The stories of Jewish Americans featured here were selected for their contributions to and impact on the American public. They reflect a broad and eclectic group of achievements in fields ranging from science and medicine to manufacturing and entertainment, and everything in between. New stories will rotate in on a regular basis. Do you have a story about a Jewish American contribution to tell? Click here to submit your story for consideration. (JAHM reserves the right to edit or refuse any submission.)

Levi Strauss 1829-1902

Born in Bavaria, Levi Strauss immigrated to San Francisco during the California Gold Rush and opened a wholesale dry goods business, Levi Strauss & Co. In 1873, Levi and the Reno, Nevada tailor Jacob Davis created the first blue jeans when they received a U.S. patent to make men's denim work pants with copper rivets. With this patent, they began to manufacture blue jeans, known today as the Levi's® brand. Levi Strauss & Co. is still privately held by descendants of the Strauss family and is one of the world's largest brand-name apparel marketers, with sales in more than 110 countries.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Estee Lauder 1906-2004

Born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Queens, New York, Estée Lauder started her career selling the skin-care creams concocted by her uncle John Schotz, a Hungarian chemist. Together with her husband, Joseph Lauder, she founded the Estée Lauder Company in 1946. Two years later, they established their first department-store account at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City. In 1964, Lauder's Aramis brand became the first women's cosmetic company to introduce a line for men. Lauder was the only woman included in Time magazine's 1998 list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the twentieth century. Devoted to philanthropy, Lauder launched the pink ribbon symbol as the worldwide emblem of breast health.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Isaac Mayer Wise 1819-1900

One of the most prominent Jewish leaders of the 19th century, Isaac Mayer Wise was instrumental in establishing the major ideas and institutions of Reform Judaism in America, including the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Hebrew Union College, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Born in Bohemia, Wise immigrated to America in 1846 to lead Congregation Beth El in Albany, New York. There, he introduced such significant reforms as choral singing, mixed seating, and confirmation, all of which created significant controversy and eventually lead to heated arguments and Wise's departure. Wise moved to Cincinnati in 1854 to become rabbi of B'nai Yeshurun, which he built into the largest and most prominent congregation of its time. A proponent of religious reform and community unity, Wise published a prayerbook entitled Minhag America in 1847 in an effort to synthesize Judaism with American culture. He presided over numerous attempts to create a union of American synagogues, most notably the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and in 1875 founded Hebrew Union College, the reform rabbinical seminary.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Sandy Koufax b. 1935

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Sandy Koufax signed on as a pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954. In 1961, Koufax won 18 games and struck out 269 batters, a league record. Koufax was the first major leaguer to pitch four no-hitters, including a perfect game. He was named the National League's Most Valuable player in 1963 and became the first player to earn three Cy Young awards. At age 36 and 20 days, he became the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Koufax chose not to pitch in the 1965 World Series when a game fell on Yom Kippur.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Edna Ferber 1885-1968

In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for her novel So Big, Edna Ferber saw many of her best-known books turned into movies or Broadway shows. Show Boat (1926), the story of a young girl on a floating theater on the Mississippi River, became a long-running musical that was later followed by three movie versions. Of Ferber's other books and plays adapted to film, Cimarron (1929) captured the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1931, and Stage Door (1926) featured Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Critics cited Ferber's rich imagination and her scene and plot development as reasons for her enormous popularity.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Louis B. Marshall 1856-1929

Born and raised in Syracuse, New York, Louis Marshall earned a law degree from Columbia University. He was a vanguard environmental conservationist and worked to secure rights for all political and minority groups. He acted as the mediator in a cloak-makers' strike in New York City and was the arbitrator in a clothing-workers' strike. In a defeated appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, he argued on behalf of Leo Frank in a notorious case that is widely seen as an antisemitic miscarriage of justice. Marshall also investigated the slum conditions of the Lower East Side of New York. He helped to found the American Jewish Committee and served as chair of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Though not a Zionist, he was involved in the establishment of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Louis Brandeis 1856-1941

Louis Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky to immigrants from Prague and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School at the young age of 21. As a lawyer in Boston he became a prominent corporate attorney and stalwart advocate for social and economic justice. Brandeis played a major role in ending a massive garment workers' strike in 1912, creating a "Protocol of Peace" that ended the strike and created America's first system of labor mediation and arbitration. His book Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (1914) attacked the use of investment funds and argued for antitrust legislation. In 1916, President Wilson nominated Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the first Jew to serve on the country's highest court and became one of its most influential figures, with opinions that defended right to privacy, freedom of speech, and labor laws. Brandeis was active in the Zionist movement, seeing it as a solution to the "Jewish problem" in Europe and Russia.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Ruth Bader Ginsburg b. 1933

