We Remember

This online collection contains reminiscences of a variety of recently deceased American Jewish women who made a difference in their community and beyond.

Showing 1 - 25 of 195

Prudence Steiner

Prudence’s dedication to the Jewish Women’s Archive was both intellectual and personal. JWA’s mission appealed to her as a scholar, a Jew, and a woman.

Arlene Agus

Arlene was known for her intense and fervid connection to Jewish liturgy, her dazzling smile, her love of words, music and laughter, and her steadfast commitment to feminism.

Yvonne at the Campbell Library in Palm Beach

Yvonne was a lifelong educator. After retiring from teaching nursery school, Yvonne continued to educate as a speaker in middle and high school classrooms, sharing her Holocaust story through the organization Facing History & Ourselves. She was a gifted storyteller, and used her talent whenever she could to spread the message of “Never Again.”

Alice Shalvi

This was essential Alice—kind, appreciative, loving (and missing) those whom she adored, always inquisitive and expanding my questions, always wanting to know more.

Vivian Silver

When my beloved friend Vivian Silver was believed to be taken hostage by Hamas on October 7^th, and later when her death that day on Kibbutz Be’eri was confirmed, many people shared anecdotes and posted tributes about her lifelong habit of speaking truth to power. This extremely nice activist from Winnipeg evoked powerful memories, layered with admiration for her bold vision, beliefs, and actions.

Merle Goldman, Ruth Fein, and Judy Moore

Remembering Who We Are: A Tale of Three Cousins

First cousins Ruth Fein (1927-2024), Merle Goldman (1931-2023), and Judy Moore (1927-2023) all came of age as young women in the restrictive 1950s. From a certain distance, you might assume that they all conformed to a simple and restrictive script – the one prescribed for women of their era, race, and class status. But in truth none of them did. In fact, what is so striking about these three cousins is how each, in her own way, defied the expectations of the era in which they came of age.

Mimi Levin Lieber

Mimi’s achievements were legion. She was a pioneer in opinion research relating to consumers and was at the forefront of shifting the thinking from what manufacturers make, to what consumers want. Her ground-breaking work in the transformation of sociology as a tool for studying people in general into a tool for the study of people as consumers helped to formulate many of what became widely-adopted methods of surveying public opinion and doing consumer research.

Joan Micklin Silver, 1935–2020

Abstract notions of feminism never interested Joan; specific women and their stories did. Yet without setting out to do so, Joan Silver influenced generations of women to come. She was a trail-blazer, a risk-taker, a champion of other women directors.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1933–2020

Pioneering lawyer, Supreme Court Justice, and pop culture icon, Ruth Bader Ginsburg redefined gender equality through vision, persistence, precision, and dissent. This collection of reflections on her life and work honors her tremendous legacy as a lawyer, judge, feminist, and Jew.

Elsa Dorfman, 1937-2020

Elsa Dorfman is best known as a photographer who used a large format Polaroid camera to make 23 by 36 inch portraits of a wide range of individuals, from celebrities such as Allen Ginsberg, Andrea Dworkin, Bob Dylan, and members of the Big Apple Circus, to children, families with their pets, babies, and couples.

Vicki Gabriner, 1942 - 2018

Activist, agitator, proud Brooklynite, feminist, lesbian, socialist, wit, wife, cherished friend and relative. Vicki Levins Gabriner was articulate, principled, often ahead of her times.

Bunny Sandler and Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, 1928 - 2018

Bunny’s passion for changing the field of education’s treatment of women was spurred by her own experience in academia. In 1969, after earning a doctorate at the University of Maryland, she hoped to secure one of seven open teaching positions in her department at that university. When she learned that she had not been considered for any of them, she asked a male colleague why. His reply was, “Let’s face it. You come on too strong for a woman.” For Bunny, those were fighting words, and battling discrimination in educational institutions became her lifelong passion.

Rachel Cowan, 1941 - 2018

Every inflection point in Rachel’s life became a source of mission and activism: as half of a young intermarried couple in the 1970s, she pushed for inclusivity in the Jewish community… When she became Jewish and then a rabbi (she was ordained in 1989 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion), she used her dual perspective as both outsider and insider to sense what was needed in the Jewish world.

Carole Hart

Carole gave millions of children the affirming soundtrack to their childhoods. You can say a lot of things about Carole, but she left this world better than she found it.

Kathy Green

By reflecting on her life in the context of her family of origin, the community of her childhood, and the historical framework of her time, Kathy deepened our knowledge and understanding of Kathy and the loneliness and losses that shaped her. She also expanded the data that form the stuff of history—shedding new light on growing up female, American and Jewish in small town America, the immigrant experience, assimilation and anti-Semitism, and Jewish women’s religious needs and search for meaning.

Enid Shapiro, 1925 - 2017

Enid Shapiro lived tikkun olam. She was an early feminist, a devoted Jew, an unceasing learner, and she made a difference in countless people’s lives through her devotion to repair the world and her commitment to kindness and care that came from a place of profound integrity.

Ros Baxandall, 1939 - 2015

With her daring, her chutzpah, her athleticism, her many male lovers and her even greater number of enduring female friendships, she exemplified the complexities of a feminist form of freedom.

Belda Lindenbaum, 1938 - 2015

It was her determination to keep one foot firmly in traditional Judaism and the other in feminist ideals of inclusion that made her a model for so many of us.

Barbara Brenner, 1951 - 2013

It had all the elements of a Barbara Brenner project: edgy humor, indignation, broad appeal, and an educational component that emphasized how profiteering was taking hold of the breast cancer advocacy movement.

Rochelle Shoretz, 1972 - 2015

Rochie lived with a spirit that was equal parts intensity and carefree exuberance. In the last few years of her life, when her cancer returned, she talked about "the strength that comes with living with a sharpened sense of time."

Frances Kroll Ring, 1916 - 2015

F. Scott Fitzgerald asked if she knew anyone in Hollywood. She didn't. He told her to open the top drawer of his dresser, where there were dozens of half empty gin bottles. She shrugged. Satisfied that Grandma wouldn't rat him out to tabloids or judge his drinking, Fitzgerald hired her that day.

Harriet Perl, 1920 - 2013

In my imagination, she was a well-adjusted spinster whose heroes were Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. But in the packed sanctuary that day, people spoke of a much greater hero: Ellen DeGeneres.

Maxine Kumin, 1925 - 2014

Among those of us who have been traveling in her wake for decades, she was and is a model of how to live, as well as how to write, courageously and sanely, with artistic craft and generosity, out of a profound love of our shared life.

Naomi Weisstein, 1939 - 2015

Naomi sometimes described herself as a female Lenny Bruce. But she was not an imitation anything. She was pure Naomi.

Fredrica Wechsler, 1929 - 2014

My mother was no shrinking violet. After a few weeks at home following the wedding, she got a job at the Gary Welfare Department, where she went on home visits and discovered Gary’s devastatingly impoverished African-American community. I am sure that this was a pivotal moment for her—and she never turned back.

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