlotte Bunch and other forceful feminists who argued that “romantic love” and “living happily after” are myths and that married life for women consisted of unshared housework and childcare. Although Marcia and Bill were largely compatible, Marcia felt hemmed in by the limitations of heterosexual culture. Following their divorce after fourteen years of marriage, Freedman turned to many straight and lesbian partners. Her friend Hannah Safran described her as a “free love person” (interview, October 28, 2024). 

In June 1967, Israel fought simultaneous wars (known collectively as the Six-Day War) against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. With Israel's surprising, rapid, and total victory, many American Jews previously uninterested in Israel were inspired to contribute funds, visit, volunteer, and even move to Israel (i.e. “to make Aliyah”). Marcia and Bill were two of these enthusiastic American Jewish immigrants. Freedman’s acclimation was eased by having faculty positions at Haifa University, where she taught philosophy, and at Oranim [Teachers] College, where she taught “Women in Western Philosophy.” 

Freedman’s academic work did not satisfy her even greater need to press for social change, particularly when she discovered that Israeli society had not yet embraced feminism or gay rights, nor explored issues of sexuality. Because Second Wave feminist activism had already emerged in the United States and Europe, Freedman was ahead of her time in Israel. Fortunately, Rachel Cohen-Kagan, one of two women (the other being Golda Meir) allowed to sign Israel’s Declaration of Independence in May 1948, became Freedman’s mentor. 

Freedman and her comrades challenged injustices in Israeli society, especially sexist religious laws; discriminatory statutes governing women's wages, taxes, and pensions; and the system of different pay scales for women and men. In 1971, the average Israeli woman worker earned 57% of the average Israeli man's salary. Freedman also advocated on behalf of housewives whose type of labor made them ineligible for social security. She strongly opposed the idea that a married woman's possessions and the woman herself are the property of her husband and rejected the Religious Court's stance that only men can file for divorce. Having internalized the anti-leader ethos of the American women’s movement, Freedman saw herself not as the leader of the Israeli movement but rather as part of a group of like-minded women, but she soon became known as “Founder of the Israel’s Women’s Movement” or “the planter of the seeds of radical feminism in Israel” (Furstenberg, 1994, 8). 

To enhance her knowledge and strategy, Freedman formed a weekly “chug bayit,” or home-based women's discussion group, analogous to American consciousness-raising groups but with an added component of activism. Participants advocated for birth control, abortion on demand, and childcare centers for women. Freedman’s group also published a movement newspaper that group members hawked on the streets of Haifa. Sadly, she recalled, “The men challenged us loudly. They made lewd jokes.... They jostled and pushed...they shouted obscenities” (Exile, 49), first on street corners—and later at the Knesset.

Men’s dismissive behavior did not deter Freedman’s “chug bayit.” “We supported a wildcat strike of women factory workers [against the Elite food processing combine] demanding equal pay. We collected signatures on a petition for abortion reform. We protested at the Rabbinical Court. We demanded and won the founding of a day-care center at the university,” Freedman later wrote (Exile, 49). But angry crowds always gathered to oppose the women. Ironically, the hostility directed at Freedman and her companions, “fed by an unflagging negative press” (Exile, 50), made “Freedman’s small feminist movement known” (Furstenberg, 9). Despite, or because of, the insulting press, as well as the ads she placed in all the Israeli newspapers asking women to write testimonies about their husbands’ violence, Israeli women began to contact Freedman about their problems. She, in turn, encouraged such women as Esther Weillam and Ruth Resnick to start their own group in Tel Aviv. Each location in which a feminist group emerged had its unique perspective. The group that formed in Jerusalem, for example, was socialist and emerged from the anti-Zionist Matzpen movement (Exile, 51; Furstenberg, 9).

On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt's joint surprise attack on Israel, known as the Yom Kippur War, initially overwhelmed Israel's military forces. In the ensuing period only a small number of women were brought into the labor force to take the place of the fighting men. Most women, especially mothers, stayed home, because no one in the government had created a plan to utilize their skills. Israeli women "felt purposeless in their own land, where being purposeful was the only reason for living.... [T]he country stopped functioning.... The women were frustrated because they had not been trained" (Rein, Daughters of Rachel, 87-88). Even when women did find job openings for which they had skills, employers generally did not hire them. 

Eight years earlier, in 1965, civil rights lawyer Shulamit Aloni had been elected to the Knesset on the Alignment list, an alliance of the Labor Zionist Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda parties. In 1973, Aloni left Alignment and established the Citizens Rights Movement (1973-1997), known by the acronym “Ratz.” In the elections of December 1973, Aloni, Boaz Moav (her brother-in-law and a scientist), and Marcia Freedman earned the top three positions on the “Ratz” list, enabling Moav and Freedman to be sworn in as Knesset members for the upcoming four-year term. 

