Jewish women played leading roles in the formative years of the General Jewish Workers’ Bund, which was established in the Tsarist Empire in 1897, and initially participated in the movement in large numbers. However, the Bund had somewhat less success in mobilizing women in independent Poland between the two world wars than it had during the Tsarist era.
Ruth Leah Bunzel began her career as anthropologist Franz Boas’s secretary, soon becoming an accomplished anthropologist herself. She broke new ground in her research the relationship of artists to their work and on alcoholism in two villages in Guatemala and Mexico.
As a widowed immigrant and young mother, Hayuta Busel fought to expand options for women in Palestine throughout her work on kibbutzim and in the women’s labor movement. Busel believed profoundly in the liberation of Jews, especially women, in the Hebrew language, and in the creation of a new model of family which would facilitate women’s liberation.
As a lawyer, Helen Lehman Buttenwieser fought to protect children in the foster care system. Throughout her life in the law she served as an important role model for many women attorneys.
Ghitta Caiserman-Roth was a well-known Canadian artist who showed her work in galleries in Canada and New York. Caiserman-Roth studied at Parsons School of Design, the École des Beaux-Arts, and at the American Artists’ School and won several awards for her artistic achievements. In her later years, she served on the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts council.
CAJE—the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education—brought together a diverse spectrum of the Jewish community. After CAJE folded in 2009, it was replaced by NewCAJE, which shares ideas and innovations, offers professional development across denominational and workplace lines, and builds a strong Jewish community.
Born in Milan, Tullia Calabi-Zevi began working as a journalist during World War II and wrote prolifically for a number of publications over the next few decades. In her later life she held many public leadership positions, including several in organizations specifically concerning Jewish life in Italy.
Hortense Calisher was a significant presence in American letters for over forty years, producing novels, short stories, and memoirs of striking originality and intelligence. Although she did not achieve popular fame, the literary community holds her in high regard and even her critics agree she is a consummate stylist.
Joyce Brothers was the second person and only woman to win the top prize on the popular television show The $64,000 Question. She became a popular psychologist and talk show host. Brothers conformed to normative understandings of 1950s womanhood but, unlike others, she gave advice about taboo topics such as sexuality and menopause.
In her fiction, Rosellen Brown confronted themes of alienation, responsibility for others, and racial tension in America. Brown is known for the passion and insight she brings to the page as a poet, essayist, and fiction writer.
Sandra (Sandy) Brown, an outstanding leader of the Toronto Jewish community at the turn of the twenty-first century, is one of the most influential and effective leaders of Toronto Jewry, highly regarded as a person of extraordinarily broad experience, unfailing fairness and commitment, and unusually deep knowledge of education.
Fighting the constraints of her Orthodox upbringing and expectations of her role as a wife and mother, novelist Carry van Bruggen wrote movingly of both the need for freedom and the isolation it could bring.
Cécile Brunschvicg was one of the grandes dames of French feminism during the first half of the twentieth century. Although her chief demand was women’s suffrage, she also focused on a range of practical reforms, including greater parity in women’s salaries, expanded educational opportunities for women, and the drive to reform the French civil code, which treated married women as if they were minors.
Psychoanalyst Ruth Mack Brunswick served as a crucial sounding board for Sigmund Freud, helping him revise his theories on the importance of the mother in the early shaping of the psyche. A valuable contributor to the American psychoanalytic group, Brunswick’s tactful thinking won her ideas a rare acknowledgment.
German-born scientist Edith Bülbring was renowned for her work in smooth muscle physiology, which paved the way for contemporary cellular investigations. She pursued this work through a large and flourishing large research group at Oxford University, which she led for seventeen years. In 1958 she was elected to the Royal Society.
As a lawyer and activist, Emilie M. Bullowa devoted her life to justice for the disenfranchised. Her colleagues, as well as many judges, respected her attitude as a woman in a field then dominated by men: She took pride in being a lawyer, rather than in being a female lawyer.
Since being allowed to resettle in 1656, Jews in Great Britain have established deep community ties throughout their diverse community. Class differences between early Sephardic settlers and the later wave of Ashkenazi immigrants gave rise to numerous Jewish charitable organizations, in which women played a key role.
Ruth Hagy Brod was a versatile and peripatetic career woman who worked for nearly fifty years as a journalist, publicist, literary agent, television host, and government antipoverty official.
May Brodbeck, whose career in the sciences ran the gamut from teaching high school chemistry to exploring fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of human consciousness, was among the foremost American-born philosophers of science.
Suzanne Brøgger is a Danish journalist, cultural critic, author, and essayist. With more than twenty books to her name, Brøgger has received widespread acclaim for her novels, essays, anthologies, poems, and plays.
Rohkel Brokhes offered an intimate and poignant glimpse into Jewish family life in Russia in the early 20th century. Her short stories, novellas, and plays documented the often-harsh lives of Russian Jews, especially women. She was born and raised in Minsk, and she would also die there in the ghetto.
A novelist, playwright, and ritualist, Esther M. Broner emerged on the literary scene in the early 1970s as a leading feminist writer. Her novels feature bitter, fearless, and funny characters. In other works, Broner has combined autobiography with feminist critique of Jewish tradition and created new rituals, such as her 1976 “Women’s Haggadah.”
Saidye Rosner Bronfman was a first-generation Canadian who used her wealth to benefit numerous Canadian Jewish organizations and philanthropies. Beginning in 1929, she served as the president of Montreal’s Young Women’s Hebrew Association for six years. In 1943 she was recognized by the British Empire for her philanthropic contributions to the war effort.
Claire Brook was a writer, editor, and composer whose career was most distinguished by her work in publishing. After retiring from W.W. Norton, she founded Pendragon Press, a small press focused on musicological books, with her husband and brother.
