September 20, 1931 Actress Haya Harareet, best known as Judah Ben-Hur’s love interest Esther in the 1959 remake of “Ben-Hur,” is born Haya Neuberg in Haifa to Polish immigrants who arrived in Mandatory Palestine when…
November 29, 1928 Shulamit Aloni, the lawyer and politician who founds the Meretz party, is born in Tel Aviv. From a young age, Aloni is involved with politics and is relentless in working to bring…
July 26, 1928 Netiva Ben Yehuda, a Palmach member, early Israeli feminist, acclaimed writer and media personality, is born in Tel Aviv to a father from Lithuania and a mother from Ukraine. She has two…
December 25, 1925 Politician and activist Geulah Cohen, the founder of the Tehiya party, is born in Tel Aviv. Cohen becomes involved with political movements in Mandatory Palestine when she is young, and she joins…
A pioneer in Israeli film, Lia Van Leer is born Lia Greenberg in Beltsy, Romania (today Moldova).
November 22, 1923 Hannele Meierzak, who as Hanna Maron becomes known as “the first lady of Israeli theater,” is born in Berlin. As a child, she appears in many plays and films, including an uncredited…
Retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice Shoshana Netanyahu, the second woman to serve on Israel’s highest court, is born in the free city of Danzig (Gdnask, Poland).
Twenty-two women graduate from the Nurses’ Training Institute at Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem. They are the first to receive nursing degrees in the Land of Israel.
September 18, 1918 Champion swimmer Judith Deutsch is born in Vienna, Austria. Most Austrian athletic clubs ban her because she is Jewish, so she begins swimming with a Jewish club, Hakoah Vienna. Between 1933 and…
Sarah Aaronsohn, a Nili intelligence operative, dies four days after shooting herself in an effort to avoid further torture and interrogation by Turkish authorities.
Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky (known simply as “Zelda”), one of the most widely acclaimed and beloved Israeli poets, is born in Russia.
May 29, 1911 Poet Leah Goldberg is born in Königsberg, Prussia, now Kaliningrad, Russia. Raised mostly in Kovno, Lithuania, Goldberg begins writing poetry in Hebrew and Russian around age 12. She studies at the Universities…
February 16, 1910 Miriam Roth, whose Hebrew writing elevates children’s literature in Israel, is born in the Slovakian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She attends various Jewish schools, including one run by her father, and…
The first 40 students, all women, enroll in the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem.
September 3, 1905 Scholar, teacher and biblical commentator Nechama Leibowitz is born in Riga, Latvia, where she grows up competing with her brother, future Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in their father’s Bible quizzes. The family…
Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister, is born Golda Mabovitch in Kyiv, Ukraine, then part of czarist Russia.
Rachel Bluwstein, born in Russia, makes Aliyah in 1909. Bluwstein is considered the “founding mother” of modern Hebrew poetry and is one of the first modern Hebrew poets to write in a conversational style.
