A pioneer in many realms—birth control, women’s suffrage, peace activism, and envisioning a wider future for women—Aletta Henriette Jacobs began her career as the Netherland’s first women physician in 1879. She went on to participate in many women’s rights conferences and was a staunch anti-war activist, traveling to the Hague and the United States to advocate her position.

Francis Wisebart Jacobs helped transform the fledgling state of Colorado through her organization of charities and hospitals.

Zipporah Nunes was born a Conversa in Portugal circa 1710. After escaping to London to avoid being re-examined by the Inquisition, her family began practicing Judaism openly; later she became one of the first Jews to settle in the newly formed colony of Georgia in 1733.

Paula Jacques (b. 1949) is a French radio hostess and a novelist. Her works, which feature memorable female protagonists, most often portray the French-speaking Jewish community of Egypt prior to their expulsion at the time of the Suez crisis.

The midrash praises Yael and includes her among the devout women converts. According to the rabbis, Yael’s actions helped God to realize God’s plan by punishing Sisera measure for measure for his wicked deeds, and by affording Israel a military victory over its enemies.

Marie Jahoda was a major figure in social psychology, known for her work on the effects of unemployment on emotional well-being, as well as the social impact of McCarthy-era blacklisting. Jahoda received an award for distinguished contributions to the public interest from the American Psychological Association in 1979.

Author of two critically acclaimed books on immigrant life, Marie Grunfeld Jastrow was educated in a German school, and lived in Serbia before moving to New York with her family at age ten. Her two memoirs, A Time to Remember: Growing Up in New York Before the Great War and Looking Back: The American Dream through Immigrant Eyes, touched audiences deeply.

Jephthah’s daughter is portrayed in midrash as a wise and practical woman, well-versed in halakhah and the Torah. The rabbis place the blame for her murder on her father and the High Priest Phinehas.

Jewish feminism in Germany today is an expression of a wide-reaching renewal of Judaism occurring in many European countries since the early 1990s. German Jewish feminists built on the historical tradition of the Jewish women’s movement in pre-Holocaust Germany and has since taken many paths.

Challenging all varieties of American Judaism, feminism has been a powerful force for popular Jewish religious revival. The accomplishments of Jewish feminists have transformed American Jewish life, even as the ultimate goal of gender equity and shared power has yet to be fully realized.

The Jewish League for Woman Suffrage (JLWS) was the only Jewish women’s organization in England—and the world—devoted exclusively to obtaining both national and Jewish suffrage for women.

American Jewish women have played an outsized role in the foundation of Jewish museums all over the country. Barred from traditional spaces of power in the early twentieth century, many women—adjacent to power as Rebbetzins, philanthropists, and secretaries of libraries and other Jewish organizations—leveraged their connections to found new kinds of cultural institutions: museums.