21 Jewish Women Icons for Women’s History Month 2021

March 8, 2021 marked the celebration of the 110th International Women’s Day. March is Women’s History Month, where we educate ourselves about and celebrate the accomplishments of women all over the world. Here at ModPop Torah, we are no different. We have compiled a list of 21 Jewish women to celebrate during Women’s History Month 2021. Without further ado, please enjoy this compilation of twenty-one strong, fearless, and Jewish female leaders.

Aly (Alexandra) Raisman (1994 – )

Aly Raisman is a gold medal-winning Olympic Gymnast on Team USA. She helped her team take home the gold in 2012, and has since taken home several bronze and silver medals. She is part of the brave group of young women who helped bring light to sexual abuse present in the gymnastics world and get justice for herself and others who have been abused.

Rabbi Alysa Stanton (1964 – )

Rabbi Alysa Stanton is the first African American woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the United States. She began her professional life as a counselor, specializing in grief and loss, and helped to counsel grieving students after the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. She was ordained by Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in 2009.

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl (1972 – )

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is the first Asian American to be ordained as a cantor, a rabbi, and to lead a major U.S. synagogue. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she was invested as a cantor in 1999 and ordained as a rabbi in 2001 by HUC-JIR. Rabbi Buchdahl was appointed as senior cantor at Central Synagogue in New York, where she is still serving, in 2006 and became senior rabbi there in 2014.

Barbara Walters (1929 – )

Barbara Walters is an American journalist who broke barriers and paved the way for women in journalism. In 1976 she became the first woman to co-anchor an evening network news program and became the highest-paid journalist at that time. Barbara has hosted many other shows during her career including 20/20 and The View and is well known for her exclusive interviews for the Barbara Walters Specials. She has earned recognition for her achievements including two Emmy Awards for best interviewer and induction to the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1990.

Betty Friedan (1921 – 2006)

Betty Friedman is the author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), a pivotal point for the second-wave feminist movement, which began in the 1960s. It helped American housewives find their voice and protest for gender equality. Friedan was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 alongside Pauli Murray and Aileen Hernandez. She also authored the organization’s mission statement, “…to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.”

Carole King (1942 – )

Born Carol Joan Klein, Carole King is a prolific female songwriter and singer. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and has received countless awards for her incredible pop music. She is an avid supporter of wilderness preservation and involved in environmental organizations. She even has a jukebox musical, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which opened on Broadway in 2014 and has received several awards; including two Tonys.

Carrie Fisher (1956-2016)

Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, was an actress most commonly known for her role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies. Carrie Fisher was also a big mental health advocate, openly speaking about her struggles with bipolar disorder, addiction, and alcoholism. She was an outspoken feminist, sharing words of wisdom for young women out there, and wasn’t afraid to call out the sexism she had to endure in the industry.

Dorothy Levitt (1882 – 1922)

Dorothy Levitt made history in 1903 as the first woman racing driver. She also raced boats and made history again setting the first water speed record at 19.3 mph, earning her the nickname “The Fastest Girl On Earth.” Some other fun facts about Dorothy are that she was the one who taught Queen Alexandra how to drive and she invented the rearview mirror before it was manufactured in 1914.

Emma Lazarus (1849 – 1887)

Emma Lazarus was a Sephardic Jew known for being a brilliant poet. During the wave of immigration by Jews from Europe in 1881, Lazarus published many works to defend persecuted Jews and Judaism. Her most famous work is The New Colossus which is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Some of its most famous lines read, “…give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Franceska Mann (1917-1943)

Franceska Mann was a Polish ballerina and modern dancer who, at the age of 26, was sent to Auschwitz in 1943. The details of the story vary, but Mann and the other women sent to Auschwitz with her (after being tricked by Germans as part of the Hotel Polski Affair) were being sent to the gas chambers and were told to undress. Mann did so slowly with “seductive dance movements” and distracted the SS officers. She was able to grab one of the SS officers’ guns, fatally shooting one and injuring another which led to a revolt. Unfortunately, Mann and the other women were murdered, but not before starting some chaos of their own which broke “the stereotypes of Jews marching like sheep to their own deaths.”

Gertrude “Trudy” Elion (1918 – 1999)

Gertrude “Trudy” Elion was a biochemist and pharmacologist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 alongside Sir James W. Black and George H. Hitchings, “for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.” We can thank Trudy for her work to help develop medicines that treated leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes, and autoimmune disorders (to aid in organ transplants), and for helping create a system for designing drugs that would eventually lead to the medicine to help treat AIDS. She was also awarded a National Medal of Science in 1991 and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Gloria Steinem (1934 – )

Gloria Steinem is a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer. She was a co-founder of New York magazine in 1968 where she was an editor and political writer and in 1971 she co-founded Ms. Magazine where she was an editor and writer for 15 years. She was a leading force in the feminist movement, leading marches and speaking across the country, and has dedicated her life to fighting for women’s rights.

Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510-1569)

Gracia Mendes Nasi was born in Portugal to a distinguished Jewish family who was forcibly baptized. During the Inquisition, she developed an escape network that saved hundreds of Conversos, Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism. She was one of the wealthiest women during the Renaissance and gave back to the Mediterranian Jewish communities by funding schools, synagogues, and hospitals.

Hannah Szenes (Senesh) (1921 – 1944)

Hannah Szenes (Senesh) was born in Budapest, Hungary, and was a paratrooper in the British Army. During the deportation of Hungarian Jews in 1944, she crossed the border to try to help and was immediately caught by police. Throughout her time being tortured for information by Hungarian police, she remained courageous and refused to give up any information. She was executed in 1944 at the age of 23. A poem of hers you may have heard before begins, “There are stars up above…” and appears in Mishkan T’fliah: A Reform Jewish Prayerbook.

Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)

Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Kiesler, was a Hollywood starlet and inventor originally from Austria. She was one of the first women to portray an on-screen orgasm which was a big step for female sexual empowerment. Outside of acting, she was an inventor and, alongside composer George Antheil, patented a “Secret Communication System,” though didn’t receive the money from this patent or even public recognition until later in her life. This technology led to the invention of wireless communication including WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Lamarr posthumously earned the nickname “the mother of Wi-Fi” and an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for the development of her frequency hopping technology.

Maya Rudolph (1972 – )

Maya Rudolph is a well-known actor, comedian, and singer, born to an Ashkenazi Jewish father and a Black mother. Her great-grandfather was a founding member of Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh. She is most well known for her films such as Bridesmaids, being a regular cast member of Saturday Night Live (SNL) from 2000-2007, and for her current portrayal of Vice President of Kamala Harris on SNL. We have also very much enjoyed her playing Judge Gen in NBC’s The Good Place.

Rabbi Regina Jonas (1902 – 1944)

Rabbi Regina Jonas was the first female rabbi and was ordained by the Liberal Rabbis’ Association of Offenbach in 1935. She led a small community of Jews in Germany until she was forced to work in a factory by Nazis. She was arrested in 1942 and deported to Theresienstadt where she assisted Viktor Frankl with his crisis intervention service. In 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz where she died. Twenty-four of her lectures can still be found in the archives of Theresienstadt.

Rebecca Walker (1969 – )

Born Rebecca Leventhal to African-American Alice Walker (The Color Purple) and civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal, Rebecca Walker is known for feminist writing. She is one of the founders of third-wave feminism which encourages women to embrace their sexuality, dismantle power structures, and be inclusive of women of color in the feminist movement. One of her most notable works is her memoir Black, White, and Jewish. Not only has she received the Women Who Could Be Present Award from the League of Women Voters, but she was also named as one of the 50 most influential leaders of her generation by Time magazine.

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)

Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer. She was able to apply X-ray diffraction methods to the study of DNA, and by doing so was able to discover its density and its helical structure. Her work provided the foundation for James Watson and Francis Crick to discover DNA’s double helix structure and unfortunately get the credit for discovering DNA.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933 – 2020)

What is a list about strong, Jewish female leaders without a shout-out to RBG? Born Joan Ruth Bader, RBG attended Cornell University where she met her future husband Marty Ginsburg; who was also a student. She attended Harvard Law School and became the first woman to serve on the editorial staff of the Harvard Law Review. When Marty was diagnosed with cancer, she cared for both him and their daughter, Jane, and not only took her own classes but also helped Marty take his. She finished her law degree at Columbia University and went on to become a brilliant lawyer, professor, and (eventually) Supreme Court Justice. Justice Ginsburg was a fierce leader in the fight to end gender-discrimination and was the first Jewish woman and second woman (Sandra Day O’Conner was the first) to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Thelma “Tiby” Eisen (1922 – 2014)

Thelma “Tiby” Eisen was a talented professional athlete and a star of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In 1943 she won a spot on the Milwaukee team (which later moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan). In 1946 she led the league in triples, made the all-star team, and stole a total of 128 bases. She helped establish the women’s exhibit in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY in 1993. Fun Fact: While she was not depicted in the movie A League of Their Own, Madonna played the character of Faye Dancer who, in real-life, was traded for Tiby Eisen.

While there is so much to be said and appreciated about these iconic women, we don’t want our post to be as long as the Torah. We encourage you to do some more research on any of these women that inspire or intrigue you. In addition, if you know of any iconic Jewish women who should be appreciated (let’s be real, they all deserve it), please let us know! And don’t forget about the strong, Jewish leaders in your family and community. We are all unstoppable.

Strong women: may we know them and may we be them.

Stay safe, wear a mask, and drink plenty of water.

Love,
Amanda & Marissa

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