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Philanthropy

Content type
Collection

Nicki Newman Tanner

Project
General

Gail Reimer interviewed Nicki Newman Tanner on August 24th, 2007, in Scarsdale New York. Nicki discusses her early life in Chicago, her experiences at Wellesley College, her career in Los Angeles, and her involvement in various leadership roles, including the board at Colonial Williamsburg, JWA, and HUC, as well as her Jewish identity and community engagement.

Judith Wolf

Project
Women Who Dared

Julie Johnson interviewed Judith Wolf on February 23, 2005, in Boston, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Wolf reflects on her Jewish upbringing, volunteer work, religious schooling, and efforts to establish educational resources for disabled children in Ukraine, emphasizing the role of women and Jewish values in her life.

Althea Diesenhaus Stroum

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Pamela Brown-Lavitt interviewed Althea Diesenhaus Stroum on July 23, 2001, in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project. Stroum discusses her upbringing, family history, experiences of antisemitism, community activism, marriage, role as a mother, support for the arts, and philanthropy.

Sandy Levy

Project
Katrina's Jewish Voices

Rosalind Hinton interviewed Sandy Levy on October 3, 2006, in New Orleans, Louisiana, as part of the Katrina’s Jewish Voices Oral History Project. Levy speaks about her Orthodox upbringing, transition to Reform Judaism, and her experiences during Hurricane Katrina, highlighting the resilience and resourcefulness of the Jewish community in New Orleans.

Shirley Bridge

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Pamela Lavitt Brown interviewed Shirley Bridge on June 27, 2001, in Seattle, Washington, as part of the Weaving Women’s Words Oral History Project. Bridge discusses her family, childhood memories, education, a career in pharmacology, marriage, raising a family, social activism, and her 50-year battle with cancer.

Donna Sternberg

Project
Katrina's Jewish Voices

Rosalind Hinton interviewed Donna Sternberg on November 28, 2006, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as part of the Katrina's Jewish Voices Oral History Project. Sternberg discusses her upbringing, pro-Israel activism, and involvement in organizing disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina, reflecting on the impact on the Jewish community and government response.

Sara Stone

Project
Katrina's Jewish Voices

Rosalind Hinton interviewed Sara Stone on February 7, 2008, in New Orleans, Louisiana, as part of the Katrina's Jewish Voices Project. Stone details her early life, activism in the Jewish community of the South, experiences of prejudice, organizing the Women's Division of the Jewish Welfare Fund, and her resilience in the face of personal tragedy and Hurricane Katrina.

Baroness Germaine de Rothschild

A member of one of France’s most privileged Jewish families, Germaine de Rothschild (née Halphen) was a noted philanthropist, accomplished musician, author of two books, and mother of four. Most significantly, she orchestrated France’s Kindertransport efforts, helping provide refuge to between 350 and 450 Jewish children.

Vera Frances Salomons

An elusive figure, Vera Salomon, who belonged to the interconnected network of Anglo-Jewish families known as “the Cousinhood,” is best remembered for founding and funding the L.A. Mayer Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem. This was the culmination of a longstanding philanthropic commitment to Jewish life in what would become the State of Israel.

Lynn Schusterman

Billionaire philanthropist Lynn Schusterman changed the landscape of the American Jewish community through her advocacy for Israel, engagement with young Jews, and pioneering funding of inclusion and equality. As Chair of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, her bold vision and commitment to repairing the world extended from Tulsa, OK, across the American Jewish community, to Israel and the Former Soviet Union.

Sephardi Women in the Dutch Republic

In the early modern period, Dutch Sephardim formed a community famous for its wealth, grandeur, and benevolence.

The article highlights the social, economic and religious position of Sephardi women in the Dutch Republic, arriving as immigrants from persecutions by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions and their offspring, settled in generations afterwards. Their adjustment to normative Judaism is being discussed as well as their professional education and their contributions to Sephardi and Dutch society.     

Ginevra Blanis

Ginevra Blanis was a late sixteenth-century silk manufacturer of the Florentine ghetto and Siena. She left her mark as a founder of the young community with her philanthropy and in the public communication of what she considered Jewish values in the provisions of her will.

Advancing Women Professionals in the Jewish Community

Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community (AWP) was founded by Shifra Bronznick in 2001 as an intervention “to advance Jewish women into leadership, stimulate new models of shared leadership, and promote policies for healthy, effective workplaces.” Over fifteen years, AWP conducted groundbreaking research and adapted strategies from other sectors that engaged women and men in decisive, systems-based change.

Sally Gottesman

Sally Gottesman, born 1962 in New Jersey and residing in New York, is a non-profit entrepreneur whose leadership and philanthropy have had a major impact on the Jewish feminist and justice landscape.

Hannah Floretta Cohen

Hannah Floretta Cohen was the first woman president of Britain’s traditionally male Jewish Board of Guardians for Jewish Poor Relief. She also promoted many other Jewish and non-Jewish charitable organizations to promote women's education, to benefit the sick and the elderly, and to encourage investment in the Palestine Mandate, through her public speaking, financial expertise, and administrative skills.

Marti Friedlander

London-born Marti Friedlander migrated to New Zealand in 1958. She became one of the country’s most outstanding and influential photographers in portraiture, photo-journalism, photo-books, and “street” photography. Her photographs still live vigorous public lives in exhibitions, books, and periodicals published after her death.

Beatrice Alexander Examining the Queen Elizabeth II Doll from the Coronation Set, 1953

Channeling Madame Alexander's Philanthropic Charge

Dahlia Soussan

Our lives don’t take place in the confined utopia of a dollhouse, thus we mustn't focus on remote needs in lieu of those right here.

Judy Wolf

Judy Wolf's career has centered on Jewish philanthropy, international relations, women's rights, and the movement for Soviet Jewry. She continues her work to support world Jewry through efforts like the Kehillah project in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

Judith Rodin

In 1994 Judith Seitz Rodin became the first permanent woman president of an Ivy League school when she took the helm of the University of Pennsylvania.

Marjorie Fisher

Marjorie Switow Fisher found inventive ways to improve children’s lives, from funding mobile dental clinics to using summer jobs as an opportunity for career training. Fisher majored in art at Marjorie Webster Junior College and graduated at the top of her class.

Angelica Berrie

A lifelong philanthropist, Angelica Berrie has helped transform the world by funding causes ranging from religious tolerance to nanotechnology.

Ellen Odetta Cuffe

Ellen Odette Cuffe, Lady Desart, was celebrated as the most important Jewish woman in Irish history for her boundless philanthropy and political acumen.

Mary Gendler

Mary Loeb Gendler has helped shape social justice movements in indirect but effective ways, from crafting new rituals for Jewish feminists to helping Tibetan exiles leverage the tools of nonviolent protest.
Mrs. Sidney Allen

From the Archives: The Challenge of Identification

Robbie Terman

I recently received a research request for a photograph of a woman named Gertrude Glogower. At the time, the only thing I knew about her was that she was a past president of the Greater Detroit section of the National Council for Jewish Woman, whose records we hold.

Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman spent years crafting novels that explored relationships and magical realism before the “overnight” success of 1995’s Practical Magic catapulted her to success.

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