ICONIC JEWISH WOMEN

A STORY BY DR. HAROLD GOLDMEIER

Harold.goldmeier@gmail.com

972 50 2619116

Harold Goldmeier teaches international university students at Touro College Jerusalem. He is an award-winning entrepreneur who received the Governor’s Award (Illinois) for family investment programs in the workplace from the Commission on the Status of Women. He was a Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard, worked for four governors, and recently sold his business in Chicago. He is a managing partner of an investment firm, a business management consultant, and a public speaker on business, social, and public policy issues.

Young girls and women give short shrift to exercises on building self-confidence and esteem. They suffer through awkward years around bat mitzvah time absorbing ideas about themselves that can squash their confidence for a lifetime. A plethora of women’s magazines have tried for decades to address the issue. Forbes talks in numerous articles about how business leaders lacking self-confidence nurture fear and limit risk-taking. A Harvard Business Review study goes further; self-satisfaction with the trajectories of women’s lives and careers is intimately linked to their self-confidence and self-esteem.

Author Dr. Aliza Lavie published a new book shining a light on the subject. She gives overdue gravitas and attention to Iconic Jewish Women (Gefen Publishing House, 2024): 59 Inspiring, Courageous, Revolutionary, Role Models for Young Girls. It is a book every girl ought to have in her library. Read it when you are 12 and again at 18, 35 and 65. Each reading brings new insights. The exercises can enhance the self-confidence and esteem of women as extrinsic events reshape the image and roles of women in religious, spiritual, political, and cultural milieus.

This is also a workbook. Be prepared to put in effort to build and repeatedly rebuild self-confidence and self-esteem. “Each chapter in this book tells the story of one inspirational Jewish woman (among dozens) and then suggests four different ways in which you can mark your bat mitzvah in her honor and make your own contribution to the world around you.”

After each short biography, Lavie wants the reader to figure out how to give back, see something new, and escape your comfort zone. The biographies are brief but poignant and impactful. Iconic Jewish Women has 322 pages of bios, suggested projects, and another three pages of lists of women who make a difference in world events and daily life. Mentors give advice. But heroes emotionally tie one to actions. Lavie offers inspiring examples from Biblical characters who shaped Judeo-value and belief systems through modern social justice leaders and scholars.

The book centers around the reader celebrating her bat mitzvah. Lavie’s history of the bat mitzvah is fascinating as is her telling of ways the bat mitzvah is celebrated around the globe. Lavie covers ancient through contemporary women. Lavie’s timeline and glossary should be of interest to history buffs and the inquisitive of every faith.    

A personal word from my lifetime of experience. Violence against women crushes their self-confidence and self-esteem. Rape and torture are tools of war, but every day we learn about sexual assaults in domestic and workplaces. A host of Lavie’s iconic women confronted violence against them like an undercurrent in every generation. The stories might help those with shaky self-confidence and self-esteem.  

The bios are organized alphabetically but looking at them generationally little changed for women until the 1920s after global economic industrialization. Lavie’s collection demonstrates how women with self-confidence changed the world and the opportunities for Jewish women, from Queen Esther and Rachel to “Battling Bella” Abzug. We cannot forget Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks because the success of the U. S. Civil Rights Movement was the greatest gift of freedom to Jews and Gentiles. It spawned the Jewish Power Movement solidifying the community’s independence and use of self-defense to solidify the State of Israel by building self-confidence and self-esteem among Jewish immigrants and their children. It opened doors for any Jewish girl or woman to turn dreams into reality. Jewish females were inspirational founders and leaders in social justice causes. But men still fail at giving women their due.

The IDF field observer teams monitoring Israel’s border with Gaza, overwhelmingly women, were ignored by male commanders, their pleas dismissed, and the world’s future changed forever. Interviewees from the unit share insights revealing how men ignored women shattering their self-confidence and esteem.  We hope there is a next edition which includes their stories.

In our opinion, Alice Lavie’s bio should be included in the next edition. Lavie is a Ph.D., former Knesset member, Film Council Chair, and advocate to end sex trafficking. Our own Bais Yaacov-educated daughter rose to advanced investigator of child sex trafficking adding to my admiration for Lavie’s iconic career. The cover of the book inadequately conveys the message. Iconic Jewish Women in no way slights men but the book tells much of the rest of the story of how women helped build Jewish life and Israel to the high point in self-confidence and self-esteem we are today.