Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Ray Frank

While her career was short-lived, Ray Frank remains significant as the first Jewish woman to preach from a pulpit in the United States. Her speeches often encouraged communal cooperation and tried to heal congregational disputes, and she notably gave an address at the first Jewish Women’s Congress in 1893.

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan was the author of a pathbreaking feminist book, The Feminine Mystique, which sold millions of copies and helped to provoke a feminist movement in the United States. She was an activist and writer who hoped to improve women’s lives by co-founding the National Organization for Women and other women’s political groups. Her many books focused on women’s rights, the women’s movement, and aging.

Jaclyn Friedman

Jaclyn Friedman voiced new possibilities for sex-positive feminism and a rejection of rape culture as editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.

Barbara Frum

Barbara Frum was an awarding-winning Canadian journalist. She was the founding co-host of CBC’s “The Journal,” in which capacity she gained public respect as a tough interviewer. Over the course of her career, she interviewed over 2600 people, receiving numerous awards for her work. Her reputation as a Canadian icon lives on.

Henriette Fürth

Despite facing ongoing anti-Semitism, journalist Henriette Katzenstein Fürth remained a passionate and vocal German patriot throughout her life. She began publishing articles on social criticism while raising eight children, eventually writing 200 articles and 30 monographs, earning both an income and a reputation for insightful journalism. She served on the Frankfurt municipal council and in 1932 she was honored by the city of Frankfurt for her 70th birthday.

Luisa Futoransky

Poet, novelist, music scholar, and journalist, Luisa Futoransky has led a life characterized by travel and the arts: she has published over two dozen books (poetry and narrative fiction), many of which have been translated into English, French, Hebrew, Portuguese, Japanese, and German, and other languages. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991, the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 1990, the Centre National des Lettres Fellowship in 1993 and 2010, and was the Regent’s Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997.

Barbara Gaffin

Barbara Gaffin brought international attention to the desperate circumstances of Ethiopian Jews and helped whole communities flee to Israel.

Roberta Galler

Roberta Galler’s work for the Congressional Challenge marked a landmark civil rights effort, using six hundred depositions that blacks had been prevented from voting in the 1964 congressional election as evidence that the election was unconstitutional.

Masha Gessen

Years of covering Putin’s regime in Russia made journalist Maria Alexandrovna “Masha” Gessen uniquely qualified to point out uncomfortable parallels between Putin’s leadership style and that of President Trump.

Tavi Gevinson

Proving the power of the internet to level the playing field, Tavi Gevinson launched her fashion blog Style Rookie at age eleven and was lauded by Forbes at age fifteen for the massive audience her feminist commentary had garnered.

Claire Goll

Claire Goll’s poetry and prose were fueled by the tragedies and scandals that shaped her life. She and her husband, writer Yvan Goll, were central cultural figures of the French avant-garde, and her prolific body of work includes journalism, multiple novels, short fiction, and numerous translations of other authors’ works.

Maralee Gordon

Rabbi Maralee Gordon helped found the Chutzpah Collective, a radical Jewish political collective that utilized the inclusion of women in religious rituals as a jumping-off point for making all Jews feel welcome in the Jewish community regardless of disability or sexual orientation.

Vivian Gornick

Vivian Gornick is an American essayist, memoirist, and noted second-wave feminist. She is known for bringing a personal lens to political and critical writing.

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.”

Käte Hamburger

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

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 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. .

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.

Gladys Heldman

After originally planning to be a medieval historian, Gladys Heldman became a competitive tennis player and later an advocate for women’s tennis. The current generation of women tennis players owe their equal status to her important efforts.

Julie Heldman

Julie Heldman won 22 professional tennis titles in her stunning career.

Helen Epstein

Born to two Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia, Helen Epstein has spent her life building an impressive journalistic career. She has also explored her own lived experiences, as well as the repercussions of intergenerational trauma from the Holocaust, on both her own family and the families of other survivors, in several memoirs and non-fiction books.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Media: Journalism