Activism
Alice Salomon
Alice Salomon was an educator, feminist, economist, and international activist who was one of the pioneers of the emerging field of professional social work in Germany in the early 20th century. In 1925 she was among the founders of the German Academy for Women’s Social and Educational Work, and she later served as the first president of the International Committee of Schools of Social Work.
Salonika: Female Education at the end of the Nineteenth Century
Salonika was a vibrant center of Sephardic Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire, at some points even boasting a majority Jewish population. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French Jewish educational program, was established to westernize, or in their words “regenerate,” Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish communities. The Alliance established dedicated girls’ schools to give young Jewish women a secular education.
Jessie Ethel Sampter
Jessie Sampter was an important Zionist activist, writer, and educator. As an influential member of Hadassah, the woman’s Zionist organization, she advocated for an inclusive vision of Zionism. Putting her ideas into practice, she moved to Palestine in 1919. Although Sampter’s disability and non-normative family structure did not align with Zionist ideals of strong, healthy bodies, she championed Zionism, though not always uncritically.
Else Rahel Samulon-Guttmann
Else Samulon-Guttmann showed her exceptional intelligence early in life, studying law at Berlin university and earning a PhD from Heidelberg University. Appointed a judge in 1929, she lost her position with the Nazi rise to power in 1933. Samulon-Guttmann stayed in Germany for her mother and was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.
Bernice Sandler
Bernice (Bunny) Sandler was an activist and education expert who theorized Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, the federal law that mandates sexual equality in educational institutions that receive federal funding. As such, Sandler was an architect of the 1970s feminist “women’s liberation” movement. She continued to fight sex discrimination in education in the following decades, especially on issues of racial inequity and sexual assault.
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.”
Elli Tikvah Sarah
Margherita Sarfatti
Born into a wealthy Venetian Jewish family, Margherita Sarfatti joined the Socialist Party and became the art critic for the newspaper Avanti!, where she met Benito Mussolini. The two became lovers, and she followed Mussolini into the Fascist movement and helped plan the rise of the Fascists, only abandoning his cause when Mussolini embraced antisemitism in 1938.
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.
Jan Schakowsky
Rosa Schapire
Rosa Schapire was one of the few women to pursue art history studies at a time when the discipline itself was still in its infancy. Her foray into this male-dominated profession was indicative of her allegiance to feminist aspirations to equal opportunity and adult suffrage.
Miriam Schapiro
Miriam Schapiro helped pioneer the feminist art movement, both through her own pushing of creative boundaries and by creating opportunities for other women artists. Starting in 1970, Schapiro raised women’s consciousness through her writing, painting, printmaking, teaching and sculpture. She lectured extensively on feminist issues to professional conferences, university audiences, art classes and women’s groups.
Madalyn Schenk
Therese Loeb Schiff
Sonja Schlesin
Sonja Schlesin was one of Gandhi's most trusted and important associates during the period when he was a young lawyer in South Africa. She rose from becoming his secretary in 1906 to playing a major role in the large nonviolent demonstrations and protest marches of 1913, which he organized on behalf of the immigrant Indian community.
Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein
Therese Schlesinger’s life was characterized by her lifelong passion for learning and her endeavor to improve the plight of working-class women. She was a dedicated feminist who was inspired by the ideals of socialism, struggling to combine both of these political passions within the Austrian Social Democratic Party.
Dominique Schnapper
Dominique Schnapper is a French sociologist who has devoted an important part of her work to an analysis of French Jews and Judaism, in particular in connection with the French model of citizenship, nation, and the republic.
Susan Weidman Schneider
Rose Schneiderman
Ottilie Schönewald
Deeply involved in several women’s and Jewish organizations, Ottilie Schönewald was an activist who became a politician to advance her causes. She worked with the League of Jewish Women and helped Jews emigrate from Nazi Germany. After Schönewald and her family fled in 1939, she continued her social work during and after the war.
Florence Schornstein
Adeline Schulberg
Deborah Wasserman Schultz
Debra L. Schultz
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.
