Browse by Category | Jewish Women's Archive

Mary Arbitman Fellman

Mary Arbitman Fellman was the first woman editor of the Omaha Jewish Press, led multiple Jewish organizations, and cofounded the Nebraska Jewish Historical Society. As a historian, a journalist, a community leader, and a matchmaker, she cared for the past, present, and future of the Jewish community in Omaha.

Mary Fels

Mary Fels used her wealth and her talents to further the Zionist cause, arguing passionately for a Jewish state and helping create both settlements and industry in Israel. Both Fels and her husband, a successful soap manufacturer, felt their wealth gave them a responsibility to reform capitalism and use their money for philanthropy.

Female Martyrdom

In various eras, Jewish women chose martrydom, or Kiddush ha-Shem (sanctification of the Divine Name), rather than repudiate God or transgress certain commandments. Examples appear in Jewish Hellenistic writings, rabbinic literature, Crusade chronicles, medieval Hebrew piyyut (liturgical poetry), accounts of the seventeenth-century Chmielnicki pogroms, and documents connected with the Shoah. Scholars differ, however, regarding the accuracy of these martyrological texts, which often reshape actual events to conform to iconic imagery.

Female Personalities in the Babylonian Talmud

Beyond the articles within this Encyclopedia that pertain to specific women in the Babylonian Talmud, six others are also mentioned repeatedly in the text. Some are described as respected and wise, while others are used as cautionary tales against female autonomy. Ultimately, the women’s stories are used to supplement the narratives about the men around them.

Female Purity (Niddah)

Halakhic practice for Niddah, or female purity, is based on a harmonistic reading of Leviticus 12,15, 18, and 20. The laws of female purity have been historically used to determine the status of women in a patriarchal society.

Feminine Images of God

Jewish scripture includes few examples of a feminine or woman-personified God. The Hebrew Bible contains limited references to a female personification of God; God is usually explicitly described as a man. Medieval and contemporary theology have largely rejected the idea of divine gender, but some modern feminist theologians have interpreted texts to draw comparisons to the feminine experience.

Ariel Sharon and Michal Modai, December 10, 2001

Feminism in Contemporary Israel

The first Israeli radical women’s movement was established in 1972. The 1973 Yom Kippur War then created an awareness of the meaning of the gendered role division between men and women, and soon after the war, a choir of voices, organizations, and movements began to fight for feminist causes. In the twenty-first century, the feminist landscape expanded, but the feminist field remained highly divided.

Feminism in the United States

Jewish women participated in and propelled all aspects of the women's rights movement, from suffrage in the nineteenth century to women's liberation in the twentieth. Despite occasional instances of antisemitism in the general feminist movement, Jewish women were passionate advocates of feminist goals.

The Journey Continues: The MA'YAN Passover Haggadah, 2000

Feminist Jewish Ritual: An International Perspective

Beginning with the first bat mitzvah, Jewish women began adapting traditional ceremonies to focus on women and their experiences. Other rituals have been created for parts of the female life cycle such as menstruation or childbirth. However, there continues to be a lack of recognition of women in recently created holidays that are based on nationalist and Zionist beliefs.

Feminist Jewish Ritual: The United States

Ritual behavior is one of the fundamental pillars of Judaism, and of all religions, whose concern is precisely with ultimate meaning and purpose. Since the 1970s, Jewish feminists have gained access to male-identified rituals, developed a wide variety of new rituals, and feminized core male rituals.

Feminist Theology

Jewish feminist theology focuses on central Jewish categories, themes, and modes of expression—for example, God, prayer, Torah, and halakhah—and asks who created them and whose interests they reflect. It raises meta-questions about Jewish tradition.

Edna Ferber

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.

18th Century woodcut of a woman lighting Shabbat candles

Festivals and Holy Days

According to halakhah, women are responsible for obeying all of Judaism’s negative commandments and for observing most of the positive ones, including the Sabbath and all of the festivals and holy days of the Jewish year. In some instances, however, male and female obligations on these days differ.

Joan Feynman

Astrophysicist Joan Feynman shaped our understanding of solar winds, auroras, and sunspots, and her battle to open scientific bastions to women transformed the field for those who followed.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris, 1923

Fiction in the United States

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.

Fiction, Popular in the United States

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.

Bobbi Fiedler

When Los Angeles announced plans in 1976 to desegregate schools by busing students, Bobbi Fielder was inspired to enter politics. She served on the Los Angeles Board of Education, where she quickly overturned the busing initiative, and subsequently served three terms in the House of Representatives. After losing a Senate race, Fielder withdrew from politics and became a consultant.

Dorothy Fields

Dorothy Fields wrote songs for a wide variety of musicals that became classics of American culture, from “Hey Big Spender” to “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” which won an Academy Award in 1936. In 1971, when the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame held its first annual nominations, Dorothy Fields was the only woman named to the ballot.

Film Industry in the United States

Jewish women have played crucial roles in the United States film industry. Despite sexism and sometimes anti-Semitism, they have worked both behind the scenes, as writers, directors, and producers, as well as on-screen as both Jewish and non-Jewish characters.

Naomi Gryn and Hugo Gryn in Karlovy Vary, 1989

Filmmakers, Independent European

The substantial success of many European Jewish women filmmakers attests to their abilities to preserve or imagine what was lost as a community. The films of those born in Central Europe are reflective of the Jewish experience of loss, outsider-ness, and memory; others explore courage and individual acts of resistance during World War II. Western European directors re-tell personal stories of friendship and betrayal in a historical context of Europe without its Jews. A strong body of work from North African-born filmmakers reflects the relationship between Arabs and Jews.

Filmmakers, Independent North American

Jewish women directors have made significant contributions to independent film and have created mainstream and experimental works that attempt to redefine Jewish identity. Subverting male-dominated Jewish literary and Hollywood traditions, these filmmakers employ images of hybrid identities and illuminate the lives of Jewish women in their work.

Filmmakers, Israeli

Israeli filmmaking is a national cultural expression, and female Israeli directors have become major contributors to that expression. In their films, these directors deal with personal relationships and family conflicts, religious and professional issues, and the effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants.

Liana Finck

Liana Finck finds new angles of approach into her life and Jewish history through her whimsical and expressive autobiographical cartoons.

Alexandra Fine

Using crowdfunding and cutting-edge technology, Alexandra Fine helped create the first successful hands-free couples’ vibrator in 2014 to overcome the difficulties women face in achieving orgasm during sex.

Irene Fine

Faced with a mandatory internship for her PhD but nowhere she could teach courses on Jewish women, Irene Fine created the innovative Woman’s Institute for Continuing Jewish Education in 1977. The Institute offered courses and published books of women’s prayers. Beyond her work leading the Institute, Fine wrote two of her own books and edited an anthology.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women