List of Jewish feminists
Encyclopedia
Jewish feminists
- Becca Ruebsamen
- Bella AbzugBella AbzugBella Savitsky Abzug was an American lawyer, Congresswoman, social activist and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan to found the National Women's Political Caucus...
- Kathy AckerKathy AckerKathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S...
- Rachel AdlerRachel AdlerRachel Adler is associate professor of Modern Jewish Thought and Judaism and Gender at the School of Religion, University of Southern California and the Hebrew Union College Rabbinical School at the Los Angeles campus...
- Larisa AlexandrovnaLarisa AlexandrovnaLarisa Alexandrovna is a journalist, essayist, and poet. She has served as the Managing Editor of Investigative News of The Raw Story for the last three years, and contributes opinion and columns to online publications such as Alternet. She is also an American blogger for the Huffington Post and...
- Gloria AllredGloria AllredGloria Rachel Allred is an American lawyer noted for taking high-profile and often controversial cases, particulary those involving the protection of women's rights.-Early life:...
- Rebecca AlpertRebecca AlpertRabbi Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert is associate professor in the Departments of Religion and Women's Studies and the chair of the Department of Religion at Temple University.-Early life and education:...
- Pauline BebePauline BebePauline Bebe is the rabbi of Communaute Juive Liberale, a Progressive Jewish congregation in Paris. She was the first female rabbi in France, and the first female rabbi to lead a synagogue there. France has only three women rabbis, Bebe, Célia Surget and Delphine Horvilleur.-Early life:Bebe was...
- Hanne BlankHanne BlankHanne Blank Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S., Hanne Blank is a historian, writer, editor and public speaker. She has also edited and written erotica but is retired from that genre....
- Lisa BloomLisa BloomLisa Bloom is a prominent American civil rights attorney, best known as anchor of Lisa Bloom: Open Court - a two-hour live legal news program - on truTv's IN SESSION, formerly Court TV, from 2001 to 2009. She is the only child of famed attorney Gloria Allred. Bloom received a bachelor's degree...
- Judy BlumeJudy BlumeJudy Blume is an American author. She has written many novels for children and young adults which have exceeded sales of 80 million and been translated into 31 languages...
- Daniel BoyarinDaniel BoyarinDaniel Boyarin is an historian of religion. Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. Trained as a Talmudic scholar, in 1990 he was appointed Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California,...
- David Brooks (journalist)David Brooks (journalist)David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...
- Susan BrownmillerSusan BrownmillerSusan Brownmiller is an American feminist, journalist, author, and activist. She is best known for her pioneering work on the politics of rape in her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Brownmiller argues that rape had been hitherto defined by men rather than women; and that men use,...
- Judith ButlerJudith ButlerJudith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
- Aviva CantorAviva CantorAviva Cantor is an American journalist, lecturer and author. An advocate of feminism and the democratization of Jewish communal life, Cantor has been actively involved in promoting progressive Jewish causes for over 40 years...
- Judy ChicagoJudy ChicagoJudy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance...
- Hedwig DohmHedwig DohmMarianne Adelaide Hedwig Dohm born Schlesinger, later Schleh was a German feminist, and author. She was one of the first feminist thinkers to see gender roles as a result of socialization and not biological determinism.-Family:She was born in Berlin to Jewish parents, as a daughter of Wilhelmine...
- Andrea DworkinAndrea DworkinAndrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women....
- Ryan Eby
- Eve EnslerEve EnslerEve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.- Personal life :...
- Daniel England (AKA Danie Ice)
- Amy EilbergAmy EilbergAmy Eilberg is the first female rabbi ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, one of the academic centers and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism.-Youth and early life:...
- Sandy Eisenberg SassoSandy Eisenberg SassoSandy Eisenberg Sasso is the first woman to have been ordained a rabbi in the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism. She was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, on May 19, 1974. She is also an author of many children's book on religious topics.-Youth and Early...
- Susan EstrichSusan EstrichSusan Estrich is an American lawyer, professor, author, political operative, feminist advocate, and political commentator for Fox News.-Early life:...
- Susan FaludiSusan FaludiSusan C. Faludi is an American feminist, journalist and author. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1991, for a report on the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, Inc., a report that the Pulitzer Prize committee thought showed the "human costs of high finance".-Biographical...
- Shulamith FirestoneShulamith FirestoneShulamith Firestone , is a Jewish, Canadian-born feminist. She was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism, having been a founding member of the New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists...
- Betty FriedanBetty FriedanBetty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
- Sarah Michelle GellarSarah Michelle GellarSarah Michelle Prinze , known professionally by her birth name of Sarah Michelle Gellar , is an American actress, singer and executive producer...