Freedman’s recognition as a public figure soared. In the Knesset, she became the voice of women’s issues, and her effective advocacy for girls' and women’s issues led to a significant increase in the Youth Ministry’s budget for “girls in distress” (i.e. pre-delinquents, vagrants, prostitutes, and more). Freedman also represented Arab citizens in Israel. But, as she wrote, “I had been elected on Shulamit Aloni’s coattails and was honor-bound to vote as she, the party leader, told me to. This discipline is part of the Israeli parliamentary system” (Exile, 19). Ironically, Aloni and Freedman never got along professionally or personally. In essence, Aloni perceived herself as the leader of the political fight for women in Israel and saw Freedman as an American interloper. On the other hand, Freedman was less interested in navigating the Israeli political system and more in political activism. 

By winter 1976, Freedman had a worldwide reputation and was asked to give interviews and write articles detailing her views. In “A Sexist Society?,” which appeared in Living Judaism: Journal of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain (1976), she insisted that, with branches in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva, Israel’s women's movement was meeting a significant need and therefore would endure. Freedman also analyzed women's limited role in the military, labelling it even smaller than before the establishment of the State. Freedman argued further that girls’ education offered them a very limited conception of what girls can accomplish. She followed this with a cultural analysis enumerating stereotypes of women in Israeli humor: the battle-axe, the mother-in-law, the castrating female, the dumb blonde, the hag, the slut, and all the rest. In the article, Freedman reiterated the ways women were discriminated against in the Israeli economy (not only in wartime) and pointed out women's meager representation in the Knesset (nine of 120 members at the time, with no women cabinet ministers or ministry heads and no women mayors or council heads). She acknowledged that “men suffer under the masculine stereotype. Nevertheless, husbands are beating their wives and must be punished,” she argued. “Women who leave their husbands lose their homes. Women and young children are victimized by the courts.” 

One of Freedman's greatest concerns was women’s limited access to abortion. While serving in the Knesset, she introduced an Abortion Bill that catapulted her to national fame and notoriety. She argued that "Abortion is illegal...today except where the life of the woman is endangered. Nevertheless, gynecologists who perform abortions privately, and for large fees (paid in cash) are not prosecuted. There are 45,000 illegal abortions performed each year (a conservative estimate of the Health Ministry) bringing in at least 90,000,000 Israeli pounds in untaxed income to several hundred gynecologists. Poor women, married and single, give birth to unwanted children in large numbers. There are no public birth control services and there is no sex education in the schools.” Freedman demanded that "the state, men, recognize our right to possession of our bodies. It is the first and necessary step towards the overthrow of male domination over our lives. The prohibition of abortion in Jewish religious law (two religious parties say abortion is murder) is nothing more than part of the system of female enslavement" (Freedman papers, 1976, file 6, p. 8). 

Freedman was proud that the Israeli Women's Movement brought these issues into the open in 1976 while she was a Member of Knesset, and that Israeli women were beginning to understand the connection between the personal and the political. Nevertheless, she did not find the future promising. “First,” she reflected, “women simply do not have the time or energy to make a commitment to activism. Second, there is no ‘confrontation politics,’ which is the only route open to oppressed peoples.... Third, we have to contend with a conservative religious community that has political power far beyond their actual numerical strength.... And last, but not least, we have to contend with one of the basic ideals of Zionism itself, that of remaking the image of the Jewish male (but not the female) as a fighter and a physical laborer, an image that brings machismo back into Jewish life for the first time since the Biblical period" (Freedman, “A Sexist Society?,” 9). Freedman concluded that the Women's Movement in Israel would succeed only if it adopted militant action and organized consciousness-raising: “We...identify with radical feminists throughout the world" (Freedman papers, 1976, file 6, p. 8). In her diary, Freedman wrote, “At the moment I'm up to my ears in being a shocking and scandalous figure in Israel” (Freedman, 1976, Jewish Feminist Archives). 

