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Janice Goodman

Janice Goodman’s work on civil rights issues drove her to become a lawyer, arguing class action cases for women’s rights.

Miriam Cohen Glickman

One of the first white women to do field work for the civil rights movement in the South, Miriam Cohen Glickman was assumed to be black by the locals, who called her “bright,” a word for light-skinned African Americans.

Elaine DeLott Baker

Elaine DeLott Baker’s experiences with civil rights activism led to a career helping workers learn reading and computer skills to qualify for better jobs.

Bernice Sains Freid

Bernice Sains Freid called her time in WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during WWII “the happiest days of my life.”
Justice Scale

Teaching Truth to Power

Emilia Diamant

At the moment, I am a Jewish educator. It doesn’t necessarily fit in with what I thought my career path would look like, but it’s taken me to some incredible places and connected me with some of the most wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

One of the best parts of working at Prozdor is that my boss almost always says “Yes” when I want to try something new. So when I came to him with the idea to run a Social Justice Leadership Certificate program for Jewish teens, he was into it right away.

Naomi Weisstein

Naomi Weisstein’s career ran the gamut from feminist rock musician to groundbreaking psychologist to stand-up comedian.

Sheryl Baron Nestel

Sheryl Baron Nestel’s activism in the childbirth reform movement led to her investigation of how race and racism affect healthcare.

Deena Metzger

Deena Metzger’s iconic portrait, “The Warrior,” changed the way we look at surviving breast cancer.

Lori Lefkovitz

Lori Lefkovitz founded the first-ever women’s studies department at a rabbinical school and helped create Ritualwell.org, a communal source for inclusive, innovative Jewish ritual and prayer.

Loolwa Khazzoom

A pioneer of the Jewish multicultural movement, Loolwa Khazoom helped promote Sephardic and Mizrahi culture and priorities within the larger Jewish community.

Evelyn Fox Keller

Evelyn Fox Keller’s work in gender, biology, and the history of science led her to question the gendered metaphors and assumptions of biologists and sociologists, which often blinded them to basic scientific facts.

Nicole Hollander

Cartoonist Nicole Hollander used her comics to poke fun at misogyny and prove that feminists could be funny.

Susannah Heschel

As a scholar and author, Susannah Heschel has explored issues of Jewish feminism and 19th and 20th century German Jewish history.

Diana Mara Henry

Diana Mara Henry photographed some of the most important events in the women’s movement, including the iconic image of the march to the First National Women’s Conference in Houston.

Rivka Haut

An Orthodox Jewish feminist, Rivka Haut advocated on behalf of agunot (chained wives) and wrote feminist prayers for Orthodox Jews.

Maralee Gordon

Rabbi Maralee Gordon helped found the Chutzpah Collective, a radical Jewish political collective that utilized the inclusion of women in religious rituals as a jumping-off point for making all Jews feel welcome in the Jewish community regardless of disability or sexual orientation.

Debbie Friedman

Debbie Friedman’s music transformed prayers for Jews across the movements.

Ellen DuBois

Feminist historian Ellen DuBois’s explorations of the history of feminism offered Second Wave feminists ways to talk about women’s sexuality beyond exploitation and banning pornography.

Dianne Cohler-Esses

Dianne Cohler-Esses broke new ground as not only the first woman from the Syrian-Jewish community to become a rabbi, but also the first non-Orthodox rabbi from that community.

Tamara Cohen

Tamara Cohen’s work with the Jewish Women’s Archive and Ma’yan: the Jewish Women’s Project helped popularize lesser-known heroines of Jewish history and new feminist rituals such as making Miriam’s Cup part of the Passover Seder.

Marla Brettschneider

As a political philosopher, Marla Brettschneider examined issues of feminist, queer, class-based, and Jewish political theory and activism.

Joyce Antler

Using both field research and her own experiences posing as a pregnant woman, Joyce Antler not only helped repeal New York’s laws against abortion, but ensured that women had real access to medical services after the law was repealed.

Rebecca Young

Rebecca Young’s focus on prisoners’ rights led her to create programs to improve the juvenile justice system and monitor and report prisoner abuse.

Rebecca Yenawine

Rebecca Yenawine’s unorthodox approach to a group of teenage vandals led her to create a unique art school for inner city kids.

Judy Frieze Wright

Judy Frieze Wright went to prison for her participation in Freedom Rides, but that was only the beginning of her career as an activist.

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