50 of Our Favorite Jewish Women Right Now
50 of Our Favorite Jewish Women Right Now
The list includes women from Israel, Europe, Australia, North America, and South America.
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After an enjoyable conversation about women and Judaism on an episode of The Future of Jewish podcast, we decided to hero our favorite Jewish women across the world right now!
1. Tiffany Harris
Prior to joining Moishe House as its Chief Program Officer, Tiffany Harris worked at Amazon Web Services, where she managed a global education program in cloud computing. She is also a founding member of Shalom Corps.
2. Meredith Jacobs
Meredith Jacobs is the CEO of Jewish Women International, as well as an award-winning journalist and former editor-in-chief of Washington Jewish Week. She also authored The Modern Jewish Mom’s Guide to Shabbat and co-authored, with her daughter Sofie, a bestselling series of interactive journals called Just Between Us.
Listen to Meredith Jacobs’ interview on The Future of Jewish podcast!
3. Amira Ahronoviz
Amira Ahronoviz has been working at The Jewish Agency for Israel for more than 26 years, first in various roles “in the field” and later in management positions. In January 2019, Amira was appointed its first-ever female CEO and Director General.
4. Stefanie Rhodes
Stefanie Rhodes is the CEO of Slingshot, where her work is motivated by the conviction that innovation is essential to carrying vibrant Jewish life into the future.
Before Slingshot, she ran the Annual Fund at the JCC Manhattan, where she started the first JCC Giving Circle to benefit JCC programs. She also spent nine years working at the Jewish Funders Network, where she ran the Younger Funders programming and was the founding Director of the Foundation Professionals program.
5. Gali Cooks
Gali Cooks is the founding president and chief executive officer of Leading Edge, an organization formed to influence, inspire, and enable dramatic change in attracting, developing, and retaining top talent for Jewish organizations.
Listen to Gali Cooks’ interview on The Future of Jewish podcast!
6. Jamie Geller
Jamie Geller is an American-Israeli award-winning television producer, celebrity chef, businesswoman, and most recently, the new Chief Media & Marketing Officer at Aish. She is also a bestselling author of eight cookbooks and the founder of Kosher Network International.
Listen to Jamie Geller’s interview on The Future of Jewish podcast!
7. Jodi Bodner
Jodi Bodner has been with Jewish National Fund-USA’s for 15 years and is their first Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for promoting the organization’s work, image, brand, and value to the public in the U.S. and around the world. Through her leadership, JNF-USA has achieved a record-high campaign in 2020-21, raising more than $100 million in support of the land and people of Israel.
8. Yael Lerman
Yael Lerman is the director of the legal arm of StandWithUs, an international Israel education non-profit organization. Before joining StandWithUs, she was a lawyer at the Anti-Defamation League; advised on effective policing at the Police Assessment Resource Center; and litigated at Boies, Schiller and Flexner in New York.
9. Aliza Kline
Aliza Kline is the co-founder and CEO of OneTable which, since 2014, has grown to a national organization that engages tens of thousands Jewish young adults through peer-led Shabbat dinners. Also the founding executive director of Mayyim Hayyim, she has devoted her career to re-imagining Jewish ritual open to the full diversity of the community.
Listen to Aliza Kline’s interview on The Future of Jewish podcast!
10. Emily Schrader
Emily Schrader is the founder of Social Lite Creative, a political marketing consultancy firm. She is also the former digital director of one of the largest pro-Israel organizations, StandWithUs, where she transformed their social media platforms into one of the leading sources of information in English and Arabic about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
11. Avital Leibovich
Lt. Col. (res.) Avital Leibovich has been the Director of American Jewish Committee Jerusalem since 2014. Previously, she served for more than 20 years in a wide range of senior media and public relations positions within the Israel Defense Forces.
Listen to Avital Leibovich’s interview on The Future of Jewish podcast!
12. Tracie Olcha
Tracie Olcha is CEO at the Australian Jewish Funders. Before joining the AJF in 2011, she worked with a variety of Jewish organizations and was responsible for a myriad of projects including fundraising, marketing, major events and conferences.
