Palestine

Content type
Collection

Flora Benenson Solomon

Flora Benenson Solomon’s deep commitments to welfare and Zionism traversed geographical boundaries and social groups. From her efforts to improve the lives of Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine to the her work on behalf of garment workers in England, Solomon maintained an unwavering commitment to Zionism, which acted as a sustainer of Jewish identity in England.  

Rachel Finkelstein's The Herstory shows images of the artist, her daughter, her grandmother, and her great grandmother superimposed onto an identification card.

Rachel Finkelstein's Queer Feminist Holocaust Art

Emily-Rose Baker

Through its exploration of gender, sexuality, nationality, and intergenerational trauma, the work of artist Rachel Finkelstein is a reminder of the power that art holds as a form of activism.

Photo of wall covered in hamsas, on a yellow patterned background.

Unity through Symbolism: The Hamsa

Leila Nuri

As a teen with a Muslim-Palestinian father and a Jewish-American mother, the hamsa has always meant a lot to me.

Topics: Crafts, Family, Palestine

Mirra Burovsky-Eitingon

Mirra Burovsky was the first Jewish actress to star in the mainstream Russian theater. Her stormy life and career brought her to center stage of Jewish cultural, intellectual, and social ferment in Tsarist and revolutionary Russia, Weimar Germany, and mandatory Palestine. Her third marriage, to psychoanalytist Max Eitingon, and the career of her son Yuli Khariton, “the father of the Soviet atomic bomb,” created the background for a continuing espionage controversy.

Hannah Floretta Cohen

Hannah Floretta Cohen was the first woman president of Britain’s traditionally male Jewish Board of Guardians for Jewish Poor Relief. She also promoted many other Jewish and non-Jewish charitable organizations to promote women's education, to benefit the sick and the elderly, and to encourage investment in the Palestine Mandate, through her public speaking, financial expertise, and administrative skills.

Jerusalem by Efrat Shvili

When Someone Mentions Israel

Ellanora Lerner

For years, these two views of Israel felt like an unquestionable binary to me, and I didn't know where I stood.

Topics: Israel, Palestine
Four Gadna participants in Sde Boker.

Gadna

Isabel Hoffman

I was en route to Gadna, a military simulation run by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for camp groups, gap year programs, and high school semesters abroad.

Silwan

Revisiting Israel

Elana Moscovitch

Elana Moscovitch revisits Israel after living there as a child and makes new discoveries through her daughter's eyes.

Topics: Israel, Palestine

Episode 16: Women Wage Peace (Transcript)

Episode 16: Women Wage Peace (Transcript)

Zioness at the D.C. Dyke March

Lessons from the D.C. Dyke March

Sophie Hurwitz

What can we learn from the debate about Jewish and Israeli symbols at Pride?

Fallen "Israel" Sign, New Orleans, Louisiana, May 9, 2006

Writing on the Walls

Yana Kozukhin

NYU’s Birthright trip did not give me answers. If anything, it only gave me more questions. And for that, I am grateful.

Topics: Israel, Palestine

Episode 16: Women Wage Peace

Are women the key to peace in the Middle East? In this episode, we hear voices from Women Wage Peace, a powerful new movement in Israel demanding peace with the Palestinians—and insisting on women's place at the negotiating table. Uniting women from across the country and across the political spectrum, the movement hopes that it can solve the country’s most intractable issues. As one member says: "There are a lot of problems that only women can solve."

Theater

Rehearsing For a Better World

Molly Pifko

YTheater is a program that Haberman co-founded in the hopes of finding a way for Israeli and Palestinian youth to work together and build a community. 

"True BU" Campaign Image

Marwa Sayed, a Leader in the Community

Elisabeth Eigerman

Marwa Sayed was the first Hijabi I ever met. I was a freshman in high school and she was a junior. A force to be reckoned with, she terrified me. She had strong convictions for equality and justice from which she did not back down. I served on student council with her at Boston University Academy (the high school we both attended) for two years, and during that time she led the charge to abolish the dress code and to establish gender neutral bathrooms. 

Long-lost Poem by War Heroine Hannah Szenes is Found

September 2, 2012

A poem by WWII hero Hannah Szenes was discovered 68 years after her death.

Peace Movement in the United States

Throughout the twentieth century, Jewish women played a major role in American peace organizations and movements. Jewish women have also been in prominent roles advocating for peace between Israel and Palestine, both in the Knesset and with private organizations.

Suffrage in Palestine

The fight for women’s suffrage in Palestine was a fierce one, pitting determined women activists with international support against the obstinance of ultra-Orthodox groups from the Old Yishuv. In 1920, fourteen women were elected to the National Assembly, and after years of thwarted efforts to revoke women’s suffrage, the 1926 Assembly decreed full equal rights for women in all areas of civil, economic, and political life.

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.

Photography in Palestine and Israel: 1900-Present Day

Although women photographers long struggled for recognition and appreciation in Palestine and Israel, in recent years awareness of their roles and contributions to photograph has increased. The activity of women photographers who focus on gender issues has increased dramatically, while female curators and academics are gaining new perspectives on Jewish female photographers, re-evaluating their role in the development of photography in Israel.

Peace Movements in Israel

Though Israel has been involved in a state of protracted conflict and in a cycle of wars since well before its establishment in 1948, a massive peace movement emerged only in 1978. Throughout the years, the various Israeli peace movements and organizations have focused on anti-militarism and electoral politics, as well as on broader cultural shifts within Israeli society.

Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Ouziel

Rabbi Ben-Zion Hai Ouziel was the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel. Ouziel believed women could vote and be elected, serve as judges, use birth control for health reasons, and inherit property. He proposed a marriage formula that would prevent women from becoming agunot (“chained”).

Zivia Lubetkin

Zivia Lubetkin was an important member of the underground resistance movement in Poland during World War II, and later an active member of the United Kibbutz Movement in Palestine.

Sarah Lishansky

A politically active nurse and midwife, Sarah Lishansky used her career to treat and care for workers in the Yishuv during the Second Aliyah.

Judith Berlin Lieberman

As dean of the Shulamith School for Girls, Judith Berlin Lieberman emphasized the importance of Jewish girls getting the same rigorous education in Judaic studies as boys did.

Lotta Levensohn

A writer, publicist, and Zionist activist, Lotta Levensohn was among the original founders of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Donate

Help us elevate the voices of Jewish women.

donate now

Get JWA in your inbox

Read the latest from JWA from your inbox.

sign up now