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Zionism

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Etta Lasker Rosensohn

An influential philanthropist and social activist, Etta Lasker Rosensohn focused most of her energy on Jewish and Zionist affairs in New York City. Her great passion was Hadassah, where she served on the national board for more than two decades and as the national president.

Gertrude Rosenblatt

Gertrude Rosenblatt earned praise for the many ways she helped build the State of Israel. From her role as one of the first directors of Hadassah to her direct service for the needy, she was a dedicated and active Zionist.

Ora Mendelsohn Rosen

Despite her tragically short career, Ora Mendelsohn Rosen was a brilliant research physician and leading investigator of how hormones control the growth of cells. One of the few female members of the National Academy of Sciences at the time, Rosen’s biochemistry work fundamentally shaped our understanding of diabetes and cancer.

Sophia Moses Robison

Sophia Moses Robison discovered her passion for social advocacy in college. Active in the National Council of Jewish Women throughout her life, Robison was also a published researcher and studied the economic impact of arriving refugees after World War II for the federal government. Her explorations into youth delinquency demonstrated the class and social biases in the reporting of delinquency.

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.

Havivah Reik

Havivah Reik was a Palmah soldier and parachutist who was killed by Nazi collaborators on a secret mission to save thousands of Slovakian Jews.

Flora Sophia Clementina Randegger -Friedenberg

Born in Italy in 1825, Flora Sophia Clementina Randegger-Friedenberg was a persistent educator and writer. She is best known for the publication of her Jerusalem journal, which shared her extraordinary experiences in a way that combined messianic hope and the enlightenment ideals of knowledge and progress.

Bracha Ramot

Bracha Ramot, a specialist in internal medicine and hematology, made major contributions to the development of hematology in Israel and to research on the genetic differences of Jewish ethnic communities in Israel. Ramot was awarded the Israel Prize for Medical Sciences in 2001.

Puah Rakovsky

Puah Rakovsky dedicated her life to working towards the empowerment of Jews, particularly of Jewish women. She was a revolutionary woman, taking on important roles as an educator, translator, organizer of women, and an early socialist Zionist.

Rahel Bluwstein

The "founding mother" of modern Hebrew poetry by women, Rahel Bluwstein achieved in death the status of a national cultural icon. Rahel’s affiliation with the avant-garde group of Second Aliyah pioneers to pre-state Palestine, her dedication to Zionist ideals, and her agonizing death made her a beloved pioneering figure in Israel.

Frances Raday

Frances Raday’s career as a leading human rights advocate, feminist academic, and litigator evolved on no less than three continents: starting in England, passing through Africa, and finally settling in Israel.

Nehamah Pukhachewsky

Nehamah Pukhachewsky’s writings advocated for Jewish women with a feminist confidence that resonates with readers to this day. Pukhachewsky immigrated from Lithuania to Palestine in 1889, actively participating in agriculture and women’s rights movements along with writing articles for Hebrew journals. She is remembered as one of the first modern Hebrew women prose writers.

Esther Raab

Esther Raab was a Hebrew poet and memoirist who had the distinction of being the first modern woman Hebrew poet born in the Land of Israel. Her poetry, much of which includes striking and detailed images from the world of nature, brought a new voice to Hebrew poetry.

Prose Writing in the Yishuv: 1882-1948

Female Yishuv writers have often been ignored in discussions of Jewish literature from the period. As the sometimes-melancholy tone and escapist themes of their writing show, these women struggled to escape the margins in pre-state Palestine. Nonetheless, the works of these female writers offer important insights into the lives of Yishuv women and paved the way for contemporary women writers.

Jane Prince

Jane Prince dedicated her life to furthering the economic, social, and educational opportunities of young people in Palestine and Israel through her involvement in the Women’s League for Palestine and its successor, the Women’s League for Israel, and with the American Friends of Hebrew University.

Rosalind Preston

Rosalind Preston is a leading British philanthropist and advocate for various Jewish and women’s groups. She was honored with the Order of the British Empire in 1993 for her service work in such groups as WIZO, the National Council of Women, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Inter Faith Network UK, and the Jewish Volunteering Network.

Rikudah Potash

Crowned “the Poetess of Jerusalem” by Sholem Asch, Rikudah Potash wrote in Yiddish about the landscape of her beloved city and its diverse ethnic communities. She brought to Yiddish readers the rarely seen Middle Eastern Jewish woman. Potash’s Jerusalem, both the heavenly and the earthly, was a capacious universe that she inhabited, body and soul, for thirty years.

Zosha Posnanska

A left-wing political activist and Soviet intelligence recruit, Zosha Posnanska was a fearless fighter against the Nazis and for a peaceful world.

Poland: Interwar

A minority habitually ignored by scholars, Polish-Jewish women played important roles in the changing cultural and political framework of the interwar years.

Political Parties in the Yishuv and Israel

Women’s political parties have played an important, though to date poorly acknowledged, role in the social and political history of Israel. They had a significant impact on women’s participation in power center, political and other; they placed a major part in the struggle for women’s right to vote and to be elected; they raised the issue of violence against women, and much more.

Politics in the Yishuv and Israel

Institutionalized politics and a variety of factors—the politicization of women’s issues, the Israeli-Arab conflict, the impact of religion on the political arena, and the socio-economic structure—have resulted in both exclusion and inclusion of women in Israeli politics.

Hantze Plotniczki

Hantze Plotniczki was an active leader of and participant in resistance movements during World War II. She had a gift for connecting with people and inspiring love and action from other members of the movement.

Frumka Plotniczki

Whether in her family, the kibbutz training program or the movement, what set Plotniczki apart was her ability to combine penetrating, uncompromising analysis with a loving heart and maternal compassion.

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.

Shoshana Persitz

Born in Russia to wealthy parents, Shoshana Persitz was a passionate Zionist and a leader in education reform. She operated a Hebrew-language publishing house in Russia before making Aliyah to Israel, where she continued in publishing and served three terms in the Knesset.

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