An outspoken champion of feminist causes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the first Jewish woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She was also the first woman to make both the Harvard and Columbia law reviews. Prior to serving on the Court, Ginsburg distinguished herself as a professor of law at Rutgers Law School in Newark, as co-founder of the Women's Rights Law Reporter, and as director of the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. She served on the U.S. Court of Appeals from 1980 until her appointment in 1993 to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she has been a judicious and eloquent voice in support of civil liberties..

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Betty Friedan 1921-2006

Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist and feminist best remembered for starting the "second wave" of the Women's Movement in the United States. Bettye Naomi Goldstein grew up in Peoria, Illinois where her immigrant father owned a jewelry store and her mother gave up her position as editor of the women's page of the local paper to raise her family. Friedan attended Smith College, majoring in psychology and editing the college newspaper. Under her stewardship, the paper became a forum for the fight against fascism abroad and in favor of union organizing at home. In 1957, Friedan began a series of studies of her female peers that resulted in her most influential book, The Feminine Mystique (1963). She argued that women were victims of "the problem that has no name" that forced them into marriage and motherhood, falsely promising a fulfilling and meaningful life. The book was an immediate best seller but also roused considerable controversy. Friedan went on to co-found the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in 1968, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. Friedan served as a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Barbra Streisand b. 1942

Barbra Streisand is one of the most commercially successful recording artists in history, having sold more albums than any other female artist. She was born in Brooklyn and began her career singing in nightclubs. Her first album, "The Barbra Streisand Album" (1963), won two Grammys and her first film, "Funny Girl" (1968), earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Streisand became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song as a composer for "Evergreen," from the soundtrack of "A Star is Born" (1976). With "Yentl" (1983), she became the first woman ever to produce, direct, write and star in a major motion picture. She is the only artist ever to receive Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, National Endowment for the Arts, and Peabody Awards, as well as the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the first female director to receive The Kennedy Center Honors. Since founding the Streisand Foundation in 1981, she has raised and distributed $21 million to organizations supporting environmental issues, constitutional rights, AIDS research, women's issues, and race relations, and has raised approximately $20 million, through performances and appearances, for additional causes and charities.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Molly Picon 1898-1992

Born in New York City, Molly Picon began acting on the Yiddish stage at age five and became so popular by the 1920s that many shows she acted in included the name Molly in their title. Picon's most famous film, Yidl Mit'n Fidl (1936), was filmed on location in Poland. On Broadway, she starred in Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn and the Jerry Herman musical Milk and Honey, both in 1961. In 1971, she portrayed the matchmaker, Yente, in the film adaptation of the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof. At one time, an entire room was filled with her memorabilia at the Second Avenue Deli in New York. Her name remains synonymous with the heyday of New York's Yiddish theater.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Emma Lazarus 1849-1887

The daughter of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors settled in New York in the colonial period, Emma Lazarus was a writer and a scholar of literature and languages. Even before Zionism became a cohesive movement, Lazarus's poetry and essays protested the rise of antisemitism and called on Jews to create a homeland in Palestine. "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" are two famous lines of her sonnet, "The New Colossus," which was affixed to the Statue of Liberty in 1903. Lazarus was at the peak of her career when she died of cancer in 1887, at the age of 38.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Uriah Levy 1792-1862

Uriah Phillips Levy was born in Philadelphia and began his naval career at the age of 14. Although well acquainted during his long career with antisemitism, which contributed to his six courts-martial, Levy went on to become the first Jewish commodore of the United States Navy. During his tenure, he ended the Navy's practice of flogging as punishment, which he had long opposed. Levy is also known for his purchase and restoration of Thomas Jefferson's estate, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia. He was the first president of the Washington Hebrew Congregation in DC, and in 1854 he sponsored the new seminary of the B'nai Jeshurun Educational Institute in New York.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Jonas Salk 1914-1995

Virologist Jonas Salk was born in New York to Russian-Jewish immigrants. In 1947, he accepted an appointment at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where, working with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, he launched his quest for a vaccine against polio, a virulent disease that primarily afflicted children. When news of his discovery of a vaccine was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a miracle worker. In 1963, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, a center for medical and scientific research. Salk spent his last years searching for a vaccine against AIDS.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Abraham Joshua Heschel 1907-1972

