Great Jewish Women by Elenor Slater and Robert Slater (hardcover)

The individuals profiled in this volume are the authors' considered choice of Jewish women who have had great impact in their respective fields. Among these outstanding personalities, one will find the biblical Deborah and the late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, women who led their nation in war; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Nobel Prize-winners Rosalyn Yalow and Nelly Sachs; singer/actress Barbra Streisand; playwrights Lillian Hellman and Wendy Wasserstein; business tycoons Helena Rubenstein and Estée Lauder; and U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. In each of the biographies, Elinor Slater and Robert Slater describe the subject's unusual gifts and achievements, noting, when relevant, her relationship to Judaism and the Jewish people.

The Slaters believe that while women in general have had to overcome discriminatory barriers in order to succeed in their various pursuits, Jewish women have often had to overcome a double measure of discrimination: one involving their gender and the other their religion. Hence, while all women who have achieved success and made a contribution to society deserve acclaim, Jewish women are doubly deserving.

And it is for this reason that the authors undertook this project: to give special recognition to those Jewish women who have persevered and succeeded, sometimes against great odds. As United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes in her introduction to Great Jewish Women, "This collection will have served its purpose if its readers come away from it with an enhanced appreciation that, with a strong will and hard work, one can overcome artificial barriers and turn dreams into reality." With black-and-white photographs.