Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Jacqueline Koch Ellenson

A rabbi and community leader, Jacqueline Koch Ellenson has balanced her concern for both Israeli and American women as chair of the Hadassah Foundation and director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network.

Sue Levi Elwell

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell dedicated her career to creating opportunities for Jewish women to learn and take ownership of Jewish rituals.

As editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, scholar and rabbi Tamara Cohn Eskenazi recovered the stories of women mentioned throughout the Bible and treated them with the academic rigor usually reserved for the patriarchs and other biblical men.

Jane Evans

Although she never became a rabbi, Jane Evans, Executive Director of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, became a powerful voice for women’s ordination within the Reform Movement.

Mimi Feigelson

Reb Mimi Feigelson, the first Orthodox woman ordained as a rabbi, has followed in the footsteps of her mentor, Shlomo Carlebach, by welcoming students from across the spectrum of religious practice.

Nina Feinstein

Although she was the second woman ordained by the Conservative Movement, Rabbi Nina Bieber Feinstein helped lay the groundwork for women’s ordination through her own years of study and struggle.

Rabbi Moses Feinstein

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the great Jewish legalists of the twentieth century, wrote numerous legal decisions responding to and affecting women’s lives. His pronouncements regarding women aimed to respond to women’s issues with respect and careful consideration, while also establishing a system in which the roles of men and women were distinctly imbalanced.

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.

Karen Fox

As a rabbi and a psychotherapist, Karen Fox guides and supports clients, congregants, and students on their different journeys.

Ray Frank

While her career was short-lived, Ray Frank remains significant as the first Jewish woman to preach from a pulpit in the United States. Her speeches often encouraged communal cooperation and tried to heal congregational disputes, and she notably gave an address at the first Jewish Women’s Congress in 1893.

Ruth Balinsky Friedman

One of the first graduates of Yeshivat Maharat, the first Orthodox seminary to ordain women, Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman is crafting a new model of religious leadership for Orthodox women and girls.

Abraham Geiger

Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) was one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century. He was one of the major intellectual leaders and founders of the Reform movement in Germany and a strong supporter of Jews entering European society. As part of his vision of Judaism, he argued for a Judaism oriented around the home and domestic life, but also a Judaism that both elevated and sidelined the women that had long created that domestic life.

Laura Geller

One of the first American women rabbis, Laura Geller has repeatedly challenged exclusions and shown that women’s leadership could bring a different, more meaningful, experience of Judaism. As a leader at the University of Southern California Hillel, the American Jewish Congress, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, and ChaiVillageLA, Geller showed the emerging possibilities of women’s leadership.

German-Jewish Pietists: Attitudes towards Women

Despite their small numbers, the introspective and penitential religious outlook of the German-Jewish Piestists had a significant and lasting impact on European Jewry. Written by men and intended for a male audience, the Pietists’ writings heighten the profound ambivalence toward women that is inherent in the rabbinic tradition

Miri Gold

In a landmark case in 2012, Miri Gold became the first non-Orthodox rabbi to have her salary paid by the Israeli government.

Elyse Goldstein

Elyse Goldstein was one of the first women rabbis in Canada. Throughout her career she has broken down barriers by founding inclusive communities for learning and prayer.

Maralee Gordon

Rabbi Maralee Gordon helped found the Chutzpah Collective, a radical Jewish political collective that utilized the inclusion of women in religious rituals as a jumping-off point for making all Jews feel welcome in the Jewish community regardless of disability or sexual orientation.

Lynn Gottlieb

One of the first ten women rabbis, Lynn Gottlieb became a voice for peace between Jews and Muslims.

Tina Grimberg

Tina Grimberg has focused her rabbinic career on empowering women and fighting domestic violence.

Susan Grossman

Rabbi Susan Grossman has helped shape the Conservative Movement’s policies on women’s rights and roles in Jewish life through her work as a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS).

A print of an Ashkenazi Dutch wedding ceremony.

Halakhic Decisions on Family Matters in Medieval Jewish Society

Across the medieval Jewish world, rabbis used takkanot (rabbinic decrees) to address urgent needs in family life among their Jewish communities. These takkanot are key historical sources for understanding the changing roles of women in the medieval Jewish world.

Jill Hammer

Jill Hammer co-founded the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute to offer women alternative ways of connecting with Jewish tradition by focusing on the sacredness of the body and the earth.

Susan Harris

As hospital chaplain, Rabbi Susan Harris has worked to make Boston Children’s Hospital more sensitive to the needs of LGBTQ patients and families.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women

Hundreds of compilations of Hasidic literature, a genre derived from oral traditions, were published in Eastern Europe between the start of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of World War II. The image of “woman” varies in Hasidic literature according to the character in the story, its narrator, and its setting in time and place; therefore we can only refer to individual women, each on her own, and not to woman in general or women as a gender.

Hasidism

Hasidism is a spiritual revival movement associated with the founding figure of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (Besht, c. 1700–1760). Although some have depicted the movement as nothing less than a “feminist” revolution in early modern Judaism, in actuality the Hasidic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conceptualized gender in conventional terms drawn unquestioningly from the classical rabbinic, philosophical, and kabbalistic sources.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Religion: Rabbis