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Legal-Religious Status of the Jewish Female

Gendered language in the Torah resulted in centuries of debate about a woman’s role with regard to commandments. The sages’ construction of a woman and her values was very negative, probably relating more to their vision of the ideal, which was male oriented, and applying its opposite to females.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/legal-religious-status-of-jewish-female

Law in Israel

Although women constitute a large portion of those who work in the Israeli legal field, women in law mostly have refrained from feminist identification, and feminist activism has been promoted by only a tiny minority of women lawyers.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/law-in-israel

Law in the United States

Until recently, “law” in relation to the Jewish community meant religious law, but in a “post-emancipation” context, “law” is related to offical behavior, enforcing equal treatment of all groups. For Jewish women who immigrated to the United States, this modern approach afforded them new freedoms, especially under secular as opposed to religious leadership.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/law-in-united-states

Lawyers in Germany and Austria

German and Austrian women were first allowed to enter careers in law in the mid-1920s, following rules permitting their admittance to universities at the turn of the century. Although women were a small proportion of all lawyers, judges, and prosecutors in Germany and Austria, Jewish women were a significant group among those women, and they often faced both religious and gender-based discrimination.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lawyers-in-germany-and-austria

Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), an internationally known poet and essayist, created the role of the American Jewish writer. She lent her voice to the Statue of Liberty to enunciate a vision for America, but she herself was in no doubt about the Jewish roots of her vision in tikkun olam (repairing the world) through righteousness, justice, and compassion.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lazarus-emma

Josephine Lazarus

Josephine Lazarus was an American Sephardi essayist and literary critic. Her writings exploring issues of Jewish destiny and identity were widely published in leading journals across the country. She is the best known of the poet Emma Lazarus’s five sisters.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lazarus-josephine

Lazarus, Nahida Ruth

Nahida Ruth Lazarus was a German-Jewish cultural and literary critic, author, journalist, and essayist who was born in Berlin to a German-Christian family and converted to Judaism in 1895. She is best known for her published source book, The Jewish Woman (1891), a product of her fundamental interest in both feminism and Judaism that remains an important text for women’s and gender studies.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lazarus-nahida-ruth

Linda Lavin

A prolific performer on stage and small screen, actor-singer Linda Lavin has been a role model for many of America’s working women. While her Jewish heritage has not always been the focus of her career, she has powerfully portrayed Jewish women whenever the roles have come her way—which they increasingly do.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lavin-linda

Anna Langfus

After surviving political prison in Poland during the Holocaust, Anna Langfus moved to France and began writing plays and novels that dealt with themes of war, destruction, and loss. In her works, she weaved autobiographical material with fiction, capturing her harrowing experiences in her art.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/langfus-anna

Sherry Lansing

Sherry Lansing broke barriers as the first woman studio executive when she became head of 20th Century Fox in 1980, going on to lead Paramount Studios to create wildly successful blockbusters like Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Titanic.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lansing-sherry

Shulamit Lapid

Shulamit Lapid is an Israeli-Jewish novelist and playwright born in 1934. Her literary work focuses on feminism, social consciousness, and immigration to Israel.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lapid-shulamit

Ruth Lapidoth

Professor Ruth Lapidoth is a major Israeli expert in international law. As a young woman, she decided to specialize in this field, seeing it as a path towards dialogue and a means to solve the Arab-Israel conflict.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lapidoth-ruth

Ruth Laredo

Ruth Meckler Laredo was a phenomenal pianist, known for her renditions of Rachmaninoff’s piano works, her performances of Scriabin’s sonatas, her work as a teacher, and for pioneering the “Concerts with Commentary” event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Starting her performance career at age eleven, Laredo was honored as Musician of the Month by High Fidelity/Musical America and was nominated three times for a Grammy Award.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/laredo-ruth

Else Lasker-Schüler

Else Lasker-Schüler was a German-Jewish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright. Born in Elberfeld (today part of Wuppertal, Germany) in 1869, Lasker-Schüler is best known for her dream-like, bohemian poetry.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lasker-schueler-else

Estée Lauder

Estée Lauder became a household name for beauty thanks to the luxurious makeup, lotions, and perfumes she created. An astute businesswoman, she made a fortune manufacturing, marketing, and distributing cosmetics around the world and was regularly honored for her business achievements.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lauder-estee

Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Press in the United States

The Ladino press of the United States, still largely unexplored, is the most vital source for the multifaceted history of Sephardic women in early twentieth-century America. Though the editors, along with much of the readership, were male, these numerous publications are an important source of information about the social status and activities of Sephardic women, and even more so, illuminate male perception of them.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ladino-judeo-spanish-press-in-united-states

Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Theater in the United States

The role of women in the Ladino theater is an eloquent testimony to how they have contributed to their communities, responded to national crises, and lent their energies to the continuation of the Judeo-Spanish cultural and linguistic heritage. Esther Cohen, who wrote and performed plays in Brooklyn in the 1930s, is an exemplary model of women involved in American Judeo-Spanish theater.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ladino-judeo-spanish-theater-in-united-states

Phyllis Lambert

Phyllis Lambert is a Canadian architect and philanthropist. After receiving her M.S. in architecture in 1963, she established herself as a leader in urban conservation and public architecture. She has received many awards and honors, including the Gold Medal from the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada in 1991—Canada’s most prestigious architectural award.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lambert-phyllis

Annie Edith Landau

As an educator in Jerusalem at the beginning of the twentieth century, Annie Edith Landau established new standards both in educational methods and in the cultural, ethical, and health arenas, while at the same time setting an example of polite and civilized behavior.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landau-annie-edith

Sara Landau

Sara Landau was an accomplished twentieth-century economist who paired her scholarship with inexhaustible volunteerism in local and national organizations. Throughout her career in academia and service, Landau exemplified a category of economically independent middle-class Jewish women in America who both developed their own careers and devoted their energy to volunteer efforts, especially on behalf of their fellow Jews.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landau-sara

Ann Landers

For over forty years, the Ann Landers advice column—written by Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer—helped lovelorn teens, confused parents, couples on the brink of divorce, grieving widows, and a myriad of others who were in need of counsel. Translated into over twenty languages, Ann Landers reached millions of readers with her clear, witty and sometimes sarcastic column.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landers-ann

Ruth Schlossberg Landes

Ruth Schlossberg Landes made her mark as one of the first professional female anthropologists with her work on gender and religious identity in different cultures. Slandered by a letter from male colleagues criticizing her fieldwork methods, Landes was unable to secure a permanent teaching job for twenty years.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landes-ruth-schlossberg

Bertha Landsman

Bertha Landsman dedicated her life to nursing, becoming one of the generation of giants who laid the foundation of the nursing profession in Palestine. She worked with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women, persuading them to abandon folk superstition in favor of “correct knowledge and information,” and also taught nursing to local women students.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landsman-bertha

Rachel Landy, Rose Kaplan, and Eva Leon, Jerusalem, 1913

Rae D. Landy

A disciplined nurse who put her own safety at risk time and again for others, Rae Landy helped Hadassah establish the first nursing service in Israel and then served as a military nurse in the US Armed Services.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/landy-rae-d

Lucy Fox Robins Lang

A committed anarchist by age fifteen, Lucy Fox Robins Lang contributed greatly to both the labor movement and the anarchist movement as aide and confidante to major figures like Emma Goldman and Samuel Gompers, though her work was largely uncredited and behind the scenes.

http://qa.jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lang-lucy-fox-robins

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