Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Joanne Greenberg

Under the pen name Hannah Green, Joanna Greenberg turned her struggle with mental illness into the bestselling novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.

Deep love for the Jewish people informed the life of Aliza Greenblatt, an American Yiddish poet and Zionist leader in women’s organizations. Greenblatt was among the first to organize the American Jewish community and raise funds toward the establishment of a Jewish national home. Many of her poems, widely published in the Yiddish press, were also set to music.

Gloria Greenfield

Disturbed by growing anti-Semitism in the women’s movement, Gloria Greenfield left the movement and began creating documentary films that brought national attention to anti-Semitism in America and around the world.

Sophie Von Grotthuss

Born in Berlin, Sophie von Grotthuss grew up with a mother who resented her Judaism and who married her off at fifteen into an unhappy relationship. In her later years she became a prolific author, but only a few of her works, including a story and a play, have survived.

Ruth Gruber

Reporter and writer Ruth Gruber dedicated her life to rescuing and covering the stories of suffering Jews worldwide. She made history as the youngest PhD in the world, escorted European refugees on a secret mission to America, and famously reported on the crisis of the Exodus 1947 and the foundation of Israel.

Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg

As director of the Child Study Association of America, Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg blended the best research on child development and her own experience as a mother of four, publishing numerous books and articles on parenting. She was a leader and publicist in the parent education movement and an authority in the field of child study.

Bracha Habas

Bracha Habas was an educator and one of the first professional women journalists in Erez Israel. She was a member of Davar’s editorial board and the co-founder of its children’s newspaper, Davar le-Yeladim. Enumerating on Habas’s 48 publications, Rahel Adir described her as “the recorder of Yishuv history.”

Ida Haendel

In a life that spanned the greater part of the twentieth century, Ida Haendel was one of the most enduring idols of the concert platform, an inspiration to both performers and music-lovers through her many recordings as well as her live performances and broadcasts. A musical prodigy who began performing at age four, Haendel continued her passionate violin performances into her late eighties.

This image depicts Hagar feeding Ishmael

Hagar: Apocrypha

Reference to Hagar appears in a wisdom poem (Bar 3:9–4:4) that is itself part of an apocryphal letter written sometime between 200 to 60 B.C.E. to the priests and people of Jerusalem from Baruch, the scribe and close friend of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36).

Käte Hamburger

Käte Hamburger was a German literary scholar and philosopher who developed a philosophical theory of literature.

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn’s popular Yiddish tales not only painted a vivid portrait of the lost shtetl of her youth, but also added a dimension male authors of the time had missed: a nuanced and complex picture of the lives of Jewish women.

Chelsea Handler

When her confession in a DUI class left people rolling in the aisles, struggling actress Chelsea Handler launched a brilliant new career as a comedian.

Leah Cohen Harby

Leah “Lee” Cohen Harby was a vibrant member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Her patriotism and her pride in her Southern roots found an outlet in her essays, short stories, and poetry.

Shulamith Hareven

Born in Poland in 1930, Shulamith Hareven was an Israeli poet, author, essayist, and political activist. From capturing the lingering pain of Holocaust survivors to describing the harsh conditions of Palestinian refugee camps, Hareven used her writing to push Israelis to confront uncomfortable truths.

Marion Hartog

Marion Hartog and her sister Celia published influential poetry and books on Jewish themes, including works that were among the first fictions ever published by Jewish women anywhere in the world. Hartog later created and edited the first Jewish women’s periodical in history, The Jewish Sabbath Journal.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women

Hundreds of compilations of Hasidic literature, a genre derived from oral traditions, were published in Eastern Europe between the start of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of World War II. The image of “woman” varies in Hasidic literature according to the character in the story, its narrator, and its setting in time and place; therefore we can only refer to individual women, each on her own, and not to woman in general or women as a gender.

Hasidic Women in the United States

Hasidic women belong to various sects of Judaism’s most religiously observant and traditional communities. Postwar Hasidism took root and thrived in many U.S. cities; while women remain dedicated to domestic responsibilities, with large family sizes and a high birth rate, many also work outside the home and/or are college-educated religious activists. .

Hasidism

Hasidism is a spiritual revival movement associated with the founding figure of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (Besht, c. 1700–1760). Although some have depicted the movement as nothing less than a “feminist” revolution in early modern Judaism, in actuality the Hasidic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conceptualized gender in conventional terms drawn unquestioningly from the classical rabbinic, philosophical, and kabbalistic sources.

Haskalah Literature: Portrayal of Women

The image of women in Haskalah literature reflects the relationship between the sexes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ashkenazi Jewish society and European culture. But Haskalah writers wished to shape new patterns of male-female relationships among their reading public; to change, at least partly, the attitude of men towards women; and to ‘improve’ women’s conduct within the home and community.

Rivka Haut

An Orthodox Jewish feminist, Rivka Haut advocated on behalf of agunot (chained wives) and wrote feminist prayers for Orthodox Jews.

Heather Havrilesky

Through her ongoing advice column “Ask Polly,” collected in the 2016 book How to Be a Person in the World, Heather Havrilesky offers advice on love and life to millennials.

Nancy Miriam Hawley

Nancy Miriam Hawley helped found the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, Inc., the organization responsible for writing the best seller Our Bodies, Ourselves, which empowered women to take control of their own health care.

Amichai Pardo in Rina Yerushalmi's "Romeo and Juliet," 1993

Hebrew Drama: Representation of Women

Prior to the 1980s, there was an almost total absence of women-related topics and women’s voices in Hebrew theater, but many talented women have fought for their voices to be heard on the Hebrew stage. Today, active women playwrights whose plays are presented in mainstage and fringe theaters have a significant impact on Hebrew theater.

Hebrew Song, 1880-2020

Hebrew song as a whole, including songs of Erez Israel and the State of Israel, is a unique socio-cultural phenomenon that has developed over time. The dawning of Hebrew song can be traced to the period between 1880 and 1903, and it has grown to reflect the diverse aspects of Israeli society since then. The contribution of women to Hebrew songs, in general, has risen steadily over the years.

Rina Yerushalmi's "Va-Yomer/Va-Yelech" with Neta Yeshchin and Noam Ben-Azar

Hebrew Theater: Yishuv to the Present

Of all the theatrical professions, only actresses were truly partners in the enterprise of reviving Hebrew culture in the early twentieth century, and only in the 1980s did women writers and directors begin to work in Israeli theater. In the last few decades of the twentieth century and the first few decades of the twenty first, howeverwomen playwrights and directors have taken on increasingly prominent roles.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Writing