A musical prodigy who began playing at age three and performing at age four, Ida Haendel continued her passionate violin performances into her late eighties.
Tatyana Grosman helped make American printmaking a respected medium through Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), the studio and publishing house she founded in 1957.
The daughter of a respected neurologist, Tilly Edinger pioneered the study of paleoneurology through her discovery that brains left detectable imprints on the insides of skulls.
The daughter of Mizrachi movement leader Rabbi Aaron M. Ashinsky, S. Deborah Ebin helped the group American Mizrachi Women rescue a staggering number of children from Europe during and after WWII.
As a lawyer and activist, Emilie M. Bullowa devoted her life to justice for the disenfranchised, arguing, “Our democracy doesn’t work if the people who can’t afford … legal aid can’t get justice.”
The wife of Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Alice Goldmark Brandeis used her position to advocate for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, child protection, and Zionist causes.
High jumper Gretel Bergmann’s Olympic hopes were dashed when Nazi officials both refused to let her leave Germany and refused to let her compete in the 1936 Games.
Margarete Berent fought for acceptance as the first female lawyer to practice in Prussia and began her career again from scratch after fleeing Nazi persecution.
Therese Benedek was a pioneer of women’s psychosexual psychology, doing groundbreaking research on the connections between women’s hormones and their emotions.
Psychologist Dorothy Walter Baruch championed a psychodynamic approach to child development that focused on the relationship between physical, emotional, and intellectual development and on rechanneling children’s feelings through play and art therapy.
Bertha Badt-Strauss used her writing to create a broader range of possible identities for women in the cultural Zionist movement called the Jewish Renaissance.
Barbara Ochs Adler pursued her commitment to Jewish and civic causes through her leadership of organizations ranging from child services to criminal justice and prison reform associations.
After surviving the Holocaust, Dina Abramowicz reconstituted her rich cultural heritage as the formidable head librarian of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.