Organizations and Institutions

Kolech: Religious Women's Forum

Kolech (Hebrew for Your Voice): Religious Women’s Forum was founded in Jerusalem in 1998 with the aim of raising the standing of women in Jewish religious Orthodoxy. Among its achievements are a monthly pamphlet discussing the weekly Torah portion, halakhic issues, homiletics, and various Torah subjects; international conferences; and a guide for rabbis and communal workers on how to act when approached by women. Kolech is also active in the work of the Israeli Parliament, concerning certain laws which affect women.

Irene Caroline Diner Koenigsberger

A distinguished chemist credited with discovering the molecular structure of rubber, Irene Caroline Koenigsberger refused to patent her work, making her discovery available to all. She was also an important figure in the Washington, D.C. Jewish community, cofounding Temple Sinai and the B’nai B’rith Hillel at George Washington University.

Esther Loeb Kohn

Esther Loeb Kohn helped bridge the gap between Chicago’s volunteer and professional social workers and spent thirty years running the Hull House settlement whenever founder Jane Addams was away on her frequent travels.

Gerda Weissmann Klein

Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein has used her experiences to educate countless people through her books, television appearances, and motivational speaking. Among numerous other awards for her work, Klein was appointed to the United States Holocaust Commission by President Clinton in 1997, and in 2011 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

Rosa Grena Kliass

Rosa Kliass is a trailblazer in the field of Brazilian landscape architecture. After graduating from university, Kliass established the first landscape office run by a woman in Brazil. Kliass’ extensive experience in public works, combined with a broad interdisciplinary approach, led her to serve as a consultant to several governmental institutions.

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.

A smiling woman stands behind a planter box watering flowers

Kibbutz Ha-Dati Movement (1929-1948)

Beginning in 1929, the religious kibbutz (Kibbutz Ha-Dati) movement represented the confluence of progressive ideals of equality and collectivism and traditional customs of Judaism. As a result, women in the movement lived at a crossroads.

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.

Rhoda Kaufman

Rhoda Kaufman helped create social welfare organizations throughout Georgia and overcame prejudice against her religion and gender to become one of the most respected social reformers in the country.

Rahel Katznelson

A thinker and teacher, Rahel Katznelson was one of the early activists in the Labor Movement and Mo’ezet ha-Po’alot in the Yishuv and Israel. She contributed greatly to the country’s emerging cultural life, laying stress on women’s participation within it.

Shulamith Katznelson

Shulamith Katznelson helped make Israel a home for a wider range of people as both a pioneer of Hebrew-immersion programs and an advocate for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.

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.

Hannah Karminski

During the mid-1920s and the 1930s in Germany, Hannah Karminski served as secretary of the League of Jewish Women and, from 1924 to 1938, as editor of its newsletter. After the forced liquidation of the League in 1938, Karminski remained in Germany and continued her work in the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, assisting with the kindertransports and welfare. She was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in 1942.

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.

Regina Kaplan

Regina “Kappy” Kaplan was nurse, teacher, hospital administrator, and health care innovator. Most notably, Kaplan helped break down gender barriers in medicine by creating the first nursing school in the South that admitted male students.

Rose Kaplan

Rose Kaplan was a trained nurse who worked with Hadassah to help establish its first visiting nurse program. During World War I, she worked with Hadassah to care for Jews in Palestine and refugees in Egypt and inspired others to follow her example.

Dorothy C. Kahn

During the Great Depression, Dorothy C. Kahn helped pioneer social work as a service provided by the government to all who needed it. Kahn developed, implemented, and advocated for social welfare programs and policies whose underlying principles upheld her deepest beliefs about what social welfare could mean in a democracy.

Florence Prag Kahn

Florence Prag Kahn was not only the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress, but also one of only a handful of women serving during the 1920s and 1930s. A Republican party loyalist, Kahn was an effective maneuverer who introduced legislation that shaped the economy and geography of the Bay Area of San Francisco.

Juedischer Frauenbund (The League of Jewish Women)

Founded in 1904, The League of Jewish Women pursued secular German feminist goals while maintaining a strong sense of Jewish identity. The League supported vulnerable women through practical social reforms while fighting for political power within the German Jewish community. It saw employment opportunities as essential to women’s economic, psychological, and emotional independence.

Irma Rothschild Jung

Irma Rothschild Jung, a native of Randegg, Baden, Germany, was born on July 1, 1897, and until her death close to a century later, dedicated her substantial energies to pioneering Jewish communal programs in aid of the needy. Her leadership and influence were deeply felt in the broader Jewish community by the countless individuals, young and old, who benefited from her generous spirit.

Healing Service Published by Central Synagogue

JWRC: Eleanor Leff Jewish Women's Resource Center

The Eleanor Leff Jewish Women’s Resource Center (JWRC) of the National Council of Jewish Women, New York Section, maintains an extensive collection of materials by and about Jewish women and creates Jewish programming with a feminist focus. The JWRC was founded in 1976 to document and advance the modern Jewish women’s movement.

Jewish Museums in the United States

American Jewish women have played an outsized role in the foundation of Jewish museums all over the country. Barred from traditional spaces of power in the early twentieth century, many women—adjacent to power as Rebbetzins, philanthropists, and secretaries of libraries and other Jewish organizations—leveraged their connections to found new kinds of cultural institutions: museums.

Laura Margolis Jarblum

Laura Margolis Jarblum’s deft management of wartime social services on three continents for the Joint Distribution Committee saved the lives of thousands. After World War II, in 1946, she became the JDC’s first female country director in France.

Frances Wisebart Jacobs

Francis Wisebart Jacobs helped transform the fledgling state of Colorado through her organization of charities and hospitals.

Rose Gell Jacobs

One of the most prominent leaders of Hadassah, Rose Jacobs promoted traditional types of American Zionist philanthropy in the 1930s and1940s, such as organizing German Jewish youth immigration to Palestine and improving the country’s medical facilities. At the same time, she broke new ground by increasing the role of women in the leadership of the Zionist movement and promoting discussion of Arab-Jewish relations.

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