Miriam Waltzer, a retired judge who had spent her career working to improve the lives of others, found it difficult to be on the receiving end as a refugee in need of aid.
Rebuilding her life time and again after great upheaval gave Lis Kahn unique insight as she helped the Jewish community of New Orleans heal after Hurricane Katrina.
The only woman in the Yale Law School class of 1941, Shirley Adelson Siegel became a trailblazer as head of the New York State Attorney’s first Civil Rights Bureau in 1959.
Inspired by the youth villages that allowed Israel to welcome staggering numbers of orphans after the Holocaust, Anne Heyman created the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village to shelter orphans of the Rwandan genocide.
"I saw the vast chasms between our rhetoric of freedom, equality and charity, and what we were doing to, or not doing for poor people, especially children.” - Justine Wise Polier
Sada Jacobson won the bronze medal for sabre fencing at the 2004 Olympics (the first Olympics where women were allowed to compete in sabre), then did one better in 2008, bringing home both a silver and another bronze medal.
I’ve already expressed my feelings on the whole “year of the Jewish woman” thing, but that’s not to say we shouldn’t celebrate the many great moments for Jewish women in 2014. Here, in no particular order, are a few of our favorites at JWA.
CEO Martine Rothblatt’s fascination with interconnectivity led her to found both GeoStar and Sirius Radio, but it was her drive to save her daughter’s life that led her to create biotech company United Therapeutics Corporation.
Harriet Lowenstein gave the Joint Distribution Committee its name and led many of the organization’s efforts to aid those trapped in Europe during both World Wars.
Carol Ruth Silver was one of the first two white women to be jailed in the Freedom Rides, an experience that sparked a career in law and politics, fighting for the rights of others.
Sonia Pressman Fuentes, the first female attorney in the office of the general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, helped extend the Civil Rights Act’s protections of equal opportunity to all people regardless of gender.
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repeal New York’s laws against abortion, but ensured that women had real access to medical services after the law was repealed.
Judy Somberg’s work with the Sister Cities Project in El Salvador helped locals return to their villages after the military takeover in 1987 and freed eleven people who had been “disappeared.”
The first Jewish woman elected to the Maryland State Senate, Rosalie Silber Abrams was an energetic and activist legislator who oversaw the passage of nearly 300 bills during her seventeen-year career in the Maryland General Assembly.
