Education

Julia Richman

A polarizing and important social reformer, Julia Richman sought to better manage the massive influx of immigrants in New York by Americanizing the new arrivals as quickly as possible, particularly through intense training in English. An educator who eventually became district superintendent of the Lower East Side schools in 1903, she created playgrounds, improved school lunches, and enforced health examinations for students.

Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society Report, 1893

Orphanages in the United States

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jewish philanthropists founded many orphanages in cities with significant Jewish populations, aiming to provide elementary education, vocational training, and religious instruction for dependent children they feared would be raised in non-Jewish asylums. Women were often at the forefront of these institutions as founders, managers, and staff members.

Pauline Newman

Pauline Newman played an essential role in galvanizing the early twentieth-century tenant, labor, socialist, and working-class suffrage movements. The first woman ever appointed general organizer by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), Newman continued to work for the ILGWU for more than seventy years—first as an organizer, then as a labor journalist, a health educator, and a liaison between the union and government officials.

JEWISH IN TRADITIONAL COSTUME FROM THE REGION OF IFRANE ATLAS SAGHIR

Morocco: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The Moroccan Jewish community was the largest Jewish community in North Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The status of Moroccan Jewish women was affected by a variety of factors, including a patriarchal order and social changes brought about by economic development, urbanization, and contact with European countries.

Frances Horwich

Frances Horwich was loved by parents and children alike for her educational television show, Ding Dong School, which taught millions of children how to finger paint, grow plants, and do craft projects with household objects such as pipe cleaners and paper plates. She ended up writing 27 Ding Dong School books and two books for parents, as well as winning several awards over her career.

Elga Ruth Wasserman

Chemist Elga Wasserman – a recipient of a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard in 1949 and a J.D. from Yale in 1976 – is best known for overseeing the entrance of the first coeducational class at Yale College in 1969.

Rosa Zimmern Van Vort

Rosa Zimmern Van Vort was a member of Virginia’s first generation of trained nurses. She devoted her career to the training and education of nurses.

Sociodemography

Over the last several decades, Jewish women attained significant achievement in the socio-economic sphere and played a leading role in maintaining Jewish continuity. In general, Jewish women are educated and participate in the labor force at higher rates than their non-Jewish counterparts.

Hannah Toby Rose

As supervisor of education at the Brooklyn Museum, Hannah Toby Rose revolutionized how museums interacted with the public, from teaching art and art history classes in the galleries to lending video and audio recordings to enrich visitors’ experiences.

Romania, Women and Jewish Education

Since the adoption of a public school system in the mid-1800s in Romania, Jewish women in Romania women have had to fight anti-Semitism and sexism to pursue their education.

The Women’s Mizrachi Federation in America, Detroit Meeting, circa 1960s

Religious Zionist Movements in Palestine

Religious Zionism, distinguished from the secular Zionists by its religious nature and from the ultra-Orthodox community by its Zionism, consisted of two major movements in the Yishuv: the Mizrachi and the Ha-Po’el ha-Mizrachi, a trade union. Women created their own organizations within these movements but distinguished themselves from the men through their support of women and their interests.

Flora Sophia Clementina Randegger -Friedenberg

Born in Italy in 1825, Flora Sophia Clementina Randegger-Friedenberg was a persistent educator and writer. She is best known for the publication of her Jerusalem journal, which shared her extraordinary experiences in a way that combined messianic hope and the enlightenment ideals of knowledge and progress.

Puah Rakovsky

Puah Rakovsky dedicated her life to working towards the empowerment of Jews, particularly of Jewish women. She was a revolutionary woman, taking on important roles as an educator, translator, organizer of women, and an early socialist Zionist.

Poland: Interwar

A minority habitually ignored by scholars, Polish-Jewish women played important roles in the changing cultural and political framework of the interwar years.

Shoshana Persitz

Born in Russia to wealthy parents, Shoshana Persitz was a passionate Zionist and a leader in education reform. She operated a Hebrew-language publishing house in Russia before making Aliyah to Israel, where she continued in publishing and served three terms in the Knesset.

Pelech Religious Experimental High School for Girls, 2004

Pelech Religious Experimental High School for Girls, Jerusalem

Pelech is a pioneering school for girls in Jerusalem. For over half a century, Pelech has sought to educate its students towards a love and understanding of Torah. It encourage its students to take part in leadership roles in the religious world and in Israeli society and promotes women’s involvement in improving social justice.

Judith Peixotto

A gifted teacher who tirelessly promoted her students both within their schools and in the larger world, Judith Peixotto was appointed the first Jewish principal in the city of New York in 1849, at age 24. A Sephardic Jew of Spanish and Portuguese origin, she continued to teach and lead schools until her marriage in 1851.

Mizrahi Feminism in Israel

Mizrahi feminism goes beyond the typical western scope of feminism to include the history and issues that concern women in the Middle East in Israel and in Arab and Muslim countries. An intersectional feminism, it is particularly sensitive to issues of race, class division, immigration, and ethnic discrimination.

Margaret Seligman Lewisohn

Margaret Seligman Lewisohn—education advocate, philanthropist, art collector, and college trustee—did not just give generously to education causes. As the head of the Public Education Association, Lewisohn helped make the community as passionate about education as she was.

Sara Lee

Sara Lee, a Jewish educator who combines charisma with caring and vision with realism, has been a central figure in the effort to ensure Jewish continuity. In recent years the American Jewish community has recognized both the critical need for and the difficult challenge of providing all Jews with an excellent, compelling Jewish education.

Learned Women in Traditional Jewish Society

The long-standing idea that women are either not fit to be educated or do not need to be educated has deep roots in Jewish history. Yet in spite of these very real disabilities, there seem always to have been a handful of women in traditional Jewish communities who became educated.

Kurdish Women

Jews lived in Kurdistan for 2,800 years, until a mass migration to Israel in the 1950s. This Jewish community’s ancient roots and relative seclusion in the Kurdistan region fostered unique religious, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. Despite assimilation and the loss of traditional practices, the community remained tight-knit.

A woman washes laundry by hand with a tin tub and washboard.

Kibbutz

Although the kibbutz was intended as an equalitarian, democratic utopia, attempts to achieve gender equality have been limited by traditional masculinities and male-controlled spheres and gender inequalities have persisted.

Higher Education Administration in the United States

The Academy and Judaism share similar values. At both their roots lies a passion for knowledge—the love of learning, the necessity for debate and discussion, an appreciation for the challenge of scholarship. This would suggest no mystery in the number of Jews in universities. However, it is women’s space in these intellectual settings—historically unwelcome by the academy and unsupported by Jewish scholarly institutions—that poses the wonder.

Hebrew Song, 1880-2020

Hebrew song as a whole, including songs of Erez Israel and the State of Israel, is a unique socio-cultural phenomenon that has developed over time. The dawning of Hebrew song can be traced to the period between 1880 and 1903, and it has grown to reflect the diverse aspects of Israeli society since then. The contribution of women to Hebrew songs, in general, has risen steadily over the years.

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