Jewish women on stage in America took on a variety of musical roles and performed all kinds of songs, including religious hymns and liturgical chants. In its heyday, the Yiddish stage mirrored American Jewish life. An amazing range of women’s woes were highlighted, discussed, and often resolved across the footlights, presenting the reality that immigrant women faced to an extent not paralleled in the English-language theatrical world during those years.

Women have always been important as both Yiddish theater audiences and actors. For a decade and more, most American Yiddish actors were immigrants, as were their audiences. Often families played in the same company, such as the famous Adler family. Now, as Yiddish theater has become attenuated, the loyalties and memories of women are important for its survival.

Jewish theater in Vienna between 1900 and 1938 is inconceivable without women actors. A total of 112 people were active in the Viennese Yiddish theaters, of whom 37 were women. Actors such as Pepi Litmann, Molly Picon, and Mina Deutsch popularized “trouser roles” in which women depicted men as well as playing strongly typified female characters.

Women’s poetry in Yiddish first made its presence felt within the wider context of modern Yiddish culture in the late 1910s. Exploring topics from gender in Judaism to queer sexuality and eroticism, women’s Yiddish poetry cemented itself as its own literary corpus with priceless value and contribution to Yiddish literary culture.

Suzy Yogev is a retired Brigadier-General in the Israel Defense Forces best known for her work in the IDF’s Women’s Corps and for her role as Adviser to the Chief of Staff on Women’s Issues in the early 2000s. During her time in the military, Yogev played an integral role in successfully integrating women throughout the various bodies of the IDF when the Women’s Corps disincorporated as a separated military unit in the 2000s.

Jane Yolen is a Jewish-American children’s author, poet, and young adult novelist. Yolen has written more than 400 books for children and adults, including the children’s book series How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and the young adult Holocaust novella The Devil’s Arithmetic.

Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef was the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel and the leader of the Shas political movement.

The Jewish community of Yugoslavia was small, vibrant, and diverse, with waves of immigrants arriving from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Like many Jewish communities in Europe, the Yugoslav community was decimated by the Nazis, and only a few Jews remain in Yugoslavia today.

Vele Rabinowitz Zabludovsky was a transnational Yiddish and Hebrew teacher who dedicated her life’s work to teaching and the preservation of Yiddish culture and language. She spent over fifty years teaching Yiddish language and culture in Mexico.

Brachah Zefira was a seminal figure in the world of Israeli song and among its most colorful and influential personalities in the pre-State period. She toured the world performing with her husband, pianist Nahum Nardi, and the duo played an influential role in ethnic integration in Palestine. In Zefira’s footsteps, an entire wave of Yemenite women singers arose. 

“She plays like a man” was a near-refrain in critiques of Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, a brilliant pianist who emerged in the young, male-dominated American concert world of the 1880s. Zeisler exploded notions about women pianists with the precision, power, and expressiveness of her performances.

An acclaimed and widely beloved Hebrew poet, Zelda’s work was utterly unique, conforming to no one school of Hebrew poetry. Her six books of mystical-religious verse were bestsellers, demonstrating that, while her poetry frequently referenced classical Jewish texts, it was admired by Jewish Israelis across political and religious spectrums.

Zillah is one of the first women mentioned in the Bible. The unusual appearance of Zillah and two associated females in the male genealogies of Genesis 1–10 may be linked to the special role of her children.