- Ruth Bader GinsburgRuth Bader GinsburgRuth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice.She is generally viewed as belonging to...
- Ilana Gliechbloom
- Emma GoldmanEmma GoldmanEmma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
- Elyse GoldsteinElyse GoldsteinElyse Goldstein is the first female rabbi in Canada, although she was born in the United States. Rabbi Goldstein is also the first woman to be elected as president of the interdenominational Toronto Board of Rabbis and president of the Reform Rabbis of Greater Toronto.-Youth and Early...
- Lynn GottliebLynn GottliebLynn Gottlieb, born April 12, 1949, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is an American rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement . Gottlieb entered pulpit life at the age of 23 in 1973, as leader of Temple Beth Or of the Deaf in New York City. In 1981, she became the first woman ordained as a rabbi in the...
- Blu GreenbergBlu GreenbergBlu Greenberg is an American writer specializing in Modern Judaism and women's issues. She is the author of On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition and Black Bread: Poems, After the Holocaust ....
- Tina GrimbergTina GrimbergTina Grimberg is a Reconstructionist Rabbi living in Toronto, Canada. Since 2008, she has been a leader in the inter-religious dialogue with Muslims and Christians in Ontario. She has been active in the movement against poverty in Canada....
- Charlotte HaldaneCharlotte HaldaneCharlotte Haldane was a British feminist author. Her second husband was the biologist J.B.S. Haldane.- Biography :...
- Nina HartleyNina HartleyNina Hartley is an American pornographic actress, pornographic film director, sex educator, feminist, and author.-Early life:...
- Tova HartmanTova HartmanTova Hartman is a Professor of Gender Studies and Education at Bar Ilan University of Ramat Gan, specializing in gender and religion, and gender and psychology...
- Judith HauptmanJudith HauptmanJudith Rebecca Hauptman is a feminist Jewish Talmudic scholar. She grew up in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, United States....
- Dorothy Ray HealeyDorothy Ray HealeyDorothy Ray Healey was a long-time activist in the Communist Party USA, from the late 1920s to the 1970s. During the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, Healey was one of the leading public figures of the Communist Party in the state of California...
- Brenda HowardBrenda HowardBrenda Howard was an American bisexual rights activist and sex-positive feminist. Howard was an important figure in the modern LGBT rights movement.- Biography :...
- Sara HurwitzSara HurwitzSara Hurwitz is a Modern Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader who received ordination from Rabbi Avi Weiss. She is the "Rabba" at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in Riverdale, New York and the dean of Yeshivat Maharat in Riverdale, New York....
- Paula HymanPaula HymanPaula Hyman is the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University and president of the American Academy of Jewish Research...
- Elfriede JelinekElfriede JelinekElfriede Jelinek is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."-...
- Erica JongErica JongErica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
- Roberta KalechofskyRoberta KalechofskyRoberta Kalechofsky is an American writer, feminist and animal rights activist, focusing on the issue of animal rights within Judaism and the promotion of vegetarianism within the Jewish community...
- Michael Kimmel
- Lydia Rabinowitsch-KempnerLydia Rabinowitsch-KempnerLydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner was an American physician.Lydia Rabinowitsch was born at Kovno, Russian Empire . She was educated at the girls' gymnasium of her native city, and privately in Latin and Greek, subsequently studying natural sciences at the universities of Zurich and Bern...
- Naomi KleinNaomi KleinNaomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...
- Edith KoneckyEdith KoneckyEdith Konecky is an American feminist novelist who, despite a relatively small body of work, can lay claim to a large literary achievement with , a coming-of-age novel that chronicles the growth of a young female artist....
- Barbara KrugerBarbara KrugerBarbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...
- Anna KuliscioffAnna KuliscioffAnna Kuliscioff was a Jewish Russian revolutionary, a prominent feminist, an anarchist influenced by Mikhail Bakunin, and eventually a Marxist socialist militant; she was mainly active in Italy, where she was one of the first women graduated in Medicine.Persecuted by the Imperial...
- Michele LandsbergMichele LandsbergMichele Landsberg, OC is an award-winning Canadian writer, social activist and feminist who wrote a column for the Toronto Star newspaper.-Life and career:...
- Lori Hope LefkovitzLori Hope LefkovitzLori Hope Lefkovitz is the Ruderman Professor and Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University and founding director of Kolot: The Center for Jewish Women and Gender Studies, the first such center at a rabbinical seminary....
- Gerda LernerGerda LernerGerda Lerner is a historian, author and teacher. She is a professor emerita of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University...
- Ariel LevyAriel LevyAriel Levy is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vogue, Slate, Men's Journal and Blender...
