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Edith Fisch

With great courage and dogged determination, Edith Lond Fisch became a lawyer, legal writer, and law professor despite severe physical limitations, educational prejudices, and sexual discrimination. Edith Fisch wrote an important book on evidence which became regularly cited by judges and used in law schools throughout New York.

Janette Fishenfeld

Janette Fishenfeld was a Brazilian author, columnist, and Zionist. In her works, she portrayed a nuanced, complex view of the Brazilian Jewish community and advocated for the Zionist cause.

Ruth E. Fizdale

Ruth E. Fizdale is credited with making modern social work a profession. Fizdale helped transform social work from a charitable volunteer activity to a paid profession, through her development of a fee-for-service, nonprofit counseling firm.

Jennie Maas Flexner

Jennie Maas Flexner was the head of the circulation department at the Louisville Public Library and later the readers’ advisor at the New York Public Library. Her sympathy for self-taught and adult learners drove her to create innovative reading lists for adults embarking on a new life or second career.

Vera Fonaroff

Vera Fonaroff was an extraordinary violinist and member of the all-female Olive Mead Quartet. Fonaroff immigrated to America from Kiev at age seven and debuted as a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra at age nine. She toured the world performing with the Olive Mead Quartet and as a soloist and eventually became the director of the violin at the New York Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School).

Sarah Feiga Meinkin Foner

Born into a family that encouraged her love of Jewish learning, Sarah Foner asked to learn Hebrew when she was only five years old and published her first novel in her twenties. During her lengthy writing career, Foner’s publications often reflected her interest in Jewish and women’s issues and centered notably independent female characters.

Selma Fraiberg

Selma Fraiberg was a psychoanalyst, author, and pioneer in the field of infant psychiatry. Her classic parenting book The Magic Years was the result of her years of research in the field of social work and her experiences as a stay-at-home mother.

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.

Ellen Frankel

A pioneering feminist leader in business and the arts, Ellen Frankel served as the first woman CEO of the Jewish Publication Society. She is the author of several books including The Classic Tales: Four Thousand Years of Jewish Lore (1989) and The Five Books of Miriam (1996), a retelling and woman’s commentary on the Five Books of Moses, and has written several librettos,.

Myra Ava Freeman

The first Jew to be appointed lieutenant governor of a Canadian province and the first woman to hold the office in Nova Scotia, Myra Freeman was born in St. John, New Brunswick. Serving as Lieutenant Governor from 2000 until 2006, Freeman made her mandate the redefinition and democratization of the largely ceremonial office. In 2003 she was named First Honorary Captain (Navy) of Maritime Forces Atlantic, Her Majesty’s Canadian Forces.

Bernice Sains Freid

Bernice Sains Freid called her time in WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during WWII “the happiest days of my life.”

Recha Freier

German-born Recha Freier founded Youth Aliyah in 1933, which assisted in sending Jewish European teenagers to Palestine prior to World War II to be trained as agricultural pioneers on kibbutzim. Although she was responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jewish youth, Freier’s efforts were not officially acknowledged until 1975, when she was eighty-three years old.

Else Frenkel-Brunswik

Else Frenkel-Brunswik was a social psychologist who is best known as a coauthor of The Authoritarian Personality.

Anna Freud

Anna Freud’s life was a constant search for useful social applications of psychoanalysis. Through her studies of children, she shaped the fields of both child psychology and developmental psychology.

Miriam Freund-Rosenthal

Miriam Freund-Rosenthal brought her passion for art and history to her leadership of Hadassah. Among other leadership positions, she served as the national president from 1956 to 1960.

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.

Debbie Friedman

Debbie Friedman’s music transformed prayers for Jews across the movements.

Lillian Fuchs

Born to a musical family, Lillian Fuchs was a talented pianist, violinist, violist, and composer who toured the United States and Europe. Fuchs was the inspiration for some of the greatest composers of the twentieth century and was a popular teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, and Mannes College of Music.

Carrie Bamberger Frank Fuld

The daughter of German Jewish immigrant parents, Carrie Bamberger Frank Fuld was a philanthropist who, in partnership with her brother, department store magnate Louis Bamberger, founded the internationally acclaimed Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Fuld was also involved in many Jewish philanthropic causes throughout her life.

Norma Fields Furst

Higher education was not merely a family priority for Norma Fields Furst; it also became her professional focus. Furst used her positions of authority at different colleges and universities to garner support for civil rights and gender equality within academia.

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.

Mamie Gamoran

Mamie Goldsmith Gamoran combated assimilation in America by writing children’s books on Jewish history and holidays that encouraged children to feel proud of their dual identities as Jews and Americans. Gamoran served as a volunteer for Hadassah and as both a national board member and vice president of Histadrut Ivriot of America, an organization that promoted the Hebrew language.

Evelyn Garfiel

Evelyn Garfiel’s Jewish scholarship on topics like the prayer book and the Hebrew language helped make Jewish study accessible to the broader public. She served on the boards of several Jewish women’s organizations and published a book in 1957 that explored the prayer book and explained the origins and purpose of different prayers.

Ruth Gavison

Ruth Gavison was an Israeli human rights expert and law professor. In addition to her academic work as a lecturer and researcher and her work in social organizations, Gavison has also been a member of various committees. Her work has been amply recognized and awarded.

Ruth Gay

Through her writing, Ruth Glazer Gay captured an engaging view of the Jewish community, both past and present. As a writer, journalist, and archivist, she demonstrated throughout her life the possibility of having an intellectually vibrant career while still accommodating marriage and motherhood.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

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