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.

Doris Fleischman made history as the first American married woman issued a passport under her own name. Her prolific writing career and public feminism brought her national recognition.

Ruth First was a prolific writer and her penetrating investigative journalism exposed many of the harsh conditions under which the majority of South Africans lived. As various restrictions prevented her from continuing her work as a journalist Ruth First became more and more involved with the underground movement that was changing its tactics from protest to sabotage.

A Polish-born writer who survived the Holocaust, Ida Fink published several collections of short stories and a novel that explore the experiences and after-effect of the Holocaust. Her subtle and nuanced writing brings memory and imagination to bear on a traumatic past.

Literature by American Jewish women reflects historical trends in American Jewish life and indicates the changing issues facing writers who worked to position themselves as Americans, Jews, and women.

The explosion of writing by American Jewish women in the twentieth century produced not only serious fiction, poetry, essays, and autobiography but also a range of popular literature geared towards pleasure and light entertainment. Popular fiction by American Jewish women in the twentieth century featured genres from regional novels, sagas, historical novels, romances, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and humor.

Prolific writer Edna Ferber celebrated America in her many works, even as she exposed its shortcomings. Her novel So Big won a Pulitzer Prize in 1925, and the film Giant and the musical Show Boat were both based on her novels. Ferber’s work was shaped by her childhood experiences of antisemitism and frequently featured strong and talented women.

Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan helped pioneer the scientific analysis of native Israeli flora and establish the study of botany and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Reportedly the first American theater actress to earn a three-figure salary, Rose Eytinge was praised for her fiery, passionate performances.  Known for taking on physically demanding roles, on a performance tour stop in Washington, she was invited to the White House by President Abraham Lincoln. In 1905 she published her autobiography, Memories of Rose Eytinge, detailing her life in theater.

Marcia Falk is a poet, translator, and liturgist whose knowledge of the Bible and of Hebrew and English literature informs the feminist spiritual vision of her work. She is widely considered one of the foremothers of, and foremost contributors to, the Jewish feminist movement.

Minna Regina Falk was a historian, writer, and professor who is remembered for her work on German history. She became the first female full professor in New York University’s history department in 1963.

Born in 1939, Rachel Ertel is a translator and an essayist. She remains one of the most prolific translators from Yiddish to French and dedicated her life to the survival of Yiddish culture in France and America.

The first American girl to publicly celebrate a bat mitzvah, Judith Kaplan Eisenstein went on to become a Jewish educator, composer, and musicologist. Her accomplishments included studying at the school that would later become Julliard, teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary Teacher’s Institute, and writing a songbook for children.

The documents found on the Egyptian island of Elephantine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which date from the fifth century BCE, extensively feature women. The women enjoyed extensive financial and property rights and their narratives show a society in which women had significant rights, rare for the time.

After making Aliyah in 1925, Elisheva Bichovsky (born in Russia as Elizaveta Zhirkova), helped shape the Yishuv’s literary scene as one of Palestine’s first Hebrew poets. Her 1926 Kos Ketannah and 1929 Simta’ot were, respectively, the first poetry collection and first novel written by a woman to be published in Palestine.

Impulsive, adventurous, and outspoken, Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp ran away from home when she was seventeen years old. Two years later, she joined destinies with western lawman, gambler, and entrepreneur Wyatt Earp. For forty-seven years, they roamed the West, mingling with well-known westerners on both sides of the law.