Freedman did not run for a second term on the Ratz ticket. Instead, shortly before the 1977 elections, she established the Women's Party, known in Hebrew as Mifleget HaNashim. Although the Women’s Party did not garner sufficient votes to send a representative to the Knesset, Freedman saw it as an important continuation of women’s history in the Jewish community in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. "Old Yishuv" refers to the Jewish community prior to 1882; "New Yishuv" to that following 1882.Yishuv “to fight for the liberty and equality of the sexes...in the Land of Israel—a struggle that was suspended after the opening of the first Knesset.” The Women’s Party platform identified fifteen areas of concern with regard to women: 1) The Housewife; 2) The Single Woman; 3) The Wage Earner; 4) Women and Poverty; 5) The Soldier; 6) The “Equal Rights of Women” law; 7) Marriage and Divorce; 8) Parenthood; 9) Education; 10) Women's Health; 11) Sexuality; 12) Violence Against Women; 13) Prostitution; 14) The Prisoner; and 15) The Rights of Children. Regarding point 13, Freedman reported that prostitution in Israel was a widespread problem, especially among [non-Ashkenazi] females, twenty-five percent of whom were under the age of 18. Moreover, she wrote that “wife-beating was a common phenomenon and that the police and the courts, as well as the welfare services, do nothing at all to protect the battered wife; that rape is common and that conviction for rape is rare, and that penalties are minimal” (Freedman papers, 1976, file 6, p. 8). Among her many goals was to encourage Israelis to discuss and then act on domestic violence, breast cancer, incest, and teenage prostitution.

In 1971, in Hounslow, Great Britain, Erin Pizzey, whom Freedman had met, established the first well-documented yet unofficial refuge for women facing domestic violence. It took Freedman more than two years as a Knesset member to convene the first Knesset session dedicated to domestic violence against women. In 1977, Freedman and her American-born friends Judy Hill, Joyce Livingstone, Cholit Bat-Edit, and Barbara Swirski opened the first Israeli shelter for battered women and their children in Israel, called “Isha le’Isha” or “Women for Women” (Natan, 2021; Gabbay, 2022). She then worked with the Haifa shelter collective to create a whole network of support services for women, including a Housing Fund. In this thoroughly activist period of her life, Freedman also worked with friends to co-found and run the Kol Ha-Isha Women’s Center in Haifa. Simultaneously, she was a member of, and advocate for, recognition of the Israeli LGBTQ community, becoming one of the first Israeli lesbians to go public.

In 1981, four years after leaving the Knesset, Freedman returned to the United States and settled in the California Bay area. There she wrote and published her insightful memoir, Exile in the Promised Land, in 1990. As she entered old age (her definition was age 60 or so), she became concerned with the topic of women and aging. This new focus led to the creation of the Women’s Computer Literacy Project and the Lesbian and Gay Aging Issues Network. In a review of Sandra Coney's The Menopause Industry: How the Medical Establishment Exploits Women (1994), Freedman urged caution in using Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT) because she determined that the recommendation was derived from poorly designed studies. She castigated the advertising industry for urging women to use ERT to prevent osteoporosis. 

Between 1997 and 2002, Freedman returned to Israel for extended stays and helped co-found the Community School for Women, which offered courses in Women’s Studies and employment skills to underserved women in Israel. She also became increasingly involved with Palestinian women. On November 2, 1998, she wrote in her diary: “I am involved in a project that I've initiated under the auspices of Bat Shalom, the main women's organization in Israel. The issue is the extent and nature of sexual abuse/harassment of Palestinian women and girls under occupation by the Israeli soldiers who enforce the occupation of the West Bank…, a topic that is not discussed in the Israeli public. Our next step is to field a single researcher to see what she can uncover and then convene a meeting with a number of Palestinian female leaders to decide if and how to proceed...there is mutual interest (among Israeli Jews and Arabs) in covering it up” (Freedman Archives, Series II).

Freedman enjoyed interacting with Palestinian women, respected their views, and understood their fears. In her diary, she even had positive things to say about Israel's then arch-enemy and leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yassir Arafat: “The peace talks have broken off. It is unclear but not hopeless, whatever this means. There is no doubt, however, that the regional hero is Arafat who exercised the power of the weak.” Because of her commitment to what she thought could bring about peace, Freedman saluted Arafat for refusing to accept even the minimum “concession” that Israel offered him. She began identifying herself as “a bi-national Jewish lesbian.” She also joined the “Women in Black” group that protested Israel's occupation/control of the West Bank by standing in solidarity on Friday afternoons in busy traffic intersections. 

In January 2000, Freedman returned to teaching and offered classes in Israel on “Revolutionary Women” and “Feminist Theory.” She also appreciated women’s artistic expression. In a 2024 interview, Jerusalem artist Rita Mendes-Flohr stated that “Marcia was very supportive of the Antea Gallery at Kol Ha-Isha Jerusalem and Kol Ha-Isha Haifa.” 

