Jewish women
Her story, and the week'sWorth knowing
Sarah Schenirer
1883–1935
Kraków seamstress who founded Bais Yaakov in 1917 and built girls' Torah education into a movement.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
Nechama Leibowitz
1905–1997
Taught Tanach to a generation by post, sending out and marking gilyonot for decades before her lessons filled halls.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka
1901–1988
Wife of the Lubavitcher Rebbe; the Chabad women's and girls' organisations carry her name.
Wikipedia ↗
Rebbetzin Chana
1880–1964
Followed her husband into Soviet exile and made ink from herbs so he could keep writing.
Wikipedia ↗
Bruriah
2nd century
The one woman whose halachic opinions are cited by name in the Talmud.
Wikipedia ↗
Glückel of Hameln
1646–1724
Her Yiddish memoir is the earliest known autobiography by a Jewish woman.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
Doña Gracia Nasi
1510–1569
Ran a shipping fortune and an escape network that carried conversos out of the Inquisition.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
Henrietta Szold
1860–1945
Founded Hadassah in 1912, then Youth Aliyah, which brought thousands of children out of Europe.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
Hannah Szenes
1921–1944
Poet who parachuted into occupied Europe in 1944 to reach Hungarian Jewry, and was executed at 23.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
Rosalind Franklin
1920–1958
Her X-ray crystallography produced the image that revealed the structure of DNA.
Wikipedia ↗
Emmy Noether
1882–1935
Noether's theorem tied every conservation law in physics to a symmetry.
Wikipedia ↗
Gertrude Elion
1918–1999
Nobel in Medicine, 1988, for drugs designed from the biology up rather than found by trial.
Wikipedia ↗
Where to turn
Sharsheret ↗
Breast and ovarian cancer support built for Jewish women and families.
Bonei Olam ↗
Financial help with fertility treatment, quietly and without a means test.
Between Carpools ↗
Frum women's lifestyle — food, home, yom tov, and getting through the week.
N'shei Chabad Newsletter ↗
The Chabad women's magazine, published since 1980.
Chochmat Nashim ↗
Advocacy and research on women's standing in Orthodox communal life.
Jewish Women's Archive ↗
The encyclopedia — thousands of biographies, free to read.