Jewish women constructed an approach to American Zionism that reflected their own unique position in American and Jewish society, employing the category of gender as a variable in the historical analysis of American Zionism. A complex interplay of gender, social class, and religio-ethnic culture shaped the ways in which women helped to direct the course of Zionism in America.

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, has been the largest Zionist organization in the world, one of the largest American women’s volunteer organizations, American Jews’ largest mass-membership organization, and probably the most active Jewish women’s organization ever.