Freedman also continued writing, submitting a review of Andrea Dworkin's Judaism, Israel and Women's Liberation to Ms. Magazine. To support some of the organizations she co-founded, Freedman made fundraising trips from Israel to the United States and received support from Barbara Dobkin (in her words, a “funding angel”) and from Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America, including a $90,000 gift to start a school for adult women who wanted to become computer literate. It is not surprising that in 2000, Freedman wrote, “the hardest question is whether I am as capable as I have been in the past. I am now a 62-year-old woman. Do I have the stamina I need for these tasks?” (Freedman, diary). Despite her fear that she was growing too old to be effective, Freedman actually was indefatigable.

Back in the United States, Freedman co-founded what she considered to be one of the most important organizations of her peace activism: Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (also known by its English translation as Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace; founded in 2002 and dissolved in 2009 to become JStreet), a non-profit grass-roots organization that supported the establishment of a Palestinian state. Brit Tzedek v'Shalom’s members were American Jews “deeply committed to Israel's well-being through the achievement of a negotiated settlement to the long-standing Israeli–Palestinian conflict” (JStreet Mission Statement). By serving as Brit Tzedek v'Shalom’s president, Freedman became as much of a peace activist as a feminist activist. Sharon Groves, an advocate for Muslims for Progressive Values, interviewed Freedman for the academic journal Feminist Studies to explore Freedman's belief that “women were the vanguard of peace work in the [Middle East] region.” Freedman stated that “the peace movement has been sustained by the women's movement, among both Israelis and Palestinians.... It was the women's peace organizations that pushed the idea of one capital, two states—an idea that had not been spoken publicly by anyone before.” Freedman explained that when the Oslo 2 Accord disintegrated in 1995 after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and the peace process ended, women's peace movements in Israel were still able to mount large demonstrations of peace advocates. She also highlighted the connection between women and peace by mentioning that “70% of the board of directors of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom appointed in July 2002 were women...and at the local chapter level, the most active members are disproportionately women.”

Throughout her life, Freedman was blessed with a wide range of friendships among feminist activists. Upon Freedman’s election to the Knesset, prominent American feminist Betty Friedan sent Freedman a telegram: “Jubilant congratulations. Right on!” In 1974, Alice Shalvi, founder of the non-partisan Israel Women's Network, provided crucial input for educating girls and reducing married women's taxation. American feminist psychologist and public intellectual Phyllis Chesler also influenced Freedman's thinking. Freedman generously wrote of her intellectual debts to Andrea Dworkin, Susan Griffin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English, Adrienne Rich, Simone de Beauvoir, Esther Broner, Pauline Bart, Marge Piercy, and Mary Daly. 

Toward the end of her life, Freedman became a member of Ashby Village (a community center for elderly people in Berkeley) and served on its Board of Directors. She also co-founded Elder Action, a political group within Ashby Village. She contributed her activist energies and visionary leadership to promote equity, diversity, inclusion, and access to the Village until she died.

Freedman succumbed to renal and heart disease in Berkeley, California, on September 21, 2021, at the age of 83. Admirers all over the world acknowledged her life with an overwhelming outpouring of gratitude. Hannah Safran, a Haifa-based activist friend of Freedman’s, described her as a “funny, loving, warm, generous woman who loved food, wine, culture, shopping, shoes, the sun, and all things beautiful” (Safran, 2025).  Another Israeli friend, Terry Greenblatt wrote, “She was this little woman”—no more than 4 feet, 8 inches tall—“and she would stand up in the Knesset and say this stuff, and they just ripped her apart. They called her crazy and a pervert, and they said she was a traitor against the Jewish people” (Seelye, 2021). But she prevailed.

An anonymous contributor to Freedman's memorial page wrote an expansive and yet precise remembrance: “Marcia had a fertile mind, lived her life according to her values, and embraced feminist and peace causes ridiculed by the mainstream. Her legacy is grassroots activism in Israel and her gift to future generations continues to be felt. Freedman was an outsider in Israeli politics as an American, as a woman, as a lesbian (which she declared while serving in the Knesset), as small in stature without military experience, as a committed human rights activist, as a feminist and perhaps also as a divorcée. And yet, she set Israeli women on the path to liberation, she set gays on the path to recognition, she set Jews on the path to co-existence with Arab neighbors, and she set American society on the path to increased care for the elderly.” In all her activism, the typically smiling Freedman operated from an intuitive sense of justice that would enable her to change the world. Thus her life embodied a profound understanding of Rabbi Tarfon's famous saying in Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot 2:16): “You are not obligated to finish the task, but you are obligated to start it."