Performing Arts
Hanna Rovina
Called the "High Priestess of the Hebrew theater," Hanna Rovina was awarded the Israel Prize for Theater Arts for her contributions to the Habimah stage and her commitment to reviving the Hebrew language. Acting with the Habimah theater, she played many different parts over the course of six decades. A year before her death, Habimah named its large auditorium after her.
Bernice Rubens
One of Britain’s most successful post-World War II authors, Bernice Rubens was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1928. In 1970, she became the first woman recipient of the Booker Prize for her novel The Elected Member.
Ruth Rubin
Ruth Rubin devoted a lifetime to the collection and preservation of Yiddish folklore in poetics and songs. As a popular performer-folklorist, she would describe the background of her selections and then sing them in a simple, unaccompanied style. Rubin helped preserve the past and launch the modern Yiddish revival.
Ida Rubinstein
Winona Ryder
Pnina Salzman
Renowned classical pianist Pnina Salzman was the first Israeli pianist to conquer concert stages in Europe and Asia in the early 1940s, before the establishment of the State of Israel. She also enriched the local music scene with her premieres of Israeli composers, who wrote for her knowing that their work would receive superb interpretation. She won the Israel Prize for her musical achievements.
Sandra Bernhard
Sandra Bernhard is an American actor, stand-up comedian, singer, memoirist, and talk show host. She has been a high-profile LGBTQ+ presence over a career that has spanned five decades. Bernhard’s work amalgamates the three perspectives that she has said define her: “the feminist, the social commentator, the Jewess.”
Karen Sarhon
Karen Gerson Sarhon, founder and vocalist of the Sephardic music group Los Pasharos Sefaradis, is coordinator of the Sephardic Culture Research Center in Istanbul, Turkey, and chief editor of El Amaneser, the world's only newspaper wholly in Judeo-Spanish/Ladino. She continues to produce innovative projects for the preservation and promotion of Sephardic culture and language.
Angiola Sartorio
Angiola Sartorio was a prolific dancer, teacher, and choreographer who subverted fascism in her artistic choices. Sartorio had a company and school, and her company was widely well-received in Italy until it performed for Hitler in Vienna and she had to flee to the United States.
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman
Lonnie Zarum Schaffer
Emma Lazaroff Schaver
Mathilde Schechter
Rina Schenfeld
Martha Schlamme
Martha Schlamme was an internationally known singer who rose to prominence after the Second World War due to her phenomenally large repertoire and ability to sing in multiple languages. Schlamme studied piano in Austria before the war and had a successful post-war career in England, singing on BBC radio, before immigrating to the United States and singing in nightclubs and concert halls across the country.
Julie Schonfeld
Adeline Schulberg
Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Ernestine Schumann-Heink was a prominent opera singer whose career spanned from the time she was seventeen into her 70s. Born in Lieben in 1861, Schumann-Heink rose to fame at the Hamburg Opera, and became a Metropolitan Opera star with a repertory of 150 roles. She was known as “The Nation’s Beloved Mother” for singing on weekly radio programs, while raising 7 children.
Amy Schumer
Amy Schumer is one of America’s most loved and successful comedians. Her career is built on a true riches-to-rags-to-riches story and is firmly centered on growing up in an unconventional Jewish upbringing.
Jewish Women in Screendance
Jewish women made overwhelming contributions to the creation of the field of Screendance. Maya Deren, Amy Greenfield, Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and others have created a legacy of socially conscious dance for the screen that collectively exhibits and performs principles of Jewish ritual and practice. Many of these artists share a focus on social justice and a collective approach to what might be called a feminist Jewish art form.
Kyra Sedgwick
Tanya Segal
Vivienne Segal
A talented singer/actor and superb comedian, Vivienne Segal enjoyed a lengthy career. She was best known for her role as Vera Simpson, the older woman in love with the “heel,” Joey (played by Gene Kelly), in the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey.
Irene Mayer Selznick
Irene Mayer Selznick was a producer and philanthropist in Hollywood and New York. She wrote in her memoir, A Private View (1983), that Act I was spent under the shadow of her father, the film executive Louis B. Mayer; Act II was marriage to David O. Selznick, producer of Gone With the Wind; and Act III consisted of her career as a Broadway producer. She is known for producing Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
Mirali Sharon
Mirali Sharon was one of Israel’s most important choreographers in the 1970s and 1980s. Her work is characterized by organic integration of music, costume, and décor, with the dance being the outcome of the composer-designer-scenarist-choreographer composite as one fertile, creative team.
