Medicine

Virginia Morris Pollak

During World War II, sculptor Virginia Morris Pollak used her deep understanding of clay, plaster, and metal to revolutionize reconstructive surgery for wounded servicemen. This earned her a presidential citation, and she was later appointed to JFK’s Commission for the Employment of the Handicapped. Pollak also co-founded her own sculpture studio and chaired the Norfolk Fine Arts Commission, beautifying her hometown with an outdoor sculpture museum at the Botanic Garden.

Nurse and Patients at National Jewish Hospital

Seraphine Eppstein Pisko

Like many middle-class Jewish women at the turn of the twentieth century, Seraphine Eppstein Pisko used her experience in volunteer work to move into the realm of the professional workplace. As executive secretary and vice president of the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives in Denver, Pisko was one of the first women to lead a national Jewish institution.

Berta Ottenstein

A pioneer in skin biochemistry and dermatology, Berta Ottenstein became the first woman lecturer in the Medical Faculty at the University of Freiburg in 1931. Two years later she was forced to flee Germany and begin her scientific career anew. After occupying research positions at the universities of Budapest and Istanbul, she received a research fellowship at Harvard University in 1945.

Jewish Women in New Zealand

Although New Zealand’s Jewish community is small, “Kiwi” Jewish women have punched well above their weight and account for a significant number of the country’s “historic firsts” and remarkable achievements.

Bessie Louise Moses

Gynecologist, professor, and contraceptive pioneer Bessie Louise Moses spent a long professional life as a public health advocate and women’s health specialist. She founded the first birth control clinic in Baltimore, organized clinics throughout Maryland, and lectured and wrote a book promoting contraception to the public.

Moshavah

Women played important roles in the moshavot (villages), the pioneer settlement form created by the Jews in Palestine at its formative period 1882-1914. Various types of women in the moshava had significant roles in creating the “new Jew” of the second generation and in establishing and consolidating the moshavot.

Medieval Ashkenaz (1096-1348)

The Jews of medieval Ashkenaz are known for their prolific rabbis and for the Ashkenazic customs that became characteristic of many European Jewish communities. During the High Middle Ages, the women in these communities had many important roles women within the family and in the communal, economic, and religious life.

Jessie Marmorston

Jessie Marmorston was a professor of experimental medicine, researching a stunning range of medical disciplines including immunology, endocrinology, psychoanalysis, and cardiology. Her research into hormone secretion led to breakthroughs in our understanding of the ways stress can contribute to heart attacks and certain cancers.

Selma Mair

Selma Mair was a German-born registered nurse who brought her education and devotion to the role of head nurse at the Sha’arei Zedek hospital in Jerusalem.

Margaret Mahler

Margaret Schönberger Mahler was a pioneering child analyst in the early twentieth century. She became a leading authority on the mother-child relationship and the separation-individuation process, which she examined in her best-known work, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant.

Sarah Lishansky

A politically active nurse and midwife, Sarah Lishansky used her career to treat and care for workers in the Yishuv during the Second Aliyah.

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Rita Levi-Montalcini was a Nobel Prize winning doctor, known for her discovering of Nerve Growth Factor, which is responsible for the development and distribution of nerve cells. Throughout her life she combined research with wide-scale public activity.

Lena Levine

Lena Levine used her medical and psychological training to offer women pioneering services for birth control, sex education, and marital counseling. She co-founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1948 and wrote best-selling advice books about women’s sexual fulfillment that championed equality for women in marriage.

Rachel Landy, Rose Kaplan, and Eva Leon, Jerusalem, 1913

Rae D. Landy

A disciplined nurse who put her own safety at risk time and again for others, Rae Landy helped Hadassah establish the first nursing service in Israel and then served as a military nurse in the US Armed Services.

Bertha Landsman

Bertha Landsman dedicated her life to nursing, becoming one of the generation of giants who laid the foundation of the nursing profession in Palestine. She worked with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women, persuading them to abandon folk superstition in favor of “correct knowledge and information,” and also taught nursing to local women students.

Rose Kushner

With a self-described “streak of stubbornness, and a loud voice as well,” Rose Kushner—journalist, activist, and patient advocate—raised American national consciousness on breast cancer and helped create a national movement around the issue.

Mathilde Krim

Scientist and philanthropist Mathilde Krim made tremendous contributions to AIDS research and fundraising for those affected by the condition. She founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985 with Elizabeth Taylor and was also instrumental in oncology research and in Israel advocacy.

Anna Kuliscioff

Born in Russia but educated in Switzerland, Anna Kuliscioff became one of the key figures in Italy’s early socialist movement and was a feminist advocate who concentrated on poor women’s issues. In her later life, she helped publish a socialist periodical and hosted a prominent salon, often with her partner Filippo Turati.

Pati Kremer

Pati Kremer was one of the pioneers of the Jewish workers’ movement in Eastern Europe. Already an active member in the 1890s of the so-called Vilna Group, the precursor to the Bund, she remained closely associated with the Jewish workers’ party until her death in the Vilna Ghetto.

Marcia Koven

Marcia Koven was the founding curator of the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum, one of a number of museums dedicated to Jewish history in Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Her work inspired other Jewish museum projects in Atlantic Canada, and she held a number of other leadership roles related to Jewish life and history.

Lena Kenin

Lena Nemerovsky Kenin made major contributions to both gynecology and psychology with her successful medical practice and her groundbreaking work on postpartum depression.

Joyce Jacobson Kaufman

A pioneer in the field of physical chemistry, Joyce Jacobson Kaufman did groundbreaking work in the fields of jet propulsion fuels used in the space program, psychotropic pharmacology, and drug design. Kaufman also discovered a novel strategy for using computers to predict drug reactions and the trajectory of a significant number of carcinogens.

Anna Kaplan

Anna Kaplan was an American Jewish nurse who contributed significantly to developing the concept of nursing as a profession in Erez Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was a leader in founding the nursing school, which later became the Henrietta Szold-Hadassah School of Nursing at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

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.

Sharing Stories
Inspiring Change