Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Rose Pastor Stokes

Rose Pastor Stokes was called the “Cinderella of the sweatshops” when, as a young reporter, she met and married millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes. Stokes became increasingly radical, adopting antiwar and pro-abortion stands, becoming a union organizer, and joining the Communist Party.

Tavy Stone

Fashion writer Tavy Stone reached the pinnacle of her career when she was chosen as one of only seven American reporters allowed to cover the wedding of Lady Diana and Prince Charles.

Manya Gordon Strunsky

Manya Gordon Strunsky was a socialist activist and a respected writer on political and social issues. Strunsky was also instrumental in bringing Jewish immigrants from czarist Russia to America and helping them to become settled.

Hasya Sukenik-Feinsod

Hasya Sukenik Feinsod served as director of the Hebrew Kindergarten Teachers College. In 1919 Feinsod was appointed by the Education Committee to serve as superintendent of kindergartens in Jerusalem. She headed the Association of Kindergarten Teachers, and she was the first and only female representative on the Education Committee.

Elsie K. Sulzberger

Elsie K. Sulzberger had an important public career through her leadership in the National Council of Jewish Women and in the early twentieth-century birth control movement.

Amy Swerdlow

Amy Swerdlow (1923-2012), child of a Communist household in the Bronx, shared her parents’ dedication to making a better world but developed her own political agenda. She became a leader of the global women’s peace movement, a pioneer in the field of women’s history, and a professor of history and women’s studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.

Marie Syrkin

Marie Syrkin is best known as a polemicist for the State of Israel, whose keen arguments appeared in a wide range of publications for a period of almost seventy years. Her life touched almost every significant aspect of Jewish life in America and Europe in the twentieth century.

Henrietta Szold

Henrietta Szold was an educator, essayist, editor, social and communal worker, Zionist organizer, and politician. She was the founder of Hadassah, which became the largest and most powerful Zionist group in the United States. Szold played important roles in organizing the Yishuv’s infrastructure and Israel’s modern medical services. She created Hadassah, the women’s organization devoted to aiding Israel, which oversaw organizing and fundraising efforts in America for the Yishuv, and served as a member of the early Knesset, organizing the Yishuv’s infrastructure and organizing Israel’s modern medical services.

Harriet Tanzman

Harriet Tanzman was a chronicler of the civil rights movement, creating new entry points into civil rights history.

Helen Brooke Taussig

Helen Brooke Taussig was one of the most celebrated physicians of the twentieth century. Through her research and teaching. she was a leader in the development of the medical specialty of pediatric cardiology, pioneering treatment for infants with congenital cardiac defects.

Olga Taussky-Todd

A self-proclaimed “torchbearer for matrix theory,” Olga Taussky-Todd made the previously little-known field essential for scientists and mathematicians.

Nechama Tec

Nechama Tec's sociological work, informed by her experience as a Holocaust survivor, addresses the silences and inaccuracies surrounding the Holocaust and reveals untold stories of righteousness and rescue. Her experiences inspired the movie Defiance.

photograph of a seated woman wearing a purple sweater and round glasses, with her chin in her hand, smiling at the camera

Gabriele Tergit

Rising to prominence as a journalist in Weimar-era Berlin, Gabriele Tergit, née Elise Hirschmann (1893–1982), was an important chronicler of German-Jewish life. In her journalistic writings and novels, Tergit wrote biting social satires, sweeping panoramic novels, and lucid, hard-hitting commentaries on current events. A liberal whose writings reveal her strong commitments to social justice, women’s rights, and humanism, Tergit was forced to flee Germany in 1933 and settled permanently in London in 1938.

Hannah Thon

Hannah (Helena) Thon was a social worker, journalist and editor, a student of Israel’s ethnic communities, and one of the leading figures in the women’s voluntary social-welfare organizations during the Yishuv (pre-State) period in Israel.

Ethel Tobach

Born in the Ukraine, Ethel Tobach spent most of her life in New York City as a professor, museum curator, and above all, a prolific researcher. She also held several leadership positions in prominent scientific associations, often combining her scientific abilities with her passion for social activism. However, her accomplishments are often overlooked by the psychological community.

Mina Tomkiewicz

Mina Tomkiewicz was a Polish author who wrote two books based on her personal experience growing up in Warsaw, Poland, and her deportation to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Dara Torres

An athlete of remarkable endurance and drive, twelve-time Olympic medalist Dara Torres is the only American swimmer to have competed in five Olympics.

Nina Totenberg

Nina Totenberg has broken important stories on the United States Supreme Court during more than four decades of covering legal affairs for National Public Radio. She helped bring to public attention the previously hidden issue of sexual harassment during the controversial confirmation hearing of Justice Clarence Thomas and has received numerous accolades as a path-breaker in the male-dominated world of Washington journalism.

Rebecca Traister

In her book All the Single Ladies, Rebecca Traister investigates why so many women are choosing to remain single, and the impact single women can have on society.

Diana Trilling

Although Diana Trilling did not begin her career as a writer and critic until her mid-thirties, she quickly became a formidable literary critic. Her prominence amongst other critics and opinionated reviews pushed against the narrative that intellectualism could only be cultivated in universities.

Marie Trommer

Marie Trommer was an early twentieth-century writer, poet, artist, art critic, and contributor to American Jewish newspapers. After attending the Cooper Union Art School, Trommer became known for her contributions to Jewish newspapers, her poetry, and her oil and watercolor paintings. She was a member of the Creative Writers Group, Society of Independent Artists, and Art Alliance of America.

Barbara W. Tuchman

From a young age, Barbara W. Tuchman was engaged with contemporary international affairs. Her passion for research and engaging writing style won her two Pulitzer Prizes for her popular histories The Guns of August and Stilwell and the American Experience in China.

Rokhl Korn, Kadya Molodowsky, and Ida Maze

Malka Heifetz Tussman

Malka Heifetz Tussman introduced into Yiddish poetry one of the most rigid verse forms, the triolet, and mastered another, the sonnet corona. A teacher of Yiddish language and literature in the Midwest and the West, Tussman was awarded the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish poetry in Tel Aviv in 1981.

Sophie Udin looking down at a sheet of paper with a large seal at the bottom

Sophie A. Udin

Sophie A. Udin fought for women's rights and equal pay, but she is best known for helping found the first libraries in Israel and creating important American archives about Zionism, helping preserve vital documents and making them accessible.

Jean Starr Untermeyer

Poet Jean Starr Untermeyer’s work was first influenced by her connections with writers Sara Teasdale, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Frost. Through her many volumes of published poetry and translations, Untermeyer explored her own personal tragedies and defended women’s right to use personal experience in their art.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Media: Journalism