Frances Wolf was a pioneering lawyer who pushed for women’s bar admission in the early twentieth century. Of the approximately eighty women who were instrumental in opening up the legal profession for women in the United States, Frances Wolf was the first Jewish woman in that very select group.

A pioneering German-Jewish lesbian and feminist physician, Charlotte Wolff became interested in sexology, psychotherapy, and chirology while working as a physician in Berlin’s working-class neighborhoods. Soon after the Nazis came to power she fled to France and then to England, where she began researching and writing books on chirology. In the 1960s she turned her research to homosexuality and published a landmark study on lesbianism.

Rosi Wolfstein’s life constituted a battle against war, racism, and social injustice. She worked with other socialist political figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, helped found the Independent Social Democratic Party, and was a representative for the German Communist Party. Despite having to flee to the United Stattes during World War II, Wolfstein returned to Germany and remained active in party and workplace politics until her death.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Women and Gender Studies programs were established at the five Israeli Universities, emerging from the “New Women’s Liberation” movement of the 1970s. The programs faced many challenges, especially a lack of university support, but today are popular with students and faculty. Women’s Studies programs also developed at Israeli colleges, and the Israeli Association for Feminist and gender Studies is a national organization of feminist scholars.

Although young immigrant Jewish women had always been especially motivated to become educated public-school students, the workers’ education movement in the 1910s and 1920s tried to teach workers specifically about social activism. Organizations such as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union created summer schools at colleges to educate women workers about trade unionism.

The Yiddishe Froyen Asosiatsiye (YFA) was the only Jewish women’s organization in Poland during its time. The YFA was a feminist organization that sought to education and empower Jewish women, who faced double discrimination for their gender and religion.

Miriam Shomer Zunser, journalist, playwright, and artist, was an important promoter of Jewish culture in America during the period before World War II. Born in Odessa in 1882, Zunser left a strong legacy in the Yiddish literary world and in the world of Jewish activism and organization.