- Fanny LewaldFanny LewaldFanny Lewald was a German Jewish author-Biography:She was born at Königsberg in East Prussia. When seventeen years of age she accepted Christianity. She traveled in the German Confederation, France and Italy...
- Rosa LuxemburgRosa LuxemburgRosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
- Frederica Sagor MaasFrederica Sagor MaasFrederica Alexandrina Sagor Maas is an American playwright, screenwriter, memoirist and author, the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants. Maas is best known for a detailed, tell-all memoir of her time spent in early Hollywood. She is one of the rare supercentenarians known for reasons other...
- Hana MeiselHana Meisel-Life:Meisel was born in Hrodna in the Russian Empire , and immigrated to Palestine in 1909, during the Second Aliyah, where she became a noted agronomist, and was a founder of Havat HaAlamot agricultural school in 1911 , and the agricultural school for girls at Nahalal...
- Annie Nathan MeyerAnnie Nathan MeyerAnnie Nathan Meyer was an American author and promoter of the higher education of women. Her sister was the activist Maud Nathan and her nephew the author and poet Robert Nathan.-Life and career:...
- Jennifer MillerJennifer MillerJennifer Miller is an American circus entertainer, writer, and professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She has lived as a woman with a beard for most of her life. She is a juggler and fire eater. Miller lives in New York City....
- Haviva Ner-DavidHaviva Ner-DavidHaviva Ner-David received her PhD from Bar Ilan University and wrote her thesis concerning the nature of the relationship between Tumah and Niddah . In 1993 she applied to Yeshiva University’s rabbinical program, RIETS and never received an official response...
- Martha NussbaumMartha NussbaumMartha Nussbaum , is an American philosopher with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics....
- Tillie OlsenTillie OlsenTillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.-Biography:...
- Judith PlaskowJudith PlaskowDr. Judith Plaskow is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College. Her scholarly interests focus on contemporary religious thought with a specialization in feminist theology. Dr. Plaskow has lectured widely on feminist theology in the United States and Europe. She co-founded The Journal...
- Rachel PollackRachel PollackRachel Pollack is an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot...
- Katha PollittKatha PollittKatha Pollitt is an American feminist poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry...
- Sally PriesandSally PriesandSally Jane Priesand is America's first ordained female rabbi, and the second ordained female rabbi in the world, after Regina Jonas.-Early life:...
- Trude Weiss-RosmarinTrude Weiss-RosmarinTrude Weiss-Rosmarin was a Jewish-German-American writer, editor, scholar, and feminist activist. With her husband, she co-founded the School of the Jewish Woman in New York in 1933, and in 1939 founded the Jewish Spectator, a quarterly magazine, which she edited for 50 years.She was the author of...
- Tamar RossTamar RossTamar Ross is a professor of Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University.She has scholarly expertise in the thought of Abraham Isaac Kook, the modern Musar movement and the ideology of Mitnaggedism, and Judaism and gender...
- Muriel RukeyserMuriel RukeyserMuriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism...
- Zalman Schachter-ShalomiZalman Schachter-ShalomiRabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi and commonly called "Reb Zalman" is considered one of the major founders of the Jewish Renewal movement.-Early life:...
- Rosika SchwimmerRosika SchwimmerRosika Schwimmer or Bédy-Schwimmer "Rózsa" Rózsika was a Hungarian-born pacifist, feminist and female suffragist.Rosika Schwimmer was born on September 11, 1877 to a Jewish family in Budapest in Austria-Hungary...
- Mendel ShapiroMendel ShapiroMendel Shapiro, a Jerusalem lawyer and Modern Orthodox Rabbi, is the author of a halakhic analysis in which he argued that women could be called to read from the Torah in prayer services with men on Shabbat under certain conditions. He and his viewpoint became the subject of extensive dispute...
- Christina Hoff SommersChristina Hoff SommersChristina Hoff Sommers is an American author and former philosophy professor who is known for her critique of late 20th century feminism, and her writings about feminism in contemporary American culture...
- Sandy Eisenberg SassoSandy Eisenberg SassoSandy Eisenberg Sasso is the first woman to have been ordained a rabbi in the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism. She was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, on May 19, 1974. She is also an author of many children's book on religious topics.-Youth and Early...
- Susan SontagSusan SontagSusan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
- Daniel SperberDaniel SperberDaniel Sperber is a professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and an expert in classical philology, history of Jewish customs, Jewish art history, Jewish education and Talmudic studies.-Biography:...
- Gertrude SteinGertrude SteinGertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
- Gloria SteinemGloria SteinemGloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
- Sandra SteingraberSandra SteingraberSandra Steingraber is an American biologist, author, and cancer survivor in the tradition of Rachel Carson. Steingraber writes and lectures on the environmental factors that contribute to reproductive health problems and environmental links to cancer.-Awards and honors:* 1997 - Named a Ms...
