America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today

In this groundbreaking history, Pamela Nadell asks what it means to be a Jewish woman in America. Weaving together stories from the colonial era’s matriarch, Grace Nathan, and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to union organizer Bessie Hillman and the great justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nadell shows two threads binding the nation’s Jewish women: a strong sense of self and a resolute commitment to making the world a better place. Informed by the shared values of America’s founding and Jewish identity, America’s Jewish women -- the well-known and the scores of activists, workers, wives, and mothers whose names linger on among their communities and families -- left deep footprints in the history of the nation they call home.