Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

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.

Reina Goldstein Hartmann focused her career on improving the lives of Jewish women in her native Chicago, serving as the leader of the Mothers Aid of the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary as well as other organizations.

Marion Hartog

Marion Hartog and her sister Celia published influential poetry and books on Jewish themes, including works that were among the first fictions ever published by Jewish women anywhere in the world. Hartog later created and edited the first Jewish women’s periodical in history, The Jewish Sabbath Journal.

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.

Hasidic Women in the United States

Hasidic women belong to various sects of Judaism’s most religiously observant and traditional communities. Postwar Hasidism took root and thrived in many U.S. cities; while women remain dedicated to domestic responsibilities, with large family sizes and a high birth rate, many also work outside the home and/or are college-educated religious activists. .

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.

A portrait of Miriam Markel Mosessohn, wearing a dress with a frilled collar

Haskalah Attitudes Toward Women

Just as the many well-known thinkers of the Enlightenment debated the proper role of women in society, so did the maskilim, the men of intellect who burst upon Ashkenazi Jewish society in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revolution known as Haskalah. Dominated by men, the movement critiqued Jewish tradition and encouraged modernity among Jews, but simultaneously met Jewish women’s pursuit of modernity with ambivalence.

Judith Hauptman

The first woman to receive a PhD in Talmud, Judith Hauptman has made significant contributions to the academic study of the origins and development of the works of the “canon” of rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity. A second prominent focus of both Hauptman’s scholarly and other work has been Jewish feminism and the status of women in rabbinic and related literature, particularly exemplified in her best-known work, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice.

Rivka Haut

An Orthodox Jewish feminist, Rivka Haut advocated on behalf of agunot (chained wives) and wrote feminist prayers for Orthodox Jews.

Amichai Pardo in Rina Yerushalmi's "Romeo and Juliet," 1993

Hebrew Drama: Representation of Women

Prior to the 1980s, there was an almost total absence of women-related topics and women’s voices in Hebrew theater, but many talented women have fought for their voices to be heard on the Hebrew stage. Today, active women playwrights whose plays are presented in mainstage and fringe theaters have a significant impact on Hebrew theater.

Hebrew Teachers Colleges in the United States

Jewish education in the United States was always the preserve of women on the “front lines” and in the classroom. In the early days of these programs, men “ran the show,” but beginning in the mid-twenteith century, women began to take on increasing roles as faculty members and administrators. In the early twenty-first century, women ascended to leadership positions in these institutions.

Hebrew Women in Egypt: Bible

Hebrew women in Egypt are critical figures in the Bible, especially concerning their maternal and physically nurturing roles. Hebrew midwives help male babies escape the infanticide commanded by the Pharaoh, and another woman helps save baby Moses’ life. These stories show how women were able to undermine the Pharaonic authority and ensure the survival of the Hebrew people in general.

Jochebed lays a crying baby Moses in the reeds.

Hebrew Women in Egypt: Midrash and Aggadah

The Rabbis famously maintain that the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt by merit of the righteous women of that generation, who strove mightily to continue to bring forth children, regardless of the grueling servitude and despite Pharaoh’s decree that the male children be killed.

Hebrew Women in the Wilderness: Midrash and Aggadah

The Rabbis portray the women of the generation that wandered in the wilderness as righteous, not caught up in the sins that swept the men of Israel.

Adele Bluthenthal Heiman

Adele Bluthenthal Heiman spent her life in Arkansas, helping create and lead the state’s close-knit Jewish community. In her various leadership positions, she made strides in helping not only Jewish women, but the Jewish community as a whole.

Hattie Henenberg, Hortense Ward, and Ruth Brazzil in the the Texas Supreme Court, 1925

Hattie Leah Henenberg

Hattie Leah Henenberg was a pioneering female jurist in Texas. In 1925, she became a member of the first all-female state Supreme Court.

Bertha Beitman Herzog

Bertha Beitman Herzog was an active participant in local and national women’s associations in Cleveland, Ohio. From 1928 to 1930, Herzog served as the first woman president of the Jewish Welfare Federation (later the Jewish Community Federation) in Cleveland, and she received the Charles Eisenmann Award for outstanding community service in 1941.

Higher Education Administration in the United States

The Academy and Judaism share similar values. At both their roots lies a passion for knowledge—the love of learning, the necessity for debate and discussion, an appreciation for the challenge of scholarship. This would suggest no mystery in the number of Jews in universities. However, it is women’s space in these intellectual settings—historically unwelcome by the academy and unsupported by Jewish scholarly institutions—that poses the wonder.

Gertrude Hirschler

A celebrated translator of deft skill and a woman of great principle, Gertrude Hirschler refused to translate, edit, or publish any book that did not mesh with her ideals or beliefs. Hirschler’s literary contributions are highly regarded in the areas of Jewish history, the Holocaust, religious literature, and Zionism.

Fanny Binswanger Hoffman

Fanny Binswager Hoffman was an early twentieth-century educator and philanthropist who served as the second president of the National Women’s League, later known as the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.

Leah Horowitz

Leah Horowitz was a Ukrainian scholar who wrote extensively about what she thought the role of women should be in Judaism. She emphasized the importance of women’s prayer and drew from the stories of the Hebrew matriarchs to argue that women’s work should be acknowledged and that they have power beyond their marriages.

Delphine Horvilleur

As one of the leaders of the Liberal Jewish Movement in France, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur is working to bring a progressive mindset to the more traditional French Jewish community.

Huldah, the Prophet: Midrash and Aggadah

Huldah is one of the seven women prophets. The rabbis explain that she was a descendant of Rahab and Joshua, and that she prophesied along with Jeremiah in the time of King Josiah.

Huldah: Bible

Huldah appears in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Her story involves a scroll discovered in the temple during the reign of King Josiah. Her identity as a female prophet is not especially remarkable for the time period, but it is significant for how her judgments are centered on a written document.

Sara Hurwitz

Sara Hurwitz was the first Orthodox woman to be publicly ordained and serve in an Orthodox synagogue, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. She went on to co-found, with Rabbi Avi Weiss, Yeshivat Maharat, the first institution to provide a credentialed pathway for Orthodox women to be ordained and serve as rabbis.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Religion