Impact Of Women On Jewish History/Prof. L. Jackson

It all started when she graduated from high school. Laura Faiwiszevski, born in West Orange, New Jersey like a number of her schoolmates, planned to spend a year of studying in Israel before entering university. Laura chose “Emuna V’Omanut” (Faith and Art), a program for American students set up by the Emunah Women Organization that focuses on a combination of Torah study and art training — a choice of music or visual arts.

Yad L’isha - Helping Hand for Woman is a Legal Aid Center and Hotline where free legal advice and representation is offered to women locked in marital prisons who would otherwise have nowhere to turn.

The bar and bat mitzvah event was her “baby.” Despite its grand scale, there was an individual, loving focus on every girl and boy.

I recently attended a very interesting lecture at Netanya's Laniado Hospital. The venue for the lecture may give you an erroneous impression: it had nothing to do with disease; on the contrary, it had much to do with the delights of good health.

Eishet Chayil is a hymn customarily recited on Friday evenings before sitting down to the Shabbat evening meal. It is a twenty-two verse poem at the conclusion of the book of Mishlei, describing the woman of valor as the ideal wife and mother.

Her family descended from Portuguese Marranos who had sought asylum in England in the eighteenth century. Grace Aguilar was born there at the onset of the nineteenth century (1816), and her remarkable work would exercise an impact on the historiography of Jewish life in the ensuing three decades of that century.

A historical drama unfolds before our eyes in this week’s Torah portion. It is a dramatic confrontation whose impact has shaped Jewish history for thousands of years. Sarah and Hagar, two women – two worlds - faced each other.

In 1939, after her father’s arrest, the family decided to flee to England.

“Israel is yours even when you live in the Diaspora.”

In 1968, she earned a Ph.D. in X-Ray crystallography at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a discipline in which her assiduous research has earned this Israeli woman of science the Nobel Prize.

Every vicious anti-Semite has a personal agenda. The anti-Israel assertions of Alice Walker, nationally celebrated feminist author and political activist, in her latest book are much too shrill to pass for your household pro-Arab hate speech.

Nearly eighty-five years have passed since Sarah Aaronson shot herself in the head, putting an end to the torture her Turkish interrogators inflicted upon her for refusing to disclose information about her associates in the NILI, an anti-Turkish spying organization that supplied the British with intelligence.

The environment of the “Gymnasia” inspired Chavka to join the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, (ZOB), the Jewish Fighting Organization, and volunteer for a most precarious, critical task.

I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of excavation in the other.

As this column focuses on the impact women have made on Jewish life and history, we will be discussing the three female cadets who were murdred.

I could not believe my ears. What? The horrible historical event’s survivors are still alive? And here in Netanya?

In a shocking move, UNESCO's Executive Board voted 30 to 28 in favor of the Jew Azoulay against the Arab Abdulaziz al-Kawari!

Unfortunately, even after Rabbi Pines passed away in 1913, the rebbetzin and her daughter occasionally had to dodge stones thrown at them by misguided fanatics.

You planted melodies in me, my mother and my father, Melodies, forgotten hymns. Here I listen to my distant lullaby, Chanted from mother to daughter. Here will sparkle in tears and laughter “Lamentations” and Sabbath tunes. It’s within me that your faraway voices teem. My eyes I’ll close and I am with you Above the darkness of the abyss.

Moshe Sharett, the head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, visited Egypt in 1945. In Cairo he met a most remarkable young woman, a beautiful journalist who was the darling of Egyptian high society - from high-ranking military brass, to culture icons and Muslim sheikhs, to the court of King Faruk.

He related how they had to create a single chain of men, women and children in order to help them board the plane that had no seats. They had to be removed in order to accommodate as many immigrants as possible, among them Belaynesh Zevadia.

Michal had never been away from home. And now, she was going so far away, for so long – an entire year!

The heading of this article is the title of Angelita Valdes’ biography written by her husband, Dr. Robert Dublin. Dr. Dublin was the physician who treated and nursed the young Filipina dancer and TV starlet back to life when she became ill with tuberculosis meningitis - a life threatening disease. Angelita Valdes’ biography is an astonishing story of an amazing woman’s life.

Justice Abella has achieved a number of "firsts" in her life.

This amazing woman was able to do this when there were five students, as well as quite recently when there have been as many as 270 students in the program.

Shifrah and Puah were on a very high spiritual level – obviously the type of women who would not hesitate to follow the way of the Torah, and to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of other Jews.

TV producer and author Yael Nitzan’s decades’ old dream is becoming a reality. Through the generosity of the Haifa municipality, an empty 200-year-old palace, once owned by an Arab sheikh, will be turned into “The Museum of Israeli Women.” Although in other countries there are museums documenting the accomplishments of women, Israel, with the world’s highest ratio of museums per person, has none dedicated to the women who contributed to the founding of the State of Israel and to its development.

This week’s parsha, Vayislach, relates a shocking episode that causes genuine outrage in the Israelite camp -- the Canaanite Prince Shechem’s brutal assault of Yaakov’s daughter Dinah.

Hadassa Dubrofsky, a lovely twelve-year old girl from Toronto, Canada decided to forgo bat-mitzvah presents and replace them with something even more meaningful and exciting – an act of chesed (charitable kindness).

You are my brothers and sisters. Your pain is my pain.