their price is above rubies Eight lesser-known Jewish women whose work has had great impact get their due in Women of Valor: Stories of Great Jewish Women Who Helped Shape the Twentieth Century by Sheila Segal. From Rose Schneiderman, co-founder of the first union of female workers, to Ida Kaminska, who helped to revive Yiddish theater, the women Segal profiles are inspiring figures for a YA audience. The 65 black-and-white photographs show the women at work. Approximately 80 Jewish women from antiquity to the present are the subjects of Remarkable Jewish Women: Rabbis, Rebels and Other Women from Biblical Times to the Present by Emily Taitz and Sondra Henry. Brief sections profile each subject and also describe the historical and social contexts surrounding their achievements. Black-and-white photos and illustrations, unfortunately, are often grainy.
Gr 4-7This adulatory collection is informative but uninspiring. If valor is the theme, the choice of subjects is uneven. Included are: Rose Schneiderman, advocate for the rights of working women in the U.S.; Henrietta Szold, American-born Zionist who set up medical units in Palestine and helped resettle thousands of Eastern European Jewish children there, saving them from Hitler's "Final Solution"; Zivia Lubetkin, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt; Ida Nudel, Soviet "refusenik" and leading petitioner for the rights of Jewish "Prisoners of Zion" in the 1970s and 80s; Ida Kaminska, international star of the Yiddish Theater; Shoshana Cardin, 1991-92 Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Nehama Leibowitz, Torah scholar and teacher; and Yael Arad, Israeli silver medalist in women's judo in the 1992 Olympics. Segal's report-style writing fails to make her heroines real. The author provides sketchy details of their life's work, but tells very little about their personal lives. Although she claims to have chosen as her subjects courageous Jewish women "whose names are too easily forgotten and whose stories are rarely told," she has included four women who are frequently featured in biographies. Captioned black-and-white photos, bullet-style section headings, and italicized synopses create an attractive format. This book would be useful for brief reports and should probably be purchased for Jewish day school and religious school collections.Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
This well-constructed if somewhat overwritten collective biography profiles eight Jewish women of this century.
From Rose Schneiderman, a union activist in New York City who founded the ILGWU in 1903, to Yael Arad, Israel's first Olympic medalist (in judo, in 1992), Segal highlights the accomplishments of remarkable women. Among her varied heroines: Ida Kaminska, queen of the Yiddish theater; Henrietta Szold, a founder of Hadassah; and Nehama Leibowitz, one of the most influential teachers of Torah in the world. Valuable for bringing the lives of these women to the attention of middle-school children, Segal's book synthesizes material not otherwise readily available to this audience. With contemporary black-and-white photographs.
