Non-Fiction

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Miriam Bernstein-Cohen

Miriam Bernstein-Cohen was an influential actor, director, poet, and translator in Europe and Israel.  She was a versatile actor, appearing successfully both in comedies and in serious plays with the Ohel, Matateh, and Haifa Municipal Theater companies. In addition to her theater work, she wrote books and essays on theater and literature throughout her life.

Deborah Bertonoff

From her debut at age nine through her performances in her late seventies and teaching into her late eighties, Deborah Bertonoff made dance her life’s work. Bertonoff began studying at the Bolshoi School before moving to Israel and joining the Habimah Theater. After studying dance in Europe she began choreographing, and in 1944 she founded a dance studio. She was honored with the 1991 Israel Prize.

Jessie Bernard

Sociologist Jessie Bernard’s feminist epiphany came at age 67 in 1969, but her earlier work anticipated feminist theory by discussing the differences between men’s and women’s experiences and arguing that quantitative studies did not accurately represent women’s stories.

Anne Fleischman Bernays

Anne Fleischman Bernays is an American editor, novelist, and nonfiction writer. Her literary work is notable for its exploration of Jewish experiences of America, the pressure of assimilation, and the then-taboo subject of sexual harassment.

Lili Berger

A prolific literary critic and essayist who wrote fiction, short stories, and novels, Lili Berger worked to educate, instruct, expose, and memorialize. Her works captured the Polish-Jewish experience in the twentieth century, particularly those of other writers and artists.

Rahel Yanait Ben-Zvi

Rahel Yanait Ben-Zvi was the second First Lady of Israel, wife to President Yizhak Ben-Zvi. Before and after Ben-Zvi’s tenure, she was active in the labor movement in Palestine and Israel and in the independence movement, as well as a prolific writer and recorder of her experiences in Erez Israel.

Bene Israel

The Bene Israel is one of three Jewish communities in India. Bene Israel women were the producers and preservers of Bene Israel culture in India, and many were very influential leaders in their communities, academia, and religious life.

Hadassa Ben-Itto

Hadassa Ben-Itto was a jurist and best-selling author. In addition to serving in multiple prestigious positions, she is best known for her book The Lie that Will Not Die: One Hundred Years of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Hebrew, 1998).

Miriam Ben-Porat

Although Miriam Ben-Porat is perhaps best known as the first woman to be appointed an Israeli Supreme Court Justice, she also held many positions throughout her life, from state comptroller to professor and author. She was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1976, where she made rulings characterized by both legal and non-legal elements and grounded in the principles of equality and good faith.

Hemdah Ben-Yehuda

Hemdah Ben-Yehuda collaborated with her husband to revive ancient Hebrew and make it a truly functional living language. She helped coin new Hebrew words, created salons for Jewish thinkers, and wrote articles for the newspaper she and her husband ran. Beyond her own writings, she helped edit and compile the seventeen-volume Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew.

Ruth Ben Israel

Ruth Ben Israel was an Israeli legal scholar who specialized in labor law, social equality, and women’s legal rights. While a member of Tel Aviv University’s law faculty from 1986 until her retirement in 2005, Ben Israel wrote more than fifteen influential books on labor law and served as a legal advisor to multiple Knesset Committees related to labor and women’s rights.

Netiva Ben Yehuda

Netiva Ben Yehuda was a Jewish-Israeli writer, poet, broadcaster, and Palmah officer. Ben Yehuda’s works surround her experiences before, during, and after her service in the Jewish underground Palmah and her dedication to enriching the lexicon of spoken Hebrew.

Sarah Bavly

Dutch-born Sarah Bavly was a pioneer nutritionist in the Yishuv who laid the groundwork for Israel's nutritional infrastructure and educational programming, directing Hadassah's hospital nutrition departments and school lunch programs and establishing the State's first College of Nutrition.

Evelyn Torton Beck

Evelyn (Evi) Torton Beck is a multi-faceted scholar, analyst, activist, feminist, dancer, Jew, and lesbian who has enriched each discipline she engaged. She wrote the iconic Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, as well as articles on Franz Kafka, Frieda Kahlo, and the transformative power of the sacred circle dance. Under Beck’s leadership, the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, became world-renowned.

Dorothy Walter Baruch

Psychologist Dorothy Walter Baruch championed the health development of children as an educator, author, psychologist, and as a community leader. Her psychodynamic approach to child development focused on the relationship between physical, emotional, and intellectual development and on rechanneling children’s feelings through play and art therapy.

Clarice Baright

Clarice Baright was one of the first women admitted to the American Bar Association and the second woman to become a magistrate in New York City. Despite many barriers, she had a distinguished career and was the first woman to try a case before an army court-martial.

Baraita de-Niddah

A rabbinic text about the ritual laws relating to menstruation, Baraita de-Niddah has a mysterious origin and an unknown impact on the interpretation of Jewish law about menstruation.

Elisabeth Badinter

Elisabeth Badinter is one of France’s most prominent and controversial philosophers. Among her most important contributions figure her numerous writings about feminism and gender relations, which emphasize the importance of “equality through resemblance,” as well as her historical works on the Enlightenment.

Bertha Badt-Strauss

A religious German-Jewish writer, intellectual, and ardent Zionist, Bertha Badt-Strauss was one of the first women to earn a doctoral degree in Prussia. She was a prolific writer, publishing hundreds of articles over the course of her lifetime, and was very involved in the “Jewish Renaissance” cultural movement. She was dedicated in particular to illuminating the diverse experiences of Jewish women past and present.

Rokhl Auerbakh

Rokhl Auerbakh (1903–1976), a member of the Polish-Jewish literary elite, ran a soup kitchen in the Warsaw Ghetto while simultaneously recording the voices of its captive inhabitants in her writing. She ultimately survived the war by passing herself off as an "Aryan," and went on to found the Department for the Collection of Witness Testimony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Australia: 1788 to the Present

The first Jewish women, like the first Jewish men, arrived in Australia on the very first day of European settlement in 1788. Those convict pioneers were followed by free settlers who made Jewish communal and congregational life viable and helped to develop the vast continent. Jewish women have made significant contributions to Australia's national story.

Dora Askowith

Dora Askowith, author, historian, and college educator, believed that a knowledge of Jewish women’s history would serve as a catalyst for organization, activism, and moral leadership. She taught women at Hunter College for a total of forty-five years and wrote that she was anxious to teach college students Jewish history because they were “poorly versed in the history of their own faith.”

Artists: Russia and the Soviet Union

Jewish women participated in the artistic life of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union for over a hundred years. Jewish women artists worked in all styles, from the routine academic to the extreme avant-garde. There were also well-known art patrons, gallery owners, art historians, and art critics.

Margaret Gene Arnstein

Margaret Gene Arnstein was a principal architect of the American nursing profession. Her belief that nurses should be involved in health policy and research helped transform her profession. Renowned for her work in public health, Arnstein also advanced nursing education and research.

Adrien Arpel

Adrien Arpel is a pioneering entrepreneur who has been highly successful in the skincare industry. She realized there was a need in the cosmetics marketplace for a business that would educate the consumer. Arpel was the president and CEO of Adrien Arpel, Inc., an enterprise with approximately 500 salons across the United States and Canada.

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