Activism
Rahel Straus
Rahel Goitein Straus, a pioneering woman medical doctor trained in Germany, was a model “New Jewish Woman” of the early-20th century. Successfully combining a career as a physician with marriage and motherhood, she committed herself to Jewish and feminist causes and organizations throughout her life, while also embracing Zionist ideals.
Barbra Streisand
Shira Stutman
Suburbanization in the United States
Jews migrated in large numbers to newly constructed suburbs after World War II and the end of restrictive covenants that had excluded them. During the day, suburbs were largely female spaces where married Jewish women cared for their children and private homes, while volunteering for Jewish and civic activities. Jewish daughters raised in suburbs enjoyed middle-class comforts but also experienced pressures to conform to American gentile ideals of beauty.
Suffrage in Palestine
Suffrage in the United States
American Jewish women were heavily involved in the suffrage movement from its earliest days, though mostly as individuals rather than through organizations. Middle-class Jewish women believed the vote was necessary to achieve their broader reform goals, while working-class women hoped enfranchisement would improve their working conditions and economic opportunities. By the time the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed in 1919 the American Jewish community overwhelmingly supported it.
Hasya Sukenik-Feinsod
Hasya Sukenik Feinsod served as director of the Hebrew Kindergarten Teachers College. In 1919 Feinsod was appointed by the Education Committee to serve as superintendent of kindergartens in Jerusalem. She headed the Association of Kindergarten Teachers, and she was the first and only female representative on the Education Committee.
Elsie K. Sulzberger
Elsie K. Sulzberger had an important public career through her leadership in the National Council of Jewish Women and in the early twentieth-century birth control movement.
Rachel Sumekh
Pamela Sussman Paternoster
Helen Suzman
Amy Swerdlow
Amy Swerdlow (1923-2012), child of a Communist household in the Bronx, shared her parents’ dedication to making a better world but developed her own political agenda. She became a leader of the global women’s peace movement, a pioneer in the field of women’s history, and a professor of history and women’s studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.
Rachel Swirsky
Bela Szapiro
Before World War II, Lublin was one of the largest Jewish communities in Poland. Bela Szapiro’s activities contributed to making it the vibrant cultural and political center of Polish Jewry that it was.
Sara Szweber
Sara Szweber was an influential leader in the Jewish labor party, the Bund, first in Belarus, then in Poland, and later in New York.
Harriet Tanzman
Meredith Tax
Teaching Profession in the United States
Jewish women in the United States became professional teachers to an extent unprecedently in Jewish history. Through Jewish educational organizations, Jewish schools, and public schools, female Jewish teachers have played an important role in shaping the North American teaching profession.
Faige Teitelbaum
When Faige Teitelbaum married Satmar rebbe Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum in 1936, she became the Satmar rebbetzin, in which capacity she was very active in charitable activities. After her husband’s death, she became the only woman in the Hasidic world to function as a de facto rebbe and leader.
Savina Teubal
Bessie Thomashefsky
With suffragist spirit and comedic skill, Bessie Thomashefsky adapted great American and British plays for Yiddish-speaking audiences. Thomashefsky performed Yiddish adaptations of plays by Chekov, Wilde, and Shakespeare, as well as modern Yiddish creations at the People’s Theater in New York, playing many strong female characters. From 1915 to 1919, she ran the People’s Theater and renamed it for herself.
Mahinarangi Tocker
New Zealand singer-songwriter Mahinaarangi Tocker (1955-2008) was best known as a Maori musician, but her Jewish heritage was an essential component of her identity and her music.
Rebecca Traister
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
I had time to notice that it was pasted full of newspaper clippings in a foreign language - before something very unusual happened.
Twenty-First Century Jewish Literature by Women in the US
Twenty-first-century Jewish women’s writing in the United States is wide-ranging in genre and topic. In this body of literature, we can find insightful and nuanced stories of contemporary American life as well as fiction that delves into lost or forgotten Jewish histories. From a female Spinoza to a female golem, a strong feminist ethic is pervasive in these writings.
