Education
Edna Goldsmith
Edna Goldsmith was a driving force in the establishment of the Ohio Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. A founder of the federation, she served as its first president from 1918 to 1923 and then as honorary president until her death. Throughout her life, Goldsmith was active in welfare organizations, concentrating particularly in the educational field.
Luba Robin Goldsmith
In 1902, Luba Robin was the first woman to graduate from the school of medicine at the Western University of Pittsburgh (later the University of Pittsburgh). Her career combined private medical practice, teaching, writing, lecturing, and active participation in educational, social, and public health work.
Elyse Goldstein
Fanny Goldstein
Librarian, social activist, and founder of National Jewish Book Week, Fanny Goldstein helped institutionalize national pride in ethnic and immigrant backgrounds through her work in libraries and settlement houses, and in her lectures and writing.
Rebecca Fischel Goldstein
The quintessential rebbetzin [rabbi’s wife], Rebecca Fischel Goldstein was a prime mover in her husband’s drive to build the Institutional Synagogue and make it a center of Jewish life in Harlem. As a consummate volunteer leader, she strove to make women a dominant force in organized Jewish life.
Rose (Berman) Goldstein
An early advocate of increased rights and responsibilities for women in Jewish life, Rose Goldstein was a prominent leader in the National Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America. She published a book detailing her relationship between scripture and her own self-understanding in 1972.
Shulamit Goldstein
A member of the underground militant group Irgun Zeva'i Le'ummi, Shulamit Goldstein became Israel’s first female pilot in the 1930s. Later in life, she also became a nursery school teacher, a poultry farmer, and a fiberglass manufacturer.
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.
Rivke Savich Golomb
Rivke Savich Golomb was an educator and Yiddishist who taught at Jewish schools in Warsaw, Palestine, Canada, and Mexico over the course of her career. She and her husband established Nuevo Colegia Israelita I. L Peretz in Mexico in 1950. Their “golombist” philosophy was based around integrating Yiddishkait into a humanist Jewish world.
Janice Goodman
Jaimy Gordon
Maralee Gordon
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.
Bessie Goldstein Gotsfeld
Rebecca Gratz
Blu Greenberg
Blu Greenberg is known as the mother of Orthodox feminism and is author of On Women and Judaism: A view from Tradition. She coined the phrase “Where there’s a rabbinic will, there’s a halakhic way,” demanding that rabbis find systemic solutions to help women who feel trapped by aspects of halakhah. Greenberg is a fierce advocate for agunot, women trapped in unwanted marriages.
Ruth Gruber
Rose Gruening
Rose Gruening created a number of social assistance organizations to aid immigrant families, offering practical help that included childcare, funding for college educations, and even a summer camp.
Rivka Guber
Through her work as a soldier, writer, teacher, and volunteer supporting immigrants, Rivka Guber exhibited selflessness for her neighbors and for the young State of Israel as a whole, earning her the title “Mother of the Sons” and the respect of the nation.
Marjorie Guthrie
First a dancer, then a teacher, Marjorie Guthrie founded the Woody Guthrie Children’s Fund and Archive in 1956 to preserve her husband’s works for future audiences. By the end of her life, she was a national activist for Huntington’s Disease and other genetic and neurological diseases.
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.”
Habsburg Monarchy: Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries
Jewish women in the Habsburg Monarchy experienced the stresses and strains of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish life as Jews, as women of their particular social classes, and as inhabitants of the different regions of the Monarchy. In some regions, they modernized and acculturated, but the overwhelming majority remained deeply pious, traditional Jews.
Hadassah in the United States
Hadassah School of Nursing: First Graduating Class
Nursing was not recognized as a profession in Israel until 1918, when the American Zionist Medical Unit, which later became the Hadassah Medical Organization, opened a nursing school. The first graduates were the leaders and pioneers of the nursing profession in Israel.
Hadassah: Yishuv to the Present Day
Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America (HWZOA) has a lengthy history of activity in the Yishuv and Israel, going back to 1913, about a year after it was founded in New York, and continuing to this day. This activity, outstanding in its scope, continuity, stability, and diversity, encompasses efforts in the sphere of health and medical services and in the welfare of children and youth.