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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.

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.

Karaite Women

Family law and personal status of women are important aspects of both the daily life and the halakhah of Karaite communities. Karaite legal sources often deal with rules pertaining to betrothal, marriage, divorce, ritual purity, and incest.

Helena Kagan

Helena Kagan, a pioneer of pediatric medicine in pre-State Palestine, is known to this day as the children’s doctor of Jerusalem, the city where she settled following her aliyah in 1914. Kagan tended to generations of children—Jews, Muslims, and Christians—saving many of them from sickness and death.

Early Modern Italy

A study of the role of Jewish women in household formation, the household, and household dissolution, as well as their engagement in Jewish culture in early modern Italy, raises the question of how much of Jewish practice reflected the context of the surrounding society and how much engaged options in traditional Jewish practices, which were selected to meet their own needs. Despite the wealth of information about some well- known women and reports of the activities of many unnamed women, Jewish women, like Christian women, still functioned in the context of women and the period does not represent a Renaissance for women.

Blanche Frank Ittleson

Blanche Frank Ittleson’s pioneering work in treating and teaching intellectually disabled and emotionally disturbed children opened new possibilities for struggling children and their families.

Izieu, Women of

Nazi Klaus Barbie’s capture, deportation, and murder of forty-four Jewish children living at a home in Izieu, France, in 1944 is known primarily as a story of children, but the bravery of five women is also a significant part of the tale. Sabine Zlatin, Léa Feldblum, Suzanne Levan-Reifman, Fourtunée Benguigui, and Ita-Rosa Halaunbrenner were workers at the home or mothers of children who lived there. They played critical roles testifying against Barbie in his 1987.

Imma Shalom

In the 1st century CE, Imma Shalom was the sister of a powerful Rabbi and wife of an eminent sage. She defended her husband when he disobeyed the wishes of his colleagues. She also challenged the tradition of giving shares of a father’s estate only to his sons and a judge awarded her part of her father’s estate, although the judge reversed himself after being bribed by her brother.

Infertile Wife in Rabbinic Judaism

Only men are legally obligated to procreate, but there is disagreement over whether that obligation compels a man to divorce his wife after ten childless years. The initial infertility of the matriarchs reinforces the efficacy of prayer by demonstrating that the individual matriarchs’ suffering and supplications are what provoked a divine response.

Iggeret Ha-Kodesh

The Iggeret ha-Kodesh is a Kabbalistic work with contested authorship, written in the second half of the twelfth century. The work is a kabbalistic interpretation of sexual relations and its sacred spirituality between a married couple.

Fanny Binswanger Hoffman

Fanny Binswager Hoffman was an early twentieth-century educator and philanthropist who served as the second president of the National Women’s League, later known as the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.

Hebrew Women in Egypt: Bible

Hebrew women in Egypt are critical figures in the Bible, especially concerning their maternal and physically nurturing roles. Hebrew midwives help male babies escape the infanticide commanded by the Pharaoh, and another woman helps save baby Moses’ life. These stories show how women were able to undermine the Pharaonic authority and ensure the survival of the Hebrew people in general.

Hebrew Women in Egypt: Midrash and Aggadah

The Rabbis famously maintain that the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt by merit of the righteous women of that generation, who strove mightily to continue to bring forth children, regardless of the grueling servitude and despite Pharaoh’s decree that the male children be killed.

Hebrew Song, 1880-2020

Hebrew song as a whole, including songs of Erez Israel and the State of Israel, is a unique socio-cultural phenomenon that has developed over time. The dawning of Hebrew song can be traced to the period between 1880 and 1903, and it has grown to reflect the diverse aspects of Israeli society since then. The contribution of women to Hebrew songs, in general, has risen steadily over the years. 

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women

Hundreds of compilations of Hasidic literature, a genre derived from oral traditions, were published in Eastern Europe between the start of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of World War II. The image of “woman” varies in Hasidic literature according to the character in the story, its narrator, and its setting in time and place; therefore we can only refer to individual women, each on her own, and not to woman in general or women as a gender.

Hasmonean Women

Though few of their names were documented, the women of the Hasmonean family were important figures in political and familial affairs during the second and first centuries BCE.

Sylvia Hassenfeld

One of the most important American Jewish communal leaders and philanthropists of the twentieth century, Sylvia Hassenfeld led the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) through the humanitarian crisis of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the massive airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

Hamutal: Bible

Hamutal was one of the queens of the Kingdom of Judah and had a great deal of influence over her sons’ reigns.

Julia Horn Hamburger

A long-time volunteer, Julia Horn Hamburger was founding president of the New York Children’s Welfare League, which offered health and education services to immigrant children, the founding vice president of the Jewish Theater for Children and founding president of Ivriah, the women’s division of the Jewish Education Association. During WWII she shifted her focus to aiding the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Nazi League.

Hannah Mother of Seven

The mother of seven is a nameless figure from II Maccabees who was arrested and died along with her seven sons for defying the decree of the Seleucid monarch to transgress the commandments of the Torah. Her death is retold in rabbinic and medieval literature, where she is named both Miriam and Hannah.

Hadassah: Yishuv to the Present Day

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America (HWZOA) has a lengthy history of activity in the Yishuv and Israel, going back to 1913, about a year after it was founded in New York, and continuing to this day. This activity, outstanding in its scope, continuity, stability, and diversity, encompasses efforts in the sphere of health and medical services and in the welfare of children and youth.

Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg

As director of the Child Study Association of America, Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg blended the best research on child development and her own experience as a mother of four, publishing numerous books and articles on parenting. She was a leader and publicist in the parent education movement and an authority in the field of child study.

Irene Rothschild Guggenheim

Irene Rothschild Guggenheim founded the Brightside Day Nursery and made it her life’s work, overseeing children’s services from day care for newborns to vocational training for teenagers. She later became director of the association of Day Nurseries of New York City, raising the standards of childcare in New York, and a trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

Elinor Guggenheimer

Elinor Guggenheimer first toured New York City day nurseries as a member of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies during the 1930s. Horrified by what she saw, Guggenheimer began a lifelong crusade for improved and standardized child care facilities across the country, in addition to her work promoting women in public office.

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