Browse by Category | Jewish Women's Archive

Madalyn Schenk

Madalyn Shenk drove significant political change both in Louisiana and in the nation as a whole.

Dorothy Schiff led many lives, from debutante to social reformer, but she is best remembered as the publisher of the New York Post, the first woman to run a New York newspaper. Her publishing philosophy was simple: The Post must avoid “narrow-mindedness, prejudice, and all the things it is the business of liberals to fight.”

Therese Loeb Schiff

Therese Loeb Schiff used her wealth to address a wide range of needs in the American Jewish community. She was a paradigm of the intellectual, religious, and cultural activities and also the social service of upper-middle-class German Jewish women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Martha Schlamme

Martha Schlamme was an internationally known singer who rose to prominence after the Second World War due to her phenomenally large repertoire and ability to sing in multiple languages. Schlamme studied piano in Austria before the war and had a successful post-war career in England, singing on BBC radio, before immigrating to the United States and singing in nightclubs and concert halls across the country.

Dorothea Mendelssohn Schlegel

Dorothea Mendelssohn Schlegel was an author and editor who published work under her husband’s name that received little recognition during her lifetime. An intelligent and spirited woman, she changed her name from Brendel to Dorothea, divorced the husband her parents had chosen for her, married a controversial writer, and converted first to Protestantism in 1804 and then to Catholicism in 1808.

Sonja Schlesin

Sonja Schlesin was one of Gandhi's most trusted and important associates during the period when he was a young lawyer in South Africa. She rose from becoming his secretary in 1906 to playing a major role in the large nonviolent demonstrations and protest marches of 1913, which he organized on behalf of the immigrant Indian community.

Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein

Therese Schlesinger’s life was characterized by her lifelong passion for learning and her endeavor to improve the plight of working-class women. She was a dedicated feminist who was inspired by the ideals of socialism, struggling to combine both of these political passions within the Austrian Social Democratic Party.

Dominique Schnapper

Dominique Schnapper is a French sociologist who has devoted an important part of her work to an analysis of French Jews and Judaism, in particular in connection with the French model of citizenship, nation, and the republic.

Susan Weidman Schneider

Author and editor Susan Weidman Schneider has agitated for feminist progress in the Jewish community, as an activist and then as a founder and editor-in-chief of Lilith magazine. She has helped galvanize change with her writings on Jewish women’s leadership; domestic abuse; Orthodoxy and feminism; ordination of women; LGBTQ issues; the treatment of converts to Judaism, and more.

Rose Schneiderman

For nearly half a century, Rose Schneiderman worked tirelessly to improve wages, hours, and safety standards for American working women. She saw those things as “bread,” the very basic human rights to which working women were entitled. But she also worked for such “roses” as schools, recreational facilities, and professional networks for trade union women, because she believed that working women deserved much more than a grim subsistence.

Eva Schocken

As the daughter of Salman Schocken, founder of Schocken Books, and later as editor and president, Eva Schocken pushed the publishing company to the forefront of both education and women’s studies.

Ottilie Schönewald

Deeply involved in several women’s and Jewish organizations, Ottilie Schönewald was an activist who became a politician to advance her causes. She worked with the League of Jewish Women and helped Jews emigrate from Nazi Germany. After Schönewald and her family fled in 1939, she continued her social work during and after the war.

Regina Schoental

Our knowledge of toxic substances in plants, in fungi, and of aromatic and other chemicals that cause cancer owes much to the pioneering work of Regina Schoental.

Julie Schonfeld

In 2009, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld became the first female leader of an American rabbinical organization, serving as executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

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.

Florence Schornstein

Florence Schornstein spent a lifetime making New Orleans a better place to live, and Hurricane Katrina only strengthened her resolve.

Denise Schorr

As a member of the French Resistance, Denise Schorr began saving Jewish children when she was still just seventeen.

Adeline Schulberg

Adeline Schulberg’s long and winding career path led her from socialist activist, to child welfare advocate, to Hollywood agent. During World War II, she moved to London and returned to activist work, helping rescue refugees from Nazi Europe.

Grace Schulman

During her decades-long career as both poet and professor, Dr. Grace Schulman has received numerous awards, including the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, and she has written extensively on her friend and mentor poet, Marianne Moore.

Deborah Wasserman Schultz

An outspoken Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was entrusted with great responsibility for the party both in the US House of Representatives and as chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Debra L. Schultz

Debra Schultz served as an advisor to the Jewish Women’s Archive in creating the Living the Legacy curriculum based on research she had done on the history of Jewish women in the civil rights movement.

Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Ernestine Schumann-Heink was a prominent opera singer whose career spanned from the time she was seventeen into her 70s. Born in Lieben in 1861, Schumann-Heink rose to fame at the Hamburg Opera, and became a Metropolitan Opera star with a repertory of 150 roles. She was known as “The Nation’s Beloved Mother” for singing on weekly radio programs, while raising 7 children.

Amy Schumer

Amy Schumer is one of America’s most loved and successful comedians. Her career is built on a true riches-to-rags-to-riches story and is firmly centered on growing up in an unconventional Jewish upbringing.

Hela Rufeisen Schüpper

Born to a hasidic family in Krakow, Hela Rufeisen Schüpper joined the Zionist youth movement Akiva against her family’s wishes. When the Germans invaded Poland, Schüpper joined the Jewish resistance against the Nazis, becoming a key courier. She survived Bergen-Belsen and moved to Israel after the war.

Margarethe Meyer Schurz

Margarethe Meyer Schurz used the training she gained in Germany to create the first kindergarten in the United States. After training under Friedrich Froebel, a groundbreaking educator, Schurz settled in Watertown, Wisconsin, where she created a German-language kindergarten that ran until World War I.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women