Jewish Women of Valor
In keeping with National Women's History Month, celebrated throughout the month of March, we wanted to pay tribute to some of the myriad of accomplished Jewish women who have contributed so much to the world we live in.
Of course, choosing whom to highlight from among the thousands of extraordinary Jewish women who fit the bill was no easy task. Nonetheless, we did not want the opportunity to honor our Jewish heroines to pass. And so, with apologies to those we left out, we selected these few as examples of the many. Much of the information in this article was culled from the Jewish Women's Archive "History Makers," http://jwa.org/historymakers
RUTH BADER GINSBURG became the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court (after Sandra Day O'Connor), and the first Jewish woman to serve, in 1993. Born in Brooklyn, NY, the young Bader had a strong involvement with Jewish education through her family's membership with the East Midwood Jewish Center; at age 13 she became the "Camp Rabbi" at Camp Che-Na-Wah in Minerva, N.Y. She graduated from Cornell University in 1954, and that fall enrolled at Harvard Law School, where she was one of only nine women in a class of more than five hundred. When her husband took a job in New York City, she transferred to Columbia Law School and became the first woman to be on both the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review. In 1959, she earned her Bachelor of Laws degree at Columbia, tied for first in her class.
From 1972 until 1980, she taught at Columbia, where she became the first tenured woman and co-authored the first law-school casebook on sex discrimination. In 1980, she was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit , where she served for 13 years, until joining the Supreme Court in 1993.
BLU GREENBERG (née Genauer) is a traditionally observant Jewish woman who has become a prime voice for feminism as applied to Orthodox Judaism. It was as a young student at Brooklyn College, where she received a B.A. in political science in 1958, that an uncomfortable dissatisfaction began to brew in her soul. The personal turning point came in 1973, when Greenberg was invited to give the opening address at the First National Jewish Women's Conference. With a unique point of view that respects Jewish tradition but at the same time recognizes the inequalities that adversely affect women in that tradition, she addressed the five hundred women who attended the conference. Since that time, Greenberg has become a highly-respected leader and sought-after speaker worldwide. In 1997, she founded the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), after the overwhelming response to the International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy held in New York City - the first of its kind - made clear the tremendous need for an organization that did not view "feminism" and "Orthodoxy" as inherently contradictory. Over two thousand people attended the following year, when Greenberg chaired the second Judaism and Feminism gathering in New York City. Though she no longer serves as chairwoman of JOFA, Greenberg continues to guide JOFA in exploring ways to reconcile the principles of feminism with the observance of Jewish law.
JUDY BLUME is a prolific Jewish author of books for young adults, exceeding sales of 80 million books translated into 31 languages. Blume's novels for children and teenagers were among the first to tackle such controversial matters as racism, divorce, bullying and teen sex. Blume published her first book in 1969. The decade that followed proved to be her most prolific, with 13 more books being published, including many of her most well-known titles, such as "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing," "Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great" and "Blubber." Blume has won more than 90 literary awards, including the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the Library of Congress Living Legends. Perhaps one of her most censored and challenged books is, "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" (1970), deals with many "rite of passage" topics for young, pre-teen girls. The book is number 60 on the list of the top 100 most challenged books between 1990 and 1999 at the American Library Association. In her efforts to preserve for young readers intellectual freedom in literature, Blume joined the National Coalition Against Censorship. Blume is also the editor for a collection of short stories, "Places I Never Meant To Be, Original Stories by Censored Writers."
HENRIETTA SZOLD enlisted generations of American Jewish women in the practical work of supporting Jewish settlements in Palestine and Israel. Born in 1860, the daughter of a rabbi, Szold created Hadassah in 1912 as a Zionist women's organization dedicated to practical work in Palestine. Largely under Szold's leadership, Hadassah created the infrastructure for a modern medical system in Palestine that would serve both Jews and Arabs. She spent most of the last 25 years of her life in Palestine, overseeing numerous health, educational, and social service institutions that would become an integral part of the State of Israel. In her 70s, under the shadow of the Nazi threat in Europe, Szold directed Youth Aliyah, an organization that brought thousands of children from Germany and Europe to agricultural settlements in Palestine. Even before her death in 1945, she had become an icon for the practical idealism that could build a Jewish state.
JUDITH RESNIK was an American engineer and a NASA astronaut who was killed aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger when it exploded on Jan. 28, 1986. Resnik was the second American woman and the first Jewish American woman in space. She was only the second Jew to go to space (after Boris Volynov of the Soviet Union). Born in Akron, Ohio in 1949, Resnik excelled in math and played classical piano; she achieved a perfect SAT score. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and held a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland. After graduation from Carnegie Mellon, she was employed at RCA as a design engineer, and later worked with various NASA projects contracted to the company. She was recruited into the astronaut program in January, 1978. Her first space flight was as a mission specialist on the maiden voyage of Discovery, from August to September, 1984. She was likewise a mission specialist aboard Challenger.
BELLA ABZUG was "born yelling" in 1920. A daughter of Russian immigrants, she grew up poor in the Bronx. By the age of 13, she was already giving her first speeches and defying convention at her family's synagogue. After attending Hunter College and Columbia University School of Law, she worked as a lawyer for the next 25 years, specializing in labor and tenants' rights, and civil rights and liberties cases. At the age of 50, she ran for Congress in Manhattan and won, becoming one of only 12 women in the House. After three terms, Abzug gave up her seat in 1976 to run for an all male Senate, but lost the Democratic primary by less than one percent. She also lost later bids for city mayor and Congress. In 1977, she presided over the historic first National Women's Conference in Houston. She then headed President Carter's National Advisory Committee on Women until she was abruptly fired for criticizing the administration's economic policies in 1979. In response, Abzug founded Women USA, a grassroots political action organization. In 1990, she co-founded the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), an international activist and advocacy network. She died in 1998 at the age of 77.
Abzug was not the first Jewish woman to serve in Congress. That distinction belongs to Florence Prag Kahn who succeeded her husband upon his death in 1924 and served the San Francisco area for five terms. Today, two Jewish women serve in the Senate - California Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein - and eight Jewish women serve in the House of Representatives. Jewish women have made their mark in state government as well. Linda Lingle (Republican Governor of Hawaii) became the second Jewish woman elected governor of a U.S. state after Madeleine Kunin (D) served as Governor of Vermont from 1985 until 1991.