Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Shoshana S. Cardin

Shoshana Cardin’s lengthy career advocating for Jewish people and the state of Israel included roles such as being the first woman president of the council of Jewish Federations and the chair of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. She was known for her savviness and fearlessness, even when confronting world leaders.

Judy Feld Carr

Canadian-born Judy Feld Carr rescued 3,228 Jews out of Syria. For almost 30 years (1973-2001), Judy either ransomed Syrian Jews (with donations made to the Dr Ronald Feld Fund for Jews in Arab Lands) or made extensive use of her underground network inside Syria to bring Syrian Jews across heavily guarded borders into either Lebanon or Turkey

The exterior of a gymnasium with a curved roof

Cedar Knolls School for Girls

Founded in 1911 by the women of the New York Jewish Protectory and Aid Society, the Cedar Knolls School for Girls aimed to provide assistance to young and so-called delinquent Jewish women through education and vocational training.

Timeline Showing the Major Organizations of Jews in Germany, 1893-1943

Central Organizations of Jews in Germany (1933-1943)

During the Nazi regime, the political participation of the League of Jewish Women in the affairs of the Jewish self-help organization the Reichsvertretung was initially unwelcomed by male leaders, despite the fact that women attended its meetings. Following the dissolution of the League in 1938, four of its members created their own network in order to present a united front for Jewish women’s interests and continued to participate in important functions of the Reichsvertretung.

Chai Feldblum

Chai Feldblum is a distinguished lawyer and legal scholar known especially for her work advocating for the rights of disabled and LGBTQIA people. She was the lead drafter of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as many other important bills affirming the rights of marginalized Americans. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed her to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Charlotte Chaney

Lieutenant Charlotte Ellner Chaney was permanently changed by her work as one of the first army nurses to help survivors of Dachau recover from their ordeal.

Peggy Charren

Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children’s Television (ACT), took on the burgeoning television industry of the 1970s and won. She received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 for her work on behalf of quality television programming for children.

A unit of Israeli women soldiers marching in the “Yom Hamedina” parade in Tel Aviv’s Allenby Street, 1948.

CHEN: Women's Corps of the Israel Defense Forces

The Israel Defense Forces’ Women’s Corps (“CHEN”—Hel Nashim) was founded on May 16, 1948, following discussions as to whether women should be integrated into men’s units or separate battalions of women should be formed.

Zoya Cherkassky

Zoya Cherkassky (b. 1976 in Kyiv, Ukraine) is a prominent Israeli artist. She works in a range of media and styles, synthesizing traditional painting techniques with vernacular tools and moving freely between allusions to the European canon and contemporary art. Her work is marked by humor, irony, and satire and at times has been controversial.

Kim Chernin

From poetry to the probing of women’s eating disorders, from autobiography to the story of a voice, from commentary on sexual identity to Israel and Palestine, Kim Chernin’s writing, “writing consultation,” and pastoral counseling practices all arose from the “spiritual politics” and deep examination of self and society that she considered the essence of her Jewishness.

Rose Chernin

Ambivalent about Judaism, passionately Marxist, charismatic, and courageous, Rose Chernin devoted a great deal of her life to securing the rights of disenfranchised citizens: the unemployed of the Depression, farm workers without a union, Black home buyers thwarted by redlining, and other foreign-born leftists, like herself, who faced deportation in the 1950s.

Phyllis Chesler

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is a feminist, best-selling author, and scholar whose career spans more than five decades and 20 books. An early and radical second wave feminist, she has focused on topics such as feminism, women’s rights globally and domestically, Islamic gender apartheid, academic freedom, Judaism, anti-Semitism, and freedom of speech.

Hannah Chizhik

Hannah Chizhik was an advocate for women’s emancipation and she was committed to the women workers movement. She became an expert in vegetable farming, agricultural work, and domestic labor for the groups of women pioneers. In 1926 she established a women’s smallholding in Tel Aviv, which became an important center for pioneer youth.

Civil War in the United States

During the Civil War, Jewish women performed a range of classic responsibilities brought on by wartime exigencies. Their efforts tended to generate little in the way of documentation, and thus historians studying the involvement of Jewish women in the Civil War and the impact of the war on Jewish women have a sparse body of primary sources upon which to draw.

Clara De Hirsch Home for Working Girls

The Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls was established in May 1897 to provide housing, occupational training, and community to mostly poor and immigrant young women in New York City.

Club Movement in the United States

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Jewish women shifted from benevolent work to social and personal reform, often through aiding immigrants and young, vulnerable women. They facilitated educational opportunities to learn about Jewish history and ethics, which in turn helped inform their aid work. These efforts created a space specifically for women in American Jewish society.

Regine Freund Cohane

A dedicated lawyer who fought sexism and anti-Semitism, Regine Freund Cohane also had the unique distinction of being half of the first married couple to try a case before the US Supreme Court.

Audrey Cohen

Audrey Cohen was the founder and president of Audrey Cohen College in New York City, which emphasized a purpose-oriented understanding of education. In 1964 she founded the earliest iteration of Audrey Cohen College, Women’s Talent Corps, which combined study with on-the-job training and greatly benefited low-income women.

Geulah Cohen

A perennial firebrand of the Israeli Right, Geulah Cohen was a major fixture in Israeli politics from the pre-state era through to the twenty-first century. She was a Lehi-affiliated member of the Jewish Underground in British Mandatory Palestine, served in five Knessets from 1974 to 1992, and was one of the first prominent female Israeli politicians of Mizrahi origin.

Jessica Cohen

Jessie Cohen served as editor of the Jewish Review and Observer for most of her life, maintaining an important resource for Jews in the city of Cleveland. She ran the Jewish Review and Observer for decades, finally retiring due to ill health, and remained editor emeritus until her death in 1945.

Naomi W. Cohen

One of the first women scholars in the new field of Jewish studies, Naomi W. Cohen earned a reputation as one of the foremost historians of American Jewry. A graduate of Columbia University, Cohen worked as a professor at several institutions and wrote many books, two of which were honored with the National Jewish Book Award.

Natalie Cohen

Natalie Cohen was a twentieth-century athlete, umpire, journalist, and civil servant who earned the Presidential Sports Award from President Gerald Ford.

Nina Morais Cohen

Nina Morais Cohen organized the Jewish women’s community of Minneapolis, where she was a force for women’s suffrage, community service, and scholarship.

Rosalie Cohen

A lifelong Zionist, Rosalie Cohen worked to promote Jewish culture and education both on a national level and locally in New Orleans. Cohen’s talents as a leader and organizer, as well as her gracious southern manners, were key assets in overcoming the obstacles she faced as a Zionist in a southern city and as a woman in a predominantly male Jewish national arena.

Rose Gollup Cohen

In her short life, Rose Gollup Cohen was a unionized factory worker and a domestic servant, was helped through an illness by Lillian Wald, became educated, and wrote short stories. Her moving 1918 autobiography Out of the Shadow offers a vivid account of her life as an immigrant Jewish woman in the sweatshops of New York.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Politics and Government