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Jessica Blanche Peixotto

Jessica Blanche Peixotto defied convention and her family to become a respected authority in the field of economics. Through her education, professorship, and departmental leadership at the University of California at Berkeley, she broke down barriers for women in education.

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.

Sylvia Ostry

Sylvia Ostry, born in Winnipeg, Canada, was a distinguished economist, academic, and government leader. She taught at universities across Canada, served in numerous government posts, and authored over eighty publications, mostly on policy analysis.

Berta Ottenstein

A pioneer in skin biochemistry and dermatology, Berta Ottenstein became the first woman lecturer in the Medical Faculty at the University of Freiburg in 1931. Two years later she was forced to flee Germany and begin her scientific career anew. After occupying research positions at the universities of Budapest and Istanbul, she received a research fellowship at Harvard University in 1945.

Paula Padani

Paula Padani was an influential choreographer, performer, and teacher who explored Jewish themes in her work as she danced throughout Israel, the United States, and Europe. Her work was inspired by the landscapes of Israel and biblical themes, and she was celebrated in post World War Two Paris for her talent and vitality as a Jewish artist.

Yehudit Ornstein

Dancer and choreographer Yehudit Ornstein followed her mother, Israeli dance pioneer Margalit Ornstein, in expanding Israeli modern and folk dance. Known for her dance duo with her twin sister, Ornstein was a prolific choreographer and dance teacher and was among the founders of the Dancers Union.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Alicia Ostriker is a feminist revolutionary, a poet, critic, and creator of contemporary midrash. She is one of an increasing number of women writers who have the courage to approach bibliocal history and legend from an unorthodox, feminist point of view.

Fayga Ostrower

Fayga Ostrower, born in Poland, began her artistic career after her family immigrated to Brazil, where she quickly developed a love and a talent for engraving. Her award-winning works have been displayed across the world, and she wrote many books reflecting on the power of art as a universal human language.

Betty Olivero

One of the most admired Israeli composers of the early twenty-first century, Betty Olivero developed her musical career in Italy, returning in 2001 to Israel where she became known for her expressions of Jewish and Israeli cultural and national identity in music.

Shoshana Ornstein

After emigrating to Palestine with her mother and twin sister at the age of ten, the Ornstein sisters formed a celebrated dancing duo. In addition to years of performing dances in the style of German “Free Dance” and influenced by her pioneer status in Erez Israel, she taught for sixty years at the Ornstein Studio in Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s most prominent schools.

Rina Nikova

Rina Nikova, a pioneer of classical and biblical ballet in Palestine, distinguished herself mostly in character dances, which had a nationalist style influenced by ethnic folklore. Nikova established the first school for classical ballet in Tel Aviv and founded the Biblical Ballet, which was based on Yemenite folklore and focused on Biblical subjects.

Emmy Noether

Emmy Noether, a German mathematician, was the world leader in the twentieth-century development of modern “abstract” algebra. Her writing, the students she inspired, and those students’ books wholly changed the form and content of higher algebra throughout the world. She influenced a generation of mathematicians, several of whom borrowed heavily from her work to write the major textbooks of the field.

Dalia Ofer

Dalia Ofer is an Israeli historian whose work mainly focuses on women’s experiences in the Holocaust and collective memory of the Holocaust in Israeli society. Ofer has published a multitude of books and articles on these topics during her career, and she has held positions at many prestigious universities around the world including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia.

Nelly Neumann

Nelly Neumann completed her doctorate in synthetic geometry in 1909 at Breslau University, making her one of the first women in Germany to obtain such a degree. In her lifetime she provided career guidance to female university students and worked as a secondary school teacher, tackling the intersection of philosophy and mathematics.

Jewish Women in New Zealand

Although New Zealand’s Jewish community is small, “Kiwi” Jewish women have punched well above their weight and account for a significant number of the country’s “historic firsts” and remarkable achievements.

Miriam Naor

Miriam Naor was widely esteemed for her expertise in criminal law. In her many famous court cases, Naor’s decisions were always based on profound legal knowledge and on rigorous analysis of the facts.

Shulamith Nardi

Shulamith Nardi helped shape relations between Jews and gentiles in the fledgling State of Israel through her writing and editing for several Zionist publications, her analysis of Jewish literature, and her work as advisor on Diaspora affairs to four Israeli presidents.

Rachel Natelson

As a young girl, Rachel Natelson corresponded with an uncle who had been studying with Henrietta Szold. From him, she learned about Palestine and the Zionist movement. These exchanges were to lay the foundation for her extraordinary life as a leader on behalf of the Zionist cause—including being one of the founding members of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Moshavah

Women played important roles in the moshavot (villages), the pioneer settlement form created by the Jews in Palestine at its formative period 1882-1914. Various types of women in the moshava had significant roles in creating the “new Jew” of the second generation and in establishing and consolidating the moshavot.

Deborah Dash Moore

Deborah Dash Moore is a leading scholar of American Jewish history. Her influential work has focused on both urban and visual Jewish history in locales from New York to Miami to Los Angeles. A prolific interpreter of Jewish and American culture, Moore has played a key role in making American Jewish history a recognized subfield in the academy.

Elinor Morgenthau

Elinor Morgenthau’s accomplishments were largely invisible, as she helped her husband, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., rise to great heights in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. Because of her sharp political and social skills, she often filled in for her husband, and eventually she became Eleanor Roosevelt’s assistant in the Office of Civilian Defense.

Erica Morini

Erica Morini made her violin debut at age five, playing for Emperor Franz Joseph’s birthday party. She debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1921 and spent the next several decades touring the world, often adding concerts to her overbooked schedule to accommodate her many fans. Morini retired in 1976, the same year the city of New York honored her with a lifetime achievement award.

Ellen Moers

Ellen Moers’ Literary Women (1976), the third and last book of her career, is a benchmark of feminist criticism. While early critics attacked Literary Women for its exclusive focus on women writers, her analysis of Mary Shelley and other women writers reshaped our understanding of their work.

Penina Moïse

A Jewish-American poet, nurse, journalist, and educator, Penina Moïse was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1797. Penina Moïse, a staunch supporter of the Confederacy, shaped American-Jewish culture through her poetry as the first woman poet included in an American prayer book.

Marion Simon Misch

Marion Misch participated in a great number of volunteer activities through her lifetime, all the while running a successful business following the death of her husband. Her primary interests centered on education and Judaism, and her volunteerism reflected her concern for these issues.

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