Politics and Government
Minnie Dessau Louis
Rebecca Pearl Lovenstein
In 1920, Rebecca Pearl Lovenstein became the first woman lawyer allowed to practice in Virginia. She went on to create a state bar association for women.
Minnie Low
Known as the “Jane Addams of the Jews,” Minnie Low was a leader in the Jewish social service community. At a time when social work usually meant wealthy people donating to the poor, Low pushed for new kinds of aid such as vocational training and loans that made the needy self–sufficient.
Johanna Löwenherz
Johanna Löwenherz traveled widely on behalf of Germany’s socialist women’s movement, raising consciousness and lecturing on the social, economic, and legal equality of women. She became one of the most active representatives of the SDP in the Neuwied region, elected as a delegate to three regional party conferences.
Harriet Lowenstein
Nita M. Lowey
Zivia Lubetkin
Zivia Lubetkin was an important member of the underground resistance movement in Poland during World War II, and later an active member of the United Kibbutz Movement in Palestine.
Esther Luria
Esther Luria was a freelance journalist whose work appeared in many politically left-of-center Yiddish publications in the early twentieth-century United States. A socialist, a feminist, and a political activist, she was also an educator. She used her columns not only to advocate for the ideas in which she believed, but also to provide her mainly east European immigrant readers with a better understanding of their new environment.
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a socialist revolutionary known for her critical perspective. Born in Poland, Luxemburg had become an important figure in the world socialist movement by 1913. She argued against Lenin’s hierarchal conception of party organization, and against revisionism. Luxemburg was internationalist in orientation and unflinchingly dedicated to a radical democratic vision.
Ada Maimon (Fishman)
Hannah Maisel-Shohat
Combining her zeal for the Zionist movement and her extensive education in agriculture, Hannah Maisel-Shohat dedicated herself to the establishment of women’s farms and agriculture education programs in Palestine in the 1920s.
Sarah Malkhin
Sarah Malkhin was among the first women agricultural laborers to arrive in Palestine during the the Second Aliyah. Through efforts to establish new kinds of agricultural settlements founded on ideals of emancipation and independence, Malkhin and her colleagues clashed with veteran settlers of the Old Yishuv.
Theresa Serber Malkiel
Lane Bryant Malsin
Judith Pinta Mandelbaum
Judith Pinta Mandelbaum was an important part of the Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America (American Mizrachi Women) from the 1930s until shortly before her death in 1977, by which time the organization was known as AMIT. She also achieved professional acclaim as an outstanding teacher and is remembered fondly as a woman with a wonderful sense of humor and a rich family life.
Emma B. Mandl
Emma B. Mandl immigrated to the United States at age fifteen and helped found the Baron Hirsch Women’s Club, a major Chicago philanthropic organization. Through the club, where she served as president, Mandl created and led vital institutions for Jewish East European immigrants in Chicago, from orphanages to trade schools to tuberculosis wards.
Jeanne Manford
Rosa Manus
Rosa Manus was a Dutch leader in international women’s movements for suffrage and equality, as well as a vocal pacifist before and during World War II. As a Jew, she at times clashed with other feminist leaders.
Gill Marcus
Ruth Barcan Marcus
Bessie Margolin
Bessie Margolin was raised in New Orleans’s Jewish orphanage, where she learned powerful lessons in social justice that propelled her trailblazing legal career through the New Deal and Nazi War Crimes Trials to the United State Supreme Court, where she championed the rights of millions of American workers. A reluctant feminist who became the nation’s top fighter for equal pay for women and a co-founder of NOW, Margolin used intellect and charm to open courtroom doors for countless women who have followed.
Lenore Guinzburg Marshall
Lenore Guinzburg Marshall, novelist, poet, activist, and literary editor, pushed her publishing company to publish William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury after it had been rejected by twelve other publishers. She published her first novel, Only the Fear, in 1935 and her first poetry collection, No Boundary, in 1943, going on to write poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and a memoir.
Lilli Marx
Born in Berlin, Lilli Marx emigrated to England as a young adult but returned to Germany, where she helped institute a national Jewish weekly newspaper and worked to create a dialogue between German society and the Jewish community. She contributed to the creation of several Jewish organizations, notably the League of Jewish Women, and continued to work in social work until her death.
Pearl Bernstein Max
Henriette May
Henriette May was committed to the upbringing of children and care for needy adults. She was active as a board member and editor for Jewish newspaper Jüdischer Frauenbund starting in 1907, established a home for Jewish women teachers in Berlin, and was a prominent member of numerous welfare institutions.