Tracie sits on the International Council at Moishe House, is a Scholar with Our Common Destiny, and co-founded Mamilla, a six-month program that aims to unlock and activate the power of Jewish entrepreneurs and connects them with the startup ecosystem in Israel.
13. Miriam Anzovin
Miriam Anzovin became a TikTok sensation thanks to her hot-take reactions of the Talmud and other Jewish texts, “locally sourced from a millennial brain” — with the goal of making Judaism sparkle for everyone — religious and non-religious Jews alike.
14. Karen Cinnamon
Karen Cinnamon, is the founder and editor of Smashing The Glass, the world’s biggest Jewish wedding media platform.
Listen to Karen Cinnamon’s interview on The Future of Jewish podcast!
15. Siggy Flicker
Sigalit “Siggy” Flicker is an Israeli-American relationship specialist, matchmaker, television personality, and author of Write Your Own Fairy Tale: The New Rules for Dating, Relationships, and Finding Love on Your Terms. She starred in the VH1 reality-television series Why Am I Still Single?! and was a cast member on the seventh and eighth seasons of Bravo;s reality-TV show The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
16. Dawne Bear Novicoff
Dawne Bear Novicoff is the Chief Operating Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, where she is responsible for ensuring effective execution of the Foundation’s grant-making, and oversees the Foundation’s internal operations regarding grants management and administration, planning and staffing. Prior to this position, Dawne worked for 10 years at the Jewish Community Federation in San Francisco as the Director of Israel & Overseas Planning and Programming.
17. Stacy Schusterman
Stacy Schusterman is a philanthropist and businesswoman. As Chair of Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, she sets the organization’s philanthropic priorities and oversees approximately $400 million in annual grant-making to advance SFP’s mission of building more just and inclusive societies in the United States and Israel.
18. Dr. Orit Shaham Gover
Dr. Orit Shaham Gover is the chief curator at ANU - Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. She is the director of the new core exhibition, and held key positions in the museum’s past, and later on in the Palmach museum, the Massada, the Begin museum, the Herzl museum, Acre Prison House, and others.
19. Dr. Shira Epstein
Dr. Shira Epstein is dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, and an assistant professor of Jewish education. She joined the JTS faculty in 2004 and during her time here has taught courses to master’s and executive doctoral students and served as coordinator of the Pedagogy and Teaching Concentration.
20. Lucila Gleicher
Lucila Gleicher is Head of the Official Visits Section of the Commemoration and Community Relations Division at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, dedicated to memorialize the victims of the Holocaust. Previously, she led the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Twinning Program at Yad Vashem from 2014 to 2019.
21. Wendy Rosov
Wendy Rosov is the Founder and Principal of Rosov Consulting, LLC. For 25 years, she has served as a senior-level consultant to individual philanthropists, community and family foundations and Jewish communal nonprofit organizations throughout North America and in Israel.
22. Rabbi Samantha Frank and Rabbi Rena Singer
Rabbi Samantha Frank and Rabbi Rena Singer are the founders of Modern Ritual, a popular Instagram account that offers content for “fresh, beautiful, feminist Jewish living.”
23. Bracha “Beatie” Deutsch
Bracha “Beatie” Deutsch is an Orthodox American-Israeli marathon runner. She has won the Tiberias Marathon and the Jerusalem Marathon, as well as the Israeli half-marathon and marathon national championships.
24. Aimee Segal
Aimee Segal is the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Programming at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She leads teams developing multi-channel content and partnerships resulting in 50-plus live, digital and digital-only public education programs in Washington, D.C. and across the country each year.
25. Rabbi Benay Lappe
Rabbi Benay Lappe is the Founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA. Ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary in 1997, Benay also currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Next Jewish Future in Chicago, and as an Associate at CLAL—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
26. Allison Josephs
Allison Josephs is the founder of Jew in the City, a nonprofit dedicated to changing negative perceptions of religious Jews and making engaging and meaningful Orthodox Judaism known and accessible — by highlighting an approach based on kindness, tolerance, sincerity, and critical thinking.
