Law

Shoshana Netanyahu

Shoshana Netanyahu served as a judge on the Magistrates Court in Haifa from 1969 until 1974 and as a District Court judge in the city from 1974 to 1981. In 1981 she was promoted to the Supreme Court, from which she retired in 1993.

Miriam Naor

Miriam Naor was widely esteemed for her expertise in criminal law. In her many famous court cases, Naor’s decisions were always based on profound legal knowledge and on rigorous analysis of the facts.

Margarete Muehsam-Edelheim

Margarete Muehsam-Edelheim was a journalist with a doctorate in law. In her native Berlin, she co-founded the organization Women Law Graduates and served as a City Councilor. In the United States, Muehsam-Edelheim was a founding member of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Women Auxiliary, as well as serving in many capacities for various organizations.

Rebecca Pearl Lovenstein

In 1920, Rebecca Pearl Lovenstein became the first woman lawyer allowed to practice in Virginia. She went on to create a state bar association for women.

Frieda Lorber

Frieda Levin Lorber made a name for herself as a prominent lawyer in the mid twentieth century and helped other women rise in the profession in New York and worldwide.

Ruth Lewinson

Born in 1895, Ruth Lewinson was one of the earliest female Jewish lawyers in the United States. In addition to her own private practice, she was active on multiple boards and committees as well as other organizations including charitable work.

Melba Levin-Rubin

Melba Levin-Rubin was an accomplished early-twentieth-century lawyer who was active in both professional and Jewish communal organizations.

Law in Israel

Although women constitute a large portion of those who work in the Israeli legal field, women in law mostly have refrained from feminist identification, and feminist activism has been promoted by only a tiny minority of women lawyers.

Law in the United States

Until recently, “law” in relation to the Jewish community meant religious law, but in a “post-emancipation” context, “law” is related to offical behavior, enforcing equal treatment of all groups. For Jewish women who immigrated to the United States, this modern approach afforded them new freedoms, especially under secular as opposed to religious leadership.

Lawyers in Germany and Austria

German and Austrian women were first allowed to enter careers in law in the mid-1920s, following rules permitting their admittance to universities at the turn of the century. Although women were a small proportion of all lawyers, judges, and prosecutors in Germany and Austria, Jewish women were a significant group among those women, and they often faced both religious and gender-based discrimination.

Ruth Lapidoth

Professor Ruth Lapidoth is a major Israeli expert in international law. As a young woman, she decided to specialize in this field, seeing it as a path towards dialogue and a means to solve the Arab-Israel conflict.

Anna Moscowitz Kross

Anna Moscowitz Kross helped reform the New York prison system by curbing abuses and offering felons chances to train in new skills. As the city’s third female court judge, she created and ran a Home Term Court that handled family law. She also served as the elected commissioner of corrections for the city and was on the board of Hadassah.

Phyllis A. Kravitch

Phyllis A. Kravitch was the third woman circuit court judge in the United States. One of the first female trial lawyers in the South, Kravitch became the first woman president of the Savannah Bar Association in 1973 and served as the first woman superior court judge in Georgia. She also established a rape crisis center and shelter for women survivors of domestic violence.

Carol Weiss King

Carol Weiss King was one of the outstanding practitioners of immigration law during the period bounded by the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy era. In her thirty-year career, she represented hundreds of foreign-born radicals threatened with deportation in administrative proceedings in the lower courts and in the Supreme Court.

Ida Klaus

Ida Klaus was an influential labor lawyer, advocating tirelessly for the rights of workers. She was solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board under Harry Truman, head of the New York Labor Department, and an arbitrator in the Long Island Railroad Strike.

Judith Kaye, Presidential Libraries Conference, Hyde Park, New York

Judith S. Kaye

Judith S. Kaye was the first woman to serve as chief judge of the state of New York and chief judge of the Court of Appeals of the state of New York.

Yehudit Karp

Yehudit Karp is widely acknowledged for her determined pursuit of truth and justice. Throughout her career as a lawyer, she has acted with grit in the Israeli and international spheres, to preserve moral standards and to ensure human rights in general and women’s, children’s, and victim’s rights in particular.

Régine Karlin-Orfinger

Régine Karlin’s resistance activities would alone have warranted esteem and recognition, but she did not desist from further work. Totally bilingual in French and Dutch and even polyglot, since she was also proficient in both English and Russian, she had a brilliant career as a lawyer, characterized by her militant and unwavering support of causes that she considered just.

Aline Kaplan

As executive director of Hadassah, Aline Kaplan credited the organization’s success to the commitment of its volunteers, whose numbers grew to a staggering 370,000 during her tenure. In addition to her impact at Hadassah, she was also a board member in several Zionist organizations and a delegate to the World Zionist Congress.

Helena Kagan and Rachel Kagan at the WIZO Jerusalem Baby Home, 1955

Rachel Kagan (Cohen)

One of two women to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Rachel Kagan shaped women’s rights in the new state. She left a powerful legacy from her work in social welfare in addition to her time as a Knesset member.

Geneviève Janssen-Pevtschin

Geneviève Janssen-Pevtschin was an accomplished lawyer, magistrate, and human rights activist in Belgium. She was active in resistance movements during World War II and is remembered for her passion, respect for human liberty, and dignity.

A large group of soldiers standing at attention in a rural area. At the front stand two lines of women soldiers in uniform dress and berets.

Women’s Service in the Israel Defense Forces

The Israel Defense Forces is among the few armies in the world that conscript women into its ranks under a mandatory military draft law, although women make up only about 40% of conscript soldiers and 25% of the office corps. Women’s integration into the IDF has been shaped by the perception of the IDF as a people’s army, security needs, and social processes that contribute to or undermine gender equality.

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