A Brazilian-born daughter of immigrants, Frida Alexandr was the only woman writer to describe Jewish cowboys in Brazil from the viewpoint of one who lived among them. Her only published book was the novel Filipson, which chronicled the lives and episodes of the farm where she was born in 1906 and spent two decades of her life.

Psychologist Dorothy Walter Baruch championed the health development of children as an educator, author, psychologist, and as a community leader. Her psychodynamic approach to child development focused on the relationship between physical, emotional, and intellectual development and on rechanneling children’s feelings through play and art therapy.

Helen Bentwich was an active community organizer, activist, and local politician. She and her husband, Norman, aided in helping people escape Nazi persecution and split their time between Palestine and England for many years.

Aline Bernstein was one of the first theatrical designers in New York to make sets and costumes entirely from scratch and craft moving sets. She designed sets for the Theatre Guild and various independent producers, winning numerous awards for her work, including a Tony for costume design for Regina in 1949. She later founded the Costume Museum and began writing fiction.

Henrietta Gittelson Blaustein was an American philanthropist. When her husband died in 1937, she became the chairperson of the Louis and Henrietta Blaustein Foundation. In 1951, the foundation awarded $1,000,000 to the Sinai Hospital and the Jewish Medical Center in Baltimore – the largest individual contribution ever made to a Jewish organization at that time.

As president of the National Council of Jewish Women, Rose Brenner focused on inclusion of people who were often marginalized—the deaf, the blind, and those isolated in rural areas.

A riveting public speaker, masterful politician, skilled organizer, and administrator, Fanny Fligelman Brin, who served two terms as president of the National Council of Jewish Women from 1932 to 1938, is best remembered for her work on behalf of world peace during the interwar years.

Sandra (Sandy) Brown, an outstanding leader of the Toronto Jewish community at the turn of the twenty-first century, is one of the many Canadians—especially Jews—who in the post-World War II era left smaller communities across the country for Toronto.

The positive aspect of the Canadian mosaic has been a strong Jewish community (and other communities) which nurtured traditional ethnic and religious values and benefited from the talent and energy of women and men restrained from participation in the broader society. The negative aspect has included considerable antisemitism and, especially for women, the sometimes stifling narrowness and conservatism of the community which inhibited creative and exceptional people from charting their own individual paths.

As part of the Black-Jewish civil rights alliance and rooted in twentieth-century political, cultural and gender dynamics, Jewish women’s activism took many forms. Jewish women contributed as professionals, through Jewish and women’s organizations, and as foot soldiers in the movement’s nonviolent direct action organizations such as CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).