27. Chanie Apfelbaum
Chanie Apfelbaum is a recipe developer, cooking instructor, brand ambassador, food photographer, and blogger who authored the cookbook, Millennial Kosher. She is also the founder of the website, Busy in Brooklyn.
28. Ashager Araro
Born in Ethiopia, Ashager Araro came to Israel as an infant on Operation Solomon, a covert military mission that airlifted Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991. One of eight siblings, she grew up in central Israel and went on to excel in the Israel Defense Forces, where she rose to the rank of lieutenant in the elite Paratroopers Brigade.
Following her military service, Araro pursued a career in diplomacy and social advocacy, visiting countries around the world to engage audiences as a proud Black, Jewish, Zionist, Israeli woman. In 2021, her work was publicly acknowledged when she was received the “Light of Israel” award, presented by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
29. Marion Haberman
Marion Haberman is a writer and content creator for her social media channels, under the name “My Jewish Mommy Life” — where she shares her experience living what she calls a “meaning-FULL Jewish family life.” She is also the author of Expecting Jewish.
30. Deb Leipzig
As Vice President of Leadership at the Anti-Defamation League, Deb Leipzig provides strategic direction and oversight of ADL’s governance structure and its national volunteer engagement bodies. She joined ADL in 2018 after running her own strategic development and philanthropic consulting practice with clients including OneTable, UpStart, and BlueStar Indexes.
She also served as the Senior Director of the General Assembly for JFNA; and Vice President, Development for JDub Music; and Director of Development for Reboot.
31. Aviva Klompas
In 2021, Aviva co-founded Boundless, a nonprofit reimagining Israel education across North America. She previously served as the Director of Speechwriting for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City, as Associate Vice President of Israel and Global Jewish Citizenship at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Ontario Government supporting efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in Canada.
Aviva’s memoir, Speaking for Israel, reflects on her time as a speechwriter and offers readers an honest and entertaining insight into the world of Israeli diplomacy.
32. Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein
Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein is a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and Executive Director of the Center for Rabbinic Innovation, where she teaches Jewish clergy of all denominations. Previously, she was Executive Director of the 14th Street Y in Manhattan; Rabbi-Educator at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn; and Associate Director/Reform Zionist Think Tank Manager at ARZA.
33. Lori Palatnik
Lori Palatnik is the Founding Director of Momentum (formerly JWRP), an organization which empowers women to change the world through Jewish values that transform themselves, their families, and their communities. She has authored four books: Friday Night and Beyond, Gossip, Remember My Soul, and Turn Your Husband Into Your Soul Mate.
34. Yael Trusch
Yael Trusch is the creator of the bilingual Jewish lifestyle blog and weekly podcast for women, Jewish Latin Princess. She is an influencer, communicator, and promoter of “a joyful, richer Jewish life” — inspiring followers across the world with honest, approachable and relatable, profound yet practical messages.
35. Rachel Fishman Feddersen
In 2016, Rachel Fishman Feddersen was named CEO & Publisher at The Forward, the United States’ leading Jewish news source since 1897. She previously served as the General Manager of Digital at The Week and MentalFloss.com, as well as Chief Content Officer at Patch.com (AOL).
36. Ilana Schiffner
Ilana Schiffner is the CEO of Jewish By Choice, a conversion consulting agency and online Judaism school she in 2020. After completing her own Orthodox conversion to Judaism, Ilana started “to help other Jewish souls in their journey to return home to the Jewish faith and Am Yisrael.”
37. Leah Soibel
Born in the U.S. to Argentinean parents, Leah Soibel is the founder and executive director of Fuente Latina, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Miami, which aims to provide pro-Israel information to Spanish-language news outlets.
38. Archie Gottesman
Archie Gottesman is the co-founder of JewBelong.com, a web-based platform focused on rebranding Judaism to make it more warm and welcoming for all, no matter where they are on their Jewish journey. Using awareness campaigns, including billboards in Times Square, NYC, JewBelong also focuses on ending the antisemitism growing in the U.S.
For nearly 30 years, Gottesman was the Chief Branding Officer/Principal of Edison Properties and the voice behind Manhattan Mini Storage’s iconic billboards.
