Italian Hebrew poet Rachel Morpurgo was part of the renaissance of Hebrew poetry and literature that began at the end of the eighteenth century. While earlier Italian Jewish women poets had written almost entirely in Italian, Morpurgo wrote all her poems in Hebrew and can be considered the first Hebrew woman poet.

As a female playwright, Martha Morton faced adversity within the male-dominated New York theater world. Despite repeated rejection, she achieved fame and prosperity. Resisting expectations of women writers, Morton took a firm hand in production, often casting and directing her own work.

Elsa Morante (1912-1985) was an Italian author whose writing often addressed persecution and injustice. After fleeing Fascist authorities during World War II, Morante traveled extensively while continuing to write prolifically; she later won the Viareggio literary prize, Strega Prize, and Prix Medicis.

Deborah Dash Moore is a leading scholar of American Jewish history. Her influential work has focused on both urban and visual Jewish history in locales from New York to Miami to Los Angeles. A prolific interpreter of Jewish and American culture, Moore has played a key role in making American Jewish history a recognized subfield in the academy.

A Jewish-American poet, nurse, journalist, and educator, Penina Moïse was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1797. Penina Moïse, a staunch supporter of the Confederacy, shaped American-Jewish culture through her poetry as the first woman poet included in an American prayer book.

Marga Minco (b. 1920) is a Dutch writer famous for her literary work relating to the Holocaust and for her economical use of words. Both topic and writing style have made her work unique.

Bette Midler went from canning pineapples at a factory in Honolulu to starring in over 20 films, releasing two dozen records, and touring the world with record-breaking live concert performances. Midler got her start at a gay bathhouse in New York, where she developed the campy and confident persona “The Divine Miss M.” Her career in show business spans decades, old and new media, and musical genres.

Hélène Metzger was a French historian of chemistry and a philosopher of science, whose work remains influential today. Her independence and drive brought her great recognition, despite the lack of credibility given to her as a woman.

Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar struggled between her allegiance to French culture and her identity as a Jewish person. In her published journal, she perceptively documented the abandonment of French Jews during the Holocaust and the struggles of assimilated French Jews.

Ida Maze was a “communitarian-proletarian” Yiddish writer who turned her Montreal home into a magnet for Yiddish writers and culture. After emigrating from Belarus to North America at age twelve in 1905, Maze began writing lyrical poems that were original and inspiring to young people.

Born in Berlin, Lilli Marx emigrated to England as a young adult but returned to Germany, where she helped institute a national Jewish weekly newspaper and worked to create a dialogue between German society and the Jewish community. She contributed to the creation of several Jewish organizations, notably the League of Jewish Women, and continued to work in social work until her death.

Despite her short writing career, Anna Margolin is regarded by literary critics as one of the finest early twentieth-century Yiddish poets in America. She was an active member of a circle of Jewish immigrant intellectuals in New York and her work influenced several major writers of her time, including the Yiddishist Chaim Zhitlovsky.