Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Barbara Gaffin

Barbara Gaffin brought international attention to the desperate circumstances of Ethiopian Jews and helped whole communities flee to Israel.

Mamie Goldsmith Gamoran combated assimilation in America by writing children’s books on Jewish history and holidays that encouraged children to feel proud of their dual identities as Jews and Americans. Gamoran served as a volunteer for Hadassah and as both a national board member and vice president of Histadrut Ivriot of America, an organization that promoted the Hebrew language.

Bird Stein Gans

Bird Stein Gans was among the first generation of women involved in what was then the new field of parent education. She served as president of the Society for the Study of Child Nature for many years, significantly expanding its membership and impact.

Helene Gans

Active throughout the twentieth century in the labor and consumer rights movements, Helene Gans devoted her life to improving the lives of working Americans.

Roz Garber

Roz Garber evaded the KGB to bring hope to refuseniks in the USSR.

Cindy Gats

Gats served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the US Marine Corps.

Ruth Gavison

Ruth Gavison was an Israeli human rights expert and law professor. In addition to her academic work as a lecturer and researcher and her work in social organizations, Gavison has also been a member of various committees. Her work has been amply recognized and awarded.

Ruth Gay

Through her writing, Ruth Glazer Gay captured an engaging view of the Jewish community, both past and present. As a writer, journalist, and archivist, she demonstrated throughout her life the possibility of having an intellectually vibrant career while still accommodating marriage and motherhood.

Sylva Gelber

Sylva Gelber dedicated her life to social work, labor politics, and women’s rights. She was the first student to enroll in Henrietta Szold’s School of Social Work in Jerusalem after immigrating to Palestine in 1932. When she returned to Canada in 1948, Gelber became nationally recognized as as a political advocate for women’s rights.

Lillian Mellen Genser

After the narrowly averted disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lillian Mellen Genser decided to train people to think differently about conflict from early childhood onward.

Deena Gerber

A seasoned social worker and executive director of Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans, Deena Gerber helped residents put their lives back together in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Berta Gerchunoff

Berta Wainstein de Gerchunoff was an Argentine socialist, feminist, and later Zionist leader. As President of the Argentine branch of WIZO, she led an exponential growth of women’s Zionist commitments all over Latin America.

The title page of volume 1, issue 1, of a new series of the Die Deborah newspaper. The page reads, in German): "Vorwärts, meine Seele, vorwärts mit Macht! Eine deutsch-amerikanishe Wochenschrift Foerderung juedischer Interessen in Gemeinde, Schule und Haus. Als Wochenschrift begündet 1855 von Isaac M. Wise. Herausgegeben von einem Vereine jüdischer Schriftsteller."

German Immigrant Period in the United States

Among nineteenth-century German Jewish immigrants to the United States, married women often made their own sources of incomes. However, high rates of poverty in large cities motivated women to create benevolent societies. As women participated more in the public sphere, the traditionally strict dichotomy between male and female roles changed in immigrant communities.

Karen Gershon

Writer and poet Karen Gershon escaped the Holocaust by being sent to England on the Kindertransport. Her best-known book, We Came as Children (1966), documented the collective experiences of refugee children and established her literary reputation in England. Her introspective poetry often reflects on her family and the Holocaust.

Shoshana Gershonowitz

Shoshana Gershonowitz was a leading woman soldier in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II and in the early years of the Women’s Corps in the Israel Defense Forces.

Gabrielle Giffords

A “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrat with a gift for cultivating friendships and alliances on both sides of the aisle, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fought to recover from a 2011 shooting and became a gun control activist.

Melissa Gilbert

After a highly successful decade as the lead on Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert defied the odds for child actors by becoming a Hollywood power-broker as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001–2005.

Susan Brandeis Gilbert

The daughter of Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Susan Brandeis Gilbert became one of the first women attorneys to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

Blanche Gilman

A native New Yorker, Blanche Pearl Gilman contributed her energy and resources to a variety of religious, health, social, and activist organizations. Gilman devoted her career to bringing diverse groups together, from her interfaith work to her leadership in the Pro-Falasha (Ethiopian Jewry) Committee.

Rosa Ginossar

Rosa Ginossar’s determined lobbying of the British Authority in Palestine won women the right to practice law in Israel.

Ida Ginsburg

Despite her short life, suffragist Ida Ginsburg made an impact on her community as founding president of the Jewish Women’s Club of Temple Beth El, which became the Detroit chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a unique figure in the history of American law, and indeed, of the twentieth-century women’s rights movement. The founder of the American Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project in 1972, she was confirmed for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 1980 and became the first Jewish woman on the Supreme Court in 1993.

Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg was an Italian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and political activist. Ginzburg is considered one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century, and her award-winning literary work is recognized for its exploration of family relationships and politics throughout fascism in modern Europe and during World War II.

Ethel Gladstone

Ethel Gladstone only joined the US Army Nurse Corps at the tail end of World War I, but her service record shows how long a war’s impact can be felt after its official end.

Elizabeth Glaser

Elizabeth Glaser’s fight to save her HIV-positive children led to her creation of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation to save children worldwide from the devastation of AIDS.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Politics and Government