38. Amanda Berman
Amanda Berman is the Founder and Executive Director of the Zioness Movement, where she works to empower and activate Zionists on the progressive left to stand proudly in social justice spaces as Jews and Zionists.
She is also a civil rights attorney who previously worked to fight antisemitism legally, spearheading such groundbreaking initiatives as the international action against Kuwait Airways for its discrimination against Israeli nationals, and the dual cases against San Francisco State University for its constitutional and civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students and community members.
39. Michal Divon
Michal Divon is an Israeli journalist and TV host working as a Senior Editor and Producer for Khaleej Times. She also hosts high-profile events, such as the annual Israel Day Parade broadcast, and the Israeli Embassy Independence Day Celebration.
40. Yael Eckstein
The daughter of the late Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, Yael Eckstein made “aliyah” in 2005 and took over as CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization founded by her father. She has been named “One of Israel’s 100 Most Influential Women,” one of the “Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life,” and among “The Jerusalem Post’s 50 Most Influential Jews.”
41. Kate Friedman-Siegel
Kate Friedman Siegel is a New York Times bestselling author of Mother, Can You Not? She became well-known when she began publishing texts between herself and her mother, Kim Friedman, on social media — under the name “Crazy Jewish Mom.”
42. Alana Newhouse
Alana Newhouse is the editor-in-chief of Tablet, a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.
43. Adina Sash
Adina Sash is an U.S. Orthodox Jewish activist and social media influencer who gained notability within Orthodox Judaism for her stage character, FlatbushGirl, on Instagram. Her comedic brand of activism focuses on the everyday lives of Orthodox Jewish women and their challenges with Jewish Law.
44. Jennifer Zwilling
Jennifer Zwilling is the Chief Strategy Officer at Hillel International, responsible for planning and implementing key initiatives to advance Hillel’s strategic priorities and to develop a model for excellence in service delivery.
Before joining Hillel, Zwilling was a Program Director for the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, and earned a joint Master’s in Jewish Communal Service and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University.
45. Esther Mor
Esther Mor is a World Jewish Congress Vice President and President of Women’s International Zionist Organization. Born in Peshawar, Pakistan of Russian parentage, she resided in India, Europe, the Far East, and the U.S. before moving to Israel in 1980 she lives in Israel. Mor speaks eight languages.
46. Elana Broitman
Elana Broitman is the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs at Jewish Federations of North America. She and her family were among the tens of thousands of Jews who fled Soviet Union in the 70’s and 80’s to escape antisemitism.
Among other positions, Broitman has staffed the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, served as a leading senator’s Senior Advisor for National Security, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and USAID Senior Rule of Law Advisor.
47. Sarah Mali
Sarah Mali is vice president of the Masa Leadership Center at Masa Israel Journey, a one-of-a-kind, Israel-based training center that builds the capacity of early and mid-career adults during their extensive time in Israel to seed change on the tough challenges facing Israel and Jewish communities around the world.
48. Lisa Gurwitch
Lisa Gurwitch is the Chief Advancement Officer at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), where she leads the fundraising and marketing efforts of the Jewish humanitarian organization working in 70 countries.
From 2015 to 2021, Gurwitch was the CEO and President of Delivering Good, a nonprofit that pairs major manufacturers and retailers with global humanitarian aid efforts, and previously served as Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement & External Relations for World Learning, which engages in leadership development, education, and civil society-building efforts in 60-plus nations.
49. Harriet Schleifer
Harriet Schleifer is American Jewish Committee’s national president, having previously served as the Chairperson of AJC’s Board of Governors, Chairperson of AJC’s Project Interchange, and as President of the Westchester/Fairfield Regional Office.
In 2017, Schleifer and her husband Len joined a small group of AJC leaders in forming AJC Central Europe in Warsaw. The office of the director in Warsaw is dedicated to Schleifer’s parents, Rubin and Frances Partel.
50. Rhoda Smolow
Rhoda Smolow is currently the 27th National President of Hadassah, having previously served as the Hadassah National Secretary, National Vice President, National Organization Department Chair, and National Presidential Development Co-chair.