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Sylvia Fine

Humorous composer Sylvia Fine created unique and influential music in her partnership with Danny Kaye. Fine wrote over 100 songs for Kaye to perform, including the music for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, and On the Riviera. She taught musical comedy at the University of Southern California and Yale and made philanthropic contributions to universities and Jewish organizations.

Rosa Fineberg

Rosa Edelhurst Fineberg kept detailed records of her work as a midwife that shed light on the lives of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century.

Rachel Kohl Finegold

One of the first women ordained by Yeshivat Maharat, a seminary for Orthodox Jewish women, Maharat Rachel Kohl Finegold is the first woman in Canada to serve as clergy for an Orthodox synagogue.

June Finer

June Finer took part in civil rights protests during Freedom Summer through the Medical Committee for Human Rights, beginning a long career at the intersection of medicine and activism.

Sheila Finestone

Senator Sheila Finestone was an important figure in Canadian parliamentary history, founding the Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians for the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She took up issues including human rights and served as president of the Quebec Federation of Women. A cornerstone of Canadian Jewish history, Finestone dedicated her life to advocacy and activism.

Ida Fink

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.

Mina Fink

Mina Fink was one of Australia’s most influential twentieth-century community leaders. With her husband she spearheaded the postwar immigration and resettlement of Holocaust survivors in Melbourne. As President of the National Council of Jewish Women she brought a new feminist and humanitarian agenda. She helped establish the Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Melbourne and imparted it with a strong educational focus.

Paulette Weill Oppert Fink

After Paulette Fink’s husband, serving in the French Army, escaped capture, Fink and her family fled to the unoccupied zone of France and joined the Resistance, hiding Jewish children and helping them escape. Despite her husband’s death, Fink continued working with the Resistance and the Jewish Brigade. When the war ended, she continued her work with refugees before settling in Minneapolis.

Telephone Switchboard Operators, circa 1914

Rose Finkelstein

A lifelong labor activist, Rose Finkelstein organized pay raises and better hours for women workers throughout New England.

Rita Sapiro Finkler

Rita Sapiro Finkler was a pioneer in the field of endocrinology, making important discoveries about the role hormones play in pregnancy, menopause, and other aspects of women’s health. She was the first womn to hold many of the leadership positions she held, and was president of the New Jersey branch of the American Medical Women’s Association.

Shulamith Firestone

Shulamith Firestone was one of the founders of radical feminism in the United States. At age 25, she published The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, which brought together the dialectical materialism of Marx and the psychoanalytic insights of Freud in an effort to develop an analysis of women’s oppression that was inclusive of the dimensions of class and race.

Ruth First

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.

Edith Fisch

With great courage and dogged determination, Edith Lond Fisch became a lawyer, legal writer, and law professor despite severe physical limitations, educational prejudices, and sexual discrimination. Edith Fisch wrote an important book on evidence which became regularly cited by judges and used in law schools throughout New York.

Jane Brass Fischel

An outstanding communal leader in New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community in the early twentieth century, Jane Brass Fischel was a generous philanthropist and active participant in Jewish communal activities.

Janette Fishenfeld

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.

Carrie Fisher

While Carrie Fisher was best known for her early film roles, she spent most of her career as a script doctor, shaping characters for others to play.

Marjorie Fisher

Marjorie Switow Fisher found inventive ways to improve children’s lives, from funding mobile dental clinics to using summer jobs as an opportunity for career training. Fisher majored in art at Marjorie Webster Junior College and graduated at the top of her class.

Sylvia Barack Fishman

Sylvia Barack Fishman is an influential scholar of contemporary Jewish life. She is the author of six books and numerous monographs and articles on gender and family formation among American Jews, Jewish education, Jewish literature and film, and the interplay between Jewish and American values and culture. Fishman is the Joseph and Esther Foster Professor in Judaic Studies (Emerita) at Brandeis University and Co-Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.

Ruth E. Fizdale

Ruth E. Fizdale is credited with making modern social work a profession. Fizdale helped transform social work from a charitable volunteer activity to a paid profession, through her development of a fee-for-service, nonprofit counseling firm.

Audrey Flack

The only female member of the founding group of photorealists, New York-born painter and sculptor Audrey Flack is especially recognized for the feminine content in her art. Her feminist sensibilities manifest in both her pioneering paintings, which often consider stereotypes of womanhood, and her sculptures, frequently depicting goddesses and other strong female figures. Flack’s work appears in prominent collections around the world.

Edith Flagg

Edith Flagg built a multi–million–dollar fashion empire through her innovative use of polyester.

Doris Fleischman

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.

Gisi Fleischmann

Gisi Fleischmann was a steadfast and brave fighter in the underground resistance to Nazism during World War II. Many times, she refused to escape Slovakia to safety and instead chose to stay and fight for her people to the bitter end.

Trude Fleischmann

Trude Fleischmann opened her studio at age 25, worked as a successful independent photographer through the Depression, and photographed some of the great artists, thinkers, and activists of her day, including Max Reinhardt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Albert Einstein. Fleischmann regarded photography as a craft rather than an art, an attitude which also helped open the field to women.

Jennie Maas Flexner

Jennie Maas Flexner was the head of the circulation department at the Louisville Public Library and later the readers’ advisor at the New York Public Library. Her sympathy for self-taught and adult learners drove her to create innovative reading lists for adults embarking on a new life or second career.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women