Six remarkable Jewish women you’ve probably never heard of

Barbra Streisand, Gal Gadot and Noa Tishby are all Chutzpah Girls. So are Golda Meir, Anne Frank and Queen Esther. But dozens of other women – many of whom you’ve probably never heard of – feature in the recently-published Chutzpah Girls.

The book shares the stories of 100 daring Jewish women, whom authors Julie Silverstein and Tami Schlossberg Pruwer have chosen because they “shaped history, rewrote the future, and helped create a better world”.

Each story is accompanied by an original portrait by a female Jewish artist.

The trailblazing group of 100 features only one Australian woman: flamenco dancer and choreographer Annalouise Paul. (Look out for TJI’s forthcoming article about Annalouise and the intersection between flamenco and Jewish culture.) The Australian launch of Chutzpah Girls, to be held in Sydney in March, will include a performance by Annalouise Paul and actor Joanna Weinberg.

Here’s a peek at some of our favourites.

1. Batya Sperling-Milner: Inclusion Activist (United States)

Batya Sperling-Milner was born blind, but she was determined to read from the Torah on her bat mitzvah. This posed a problem: although Batya had learned Hebrew braille, the Torah is not just read – it is sung – and there is no braille system for cantillation (trope), the accents above or below letters which show how a word should be chanted.