- Cathy YoungCathy YoungCathy Young is a Russian American journalist and writer whose books and articles, as well as columns which appear in the libertarian monthly Reason, and also weekly in The Boston Globe, primarily espouse equality feminism and libertarianism.-Life and Career:Born in Moscow, the capital of what was...
- Yona WallachYona Wallach-Writing career:She was proud of her bisexuality and stunned her readers with her daring expressions of sexuality and spirituality combined.Wallach also featured Jungian psychology in her work. Wallach also wrote lyrics for, and performed with, Israeli rock bands. Her book, Island Songs, was...
- Wendy WassersteinWendy WassersteinWendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University...
- Trude Weiss-RosmarinTrude Weiss-RosmarinTrude Weiss-Rosmarin was a Jewish-German-American writer, editor, scholar, and feminist activist. With her husband, she co-founded the School of the Jewish Woman in New York in 1933, and in 1939 founded the Jewish Spectator, a quarterly magazine, which she edited for 50 years.She was the author of...
- Naomi WeissteinNaomi WeissteinNaomi Weisstein is the daughter of Mary Wenk and Samuel Weisstein. She is a Professor of Psychology, neuroscientist, and author. She graduated from Wellesley College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1961 and received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964. In 1964 she took a post-doctoral fellowship at the...
- Ruth WestheimerRuth WestheimerRuth Westheimer is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, the New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s...
- Naomi WolfNaomi WolfNaomi Wolf is an American author and political consultant. With the publication of The Beauty Myth, she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement.-Biography:...
- Joel B. WolowelskyJoel B. WolowelskyDr. Joel B. Wolowelsky is on the Faculty at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, and an author on topics pertaining to the role of women in Judaism and Jewish medical ethics. He is the Associate Editor of Tradition, the Journal of Jewish Thought and of the Toras HoRav Foundation, which is bringing to print the...
- Elizabeth WurtzelElizabeth WurtzelElizabeth Lee Wurtzel is an American corporate attorney, writer and journalist, known for her work in the confessional memoir genre. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.-Early life:...
- Cathy YoungCathy YoungCathy Young is a Russian American journalist and writer whose books and articles, as well as columns which appear in the libertarian monthly Reason, and also weekly in The Boston Globe, primarily espouse equality feminism and libertarianism.-Life and Career:Born in Moscow, the capital of what was...
- Gabi Chutter
See also
- Jewish feminismJewish feminismJewish feminism is a movement that seeks to improve the religious, legal, and social status of women within Judaism and to open up new opportunities for religious experience and leadership for Jewish women...
- Judaism and women
- Jewish leftJewish leftThe term "Jewish left" describes Jews who identify with or support left wing, occasionally liberal causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the "Jewish left," however...
- List of feminists
- Jewish mother stereotypeJewish mother stereotypeThe Jewish mother or wife stereotype is a common stereotype and stock character used by Jewish comedians and authors whenever they discuss actual or fictional situations involving their mothers or other females in their lives who possess mother-like qualities...
- Jewish-American princessJewish-American princessJewish-American Princess or JAP is a pejorative stereotype of a subtype of Jewish-American female. The term implies materialistic and selfish tendencies, attributed to a pampered or wealthy background.-Origins:...
- Jewish Orthodox Feminist AllianceJewish Orthodox Feminist AllianceThe Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance was founded in 1997 with the aim of "expand[ing] the spiritual, ritual, intellectual, and political opportunities for women with the framework of halakha," or Jewish law...
- Lilith (magazine)Lilith (magazine)Lilith magazine is an independent, Jewish-American, feminist non-profit publication that has been issued quarterly since 1976. The magazine features award-winning investigative reports, first-person accounts both contemporary and historical, entertainment reviews, fiction and poetry, art and...
- National Council of Jewish WomenNational Council of Jewish WomenThe National Council of Jewish Women defines itself as a grassroots organization of volunteers and advocates who turn progressive ideals into action...
- Partnership minyanPartnership minyanPartnership minyan is a term used by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance to describe a prayer group that, according to its adherents, conforms to the strictures of Orthodox Judaism while still allowing for parts of the services to be led by both men and women...
- Role of women in JudaismRole of women in JudaismThe role of women in Judaism is determined by the Hebrew Bible, the Oral Law , by custom, and by non-religious cultural factors...
- Shira HadashaShira HadashaKehillat Shira Hadasha in Jerusalem was founded in 2002 by a group of Jerusalem residents, including Tova Hartman. Its website describes its purpose as the creation of "a religious community that embraces our commitment to halakha, tefillah and feminism" in response to "the growing need of many...