OUR HEROINES INSPIRING WOMEN
ELANA SZTOKMAN
Feminist and rabbinical scholar
My heroine is Deborah the Judge, the first woman to lead the entire Jewish people and, to this day, one of only three such women throughout our history (Shlomtzion and Golda Meir are the others,). She was accessible to the people, she knew how to use her strength when needed, she inspired gender equality and, most importantly, brought peace to Israel for 40 years. We need her today!
FRANCESCA SIMON
Author and creator of Horrid Henry
Nora Ephron. For being bold, brave, hilarious, and a female writer-director film pioneer.
DEBBIE WISEMAN
Composer
Fanny Mendelssohn composed hundreds of compositions in her lifetime but, as a female composer, she was never encouraged to take up her composing publicly, even though she was undoubtedly as talented as her more celebrated brother Felix, as well as being an accomplished pianist. She was driven and gifted
— she even wrote her own wedding music the night before the ceremony! Although she was neglected during her lifetime, her music is receiving due recognition now thanks to CD recordings and more performances of her work. She was a true artist, writing because she had to, living and breathing through her music. She even nursed her family through a cholera epidemic, and then wrote a Cholera Cantata when it was all over. A true musical heroine in my eyes who defied convention, and is finally starting to get the recognition she deserves.
ESTHER RANTZEN
Broadcaster
Queen Esther, of course. The first recorded winner of a beauty contest, with brilliant courage and diplomacy she persuaded her husband Ahasuerus to come to dinner and with consummate courage saved her people. What a great queen. What a fantastic woman.
LINDA PLANT
Entrepreneur and interviewer for ‘The Apprentice’
Golda Meir was the first and only woman so far to be prime minister of Israel .
Where do I begin to list her achievements?
She raised $50,000,000 to purchase arms for Israel; she was the Jewish woman who got the money to make the state possible.
I love her statement , that being Jewish means, and has always meant, being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than 2,000 years, even with all the pain and torment that have been inflicted upon us .
In my own words, you don’t have to be religious to admire Golda Meir, you just have to be proud to be Jewish .
AMANDA CRAIG
Novelist
Myra Hess, musician. I first came across her because I am obsessed by an exquisite piece of Bach she transcribed for piano as Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (which I used in the climax of my latest novel, The Lie of the Land), which seems to me to be very much about the irrepressible vigour of life and goodness. It was one of the 150 pieces she herself played in the 1,300-plus lunch-time concerts she organised during the Second World War in the National Gallery to keep up national morale. She was a tiny woman, and like many women then and now had some difficulties getting started but won through. Her work introduced many people who had never heard classical music before to some of the greatest works ever composed — many by Germans and Austrians — because art and the love of art is greater than politics. Her courage in playing through air-raids, and her indomitable strength as a pianist make me think of a flame in the dark that refused to be put out.
RUTH SMEETH Labour MP
Trade Unionist Rose Schneiderman (1882-1972), embodied the very best of international trade unionism and coined the phrase “Bread & Roses” in 1912 forever linking the labour movement to the rose, demanding more for working-class women than the bare necessities — we deserve beauty, too. She was a political leader and one of my many personal heroines
ELAINE AARONS
Lawyer
My late mother, Dr Freda Freedman, who passed away just before Shavuot last year, inspired me in every way. She was a doctor who qualified in 1952; practised medicine throughout our childhood and into her seventies; loved speaking Yiddish, chairing the Ladies Guild and being matriarch to her Orthodox Jewish family. She was a wonderful blend of a high achieving woman (way ahead of her times) and traditional Jewish home-maker. At her funeral last year she was praised by those attending for going to extraordinary lengths to save lives and for making the best ever holishkes.
What better role model can there be than that?”
NECHEMA ATLAS
Rebetzein at Yeshurun Hebrew Congregation in Cheadle, south Manchester and a participant on the Chief Rabbi’s Ma’aynot programme.
Flora Sassoon (1859-1936). An inspirational woman who, during her lifetime embodied the words of the Mishnah (Avot 1:2) — “The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of God, and kind deeds.” She was a successful businesswoman and great Torah scholar. She corresponded with the leading rabbis of her time and was involved in innumerable acts of charity and kindness in the Jewish and non-Jewish world. In April 1924, she was the first woman to address rabbis and students on the Jews’ College speech day. Love of Torah together with humour and cynicism were cleverly woven into an amazing lecture.
RABBI LAURA JANNER KLAUSNER
Senior Rabbi of the UK reform movement
It’s impossible this week not to think of the Jewish educator Maureen Kendler (z’l)
She brought an unparalleled depth of knowledge, a love of Judaism and people and a feisty but not fierce feminism that impacted on our community in the widest variety of cross communal spaces.
EMMA BARNETT
BBC broadcaster
Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild. Not only did she barmitzvah my husband, but she “converted” me to female rabbis in my twenties. Having grown up never meeting a woman rabbi, she generously and cleverly opened my eyes. I am forever grateful for her friendship, wisdom, wit and kindness.