Carolivia Herron draws on her experience as an African American Jewish woman living in Washington, D.C. to reimagine the traditional form of “the epic” through her writing.
In her debut novel, Ellen Umansky emphasizes the evolving legacy of the Holocaust and the power of grappling with the past to better understand the present.
Sharon Salzberg helped bring Theravedic Buddhism, one of the most conservative Buddhist dsiciplines, to America as one of the three co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in 1974.
Allegra Goodman centers her acclaimed novels and short stories on deep, nuanced depictions of Jewish characters and Jewish families grappling with the problems of the larger world.
Edith Head’s brilliant eye for design earned her a record eight Oscars for Best Costume Design for movies that included Roman Holiday (1954) and The Sting (1974).
Known as much for her signature men’s jackets, cowboy boots, and tortoiseshell glasses as for her stunning (and often scathing) social commentary, Fran Lebowitz has spent a lifetime critiquing cultural norms.
Rachel Calof’s memoir of life as a mail-order bride in Devils Lake, North Dakota vividly depicts the hardships of life as a western pioneer through the unique lens of a Jewish woman’s experience.
As a Talmud scholar and a member of the progressive Israeli political party Yesh Atid, Ruth Calderon has sought to break down the traditional divide in Israeli society between right-wing Orthodoxy and secular liberalism.
Through her genealogical program Routes to Roots, Miriam Weiner helped Jews access historical records that had survived the Soviet suppression of information throughout Eastern Europe.
In her wildly popular 1958 debut novel, The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe captured the struggle of women working in New York before the women’s liberation movement.
Rachel Kadish’s fiction focuses on the ways Jewish women struggle to fulfill their longings and dreams despite the limitations of the times and places in which they live.
Through her ongoing advice column “Ask Polly,” collected in the 2016 book How to Be a Person in the World, Heather Havrilesky offers advice on love and life to millennials.
Rozka Korczak-Marla was one of three leaders of the Vilna Ghetto uprising, which, astonishingly, ended with successful escapes rather than mass executions.
Philosopher Sarah Kofman argued that the ideas of great thinkers couldn’t simply be taken on their abstract merit, they had to be considered in the context of those philosophers’ lives.
Melanie Klein, a pioneer of play therapy who made important discoveries about children’s emotional development, fought with Anna Freud over the differences between their theories of child psychology.
Rashel Mironovna Khin hosted salons that made her the toast of Imperial Russia and, with the help of the novelist Ivan Turgenev, became a successful writer in her own right.
Gurit Kadman earned fame as a pioneer of Israeli folk dancing. Born Gertrude Lowenstein, Kadman joined the Wandervogel, a youth movement that focused on German folk culture.
