One of the finest actors of her day, as well as a producer and a philanthropist, Helen Menken devoted her entire life to the American theater. While she was known for playing a lesbian in The Captive, for which she was arrested during a performance, and her role as Elizabeth I in Mary of Scotland, her biggest contribution to theater was creating the 1942–1946 Stage Door Canteen through the American Theater Wing, in which Broadway stars performed for service people.

Fritzi Massary was a prominent singer in Berlin prior to the onset of World War II. She reigned over the Berlin stage, singing the title role in Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow and Adele in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. Among the works created especially for her was the operetta Die Kaiserin by Leo Fall.

Sara Levi-Tanai was the founder, choreographer, and artistic director of the Inbal Dance Theater. With an original style, she established a unique dance theater that combined the East and West and the early history of the Nation of Israel with the present, as well as creating a new language of movement in the world of dance that is called “the Inbal language.”

Lia Koenig is known as the First Lady of Israeli Yiddish Theater for her complex roles in world drama. After immigrating to Israel from Poland in 1961 with her husband Zevi Stolper, she began her legendary career at the Habimah theater. Koenig was awarded the Israel Prize, the Israel Theater Prize, and the EMET Prize. 

Known for her majestic bearing, great beauty, and fine diction, Bertha Kalich was the first female actor to make the transition from the Yiddish to the English stage. Kalich performed 125 roles in seven languages and was a star of Yiddish theater in Europe before immigrating to the United States and rising to fame in American Yiddish theater and mainstream films, plays, and radio shows. 

Over a sixty-year career as a writer, actor, co-producer, and activist, Fay Kanin was awarded several Emmys and Peabodys, the ACLU Bill of Rights Award, the Crystal Award from Women in Film, the Burning Bush Award from the University of Judaism, and nominations for Oscar and Tony awards. She was the second female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Rokhl Holzer earned a reputation as an actress with a talent for transforming herself to suit any role, but her most remarkable transformation may have been her shift from Poland to Australia’s Yiddish theater in the 1930s. Holzer, a riveting recital artiste and unforgettable star of the Yiddish stage, mesmerized global audiences and was also an adored director of the Yiddish theater.

Singer and actress Libby Holman was known as much for her scandalous personal life and revolutionary activism as for her lush voice. She grew famous performing in Broadway shows and revues throughout the 1920s. Holman was openly bisexual and was accused of murdering her husband, Zachary Smith Reynolds, in 1932. She was actively involved in protesting racial segregation.

In the years between 1914 and 1933, numerous significant personalities in art, culture, politics, society and sport met in the photographic portraiture studio of Nini and Carry Hess. With their technical and aesthetic brilliance, the sisters were among the leading photographers in Germany of the time.

Judith Herzberg is a Dutch Jewish poet, essayist, screenwriter, and professor who has been hailed as one of the greatest living Dutch poets for her ability to imbue everyday objects with unexpected meaning. Making her debut as a poet in the early sixties, Herzberg has written poems, essays, plays, film scripts, and television dramas, with many translations and adaptations to her name.