A descendant of two Hassidic dynasties and one of the leading Jewish theologians of the twentieth century, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw, Poland. After a thorough Jewish education, Heschel received his doctorate from the University of Berlin. Three years later he became Martin Buber's successor at the Judisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, but was deported by the Nazis to Poland the following year. Heschel managed to immigrate to the United States in 1940 to teach at the Hebrew Union College. In 1946, Heschel became a professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and began to publish influential works on Jewish observance and ethics, including the seminal book, God in Search of Man (1976). Heschel also became a central Jewish voice in the civil rights movement, developing a close relationship with Martin Luther King, and spoke out vehemently against the Vietnam War.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Joachim Prinz 1902-1988

Rabbi Joachim Prinz came to the United States in 1939 after the Nazi government formally expelled him from Germany. In addition to his congregational work, Prinz was active in national and world affairs, joining the executive board of the World Jewish Congress in 1946. He also served as president of the American Jewish Congress from 1958-1966. Prinz was active in the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s, being one of ten founding chairman of the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights. Prinz spoke at the August rally, appearing on the podium just moments before the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Earlier, in April 1960, Prinz led a picket line in front of a Woolworth store in New York City, protesting discrimination against African Americans at lunch counters in Southern states.

Text courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives

Riegner Telegram

Scholars consider the Riegner telegram to be the first official communiqué regarding the implementation of Hitler’s Final Solution. This famous telegram was found in the World Jewish Congress (WJC) Collection, which was donated to the American Jewish Archives in 1983. It tells of Hitler’s efforts to eradicate the Jews of occupied Europe using poison gas. In August 1942, Geneva-based WJC representative, Gerhart Riegner, cabled his New York and London offices to report the Nazi mass murder. Riegner’s alarming statement was cabled to Jewish leader Rabbi Stephen Wise by Samuel Sidney Silverman, a member of the British Parliament. Wise, in turn, alerted the State Department and other American Jewish leaders. Thereafter, with mounting evidence, public knowledge of Hitler’s Final Solution intensified.

Text courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives

Manischewitz Family: Dov Behr and Nesha Manischewitz

For most of Jewish history, matzah (the unleavened bread used during Passover) was round, made by hand, and produced locally, often in the synagogue or in a communal oven set aside for this purpose. This was also true in America during the early years of the Jewish community. But as the Jewish population increased and synagogues diversified, independent matzah bakeries assumed this task. Dov Behr Manischewitz, an immigrant from Lithuania, entered the matzah business in Cincinnati in 1888. He soon introduced a series of improvements and inventions that revolutionized the process of matzah baking the world over. Building on machines that had been developed in Europe, Manischewitz yoked modern technology to the service of religion by introducing such newfangled ideas as the more easily controlled gas-fired matzah baking oven and the enormously important (and patented) "traveling carrier bake-oven," a conveyor belt system that made it possible to automate the whole process of matzah baking. Today, The Manischewitz Company is the largest baker of matzah in the world.

Text courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives

Florence Prag Kahn 1866-1948

The first Jewish woman to serve in the United States Congress, Florence Prag Kahn was a teacher, a politician, and a dedicated Jew. Born in Salt Lake City and raised in San Francisco, she taught high school English and history before marrying German-born Julius Kahn in 1899. When her husband, a Bay-area Republican congressman, died in 1924, she won his seat in a special election and was then re-elected on her own for five terms. A steadfast voice for the military installations of her district, Kahn was the first woman to serve on the House Military Affairs Committee. She was active with Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women.

Text courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History

Ida Cohen Rosenthal 1886-1973

The co-founder of Maidenform, the first company to make modern bras, was born in Tsarist Russia. Shortly after immigrating to New Jersey in 1904, she married William Rosenthal. With little money in her pocket, she bought herself a Singer sewing machine on the installment plan and began working as an independent seamstress.

Ida's sewing business boomed during World War I, and soon she and her husband, along with business partner Enid Bisset, opened a custom dress shop.The popular "flapper" style of the day demanded a flat-chested look, which women achieved by wearing uncomfortable bandeaux. But the Rosenthals disliked the way their dresses fit women with artificially flat chests, and so they developed a new undergarment that would support and accentuate a woman's natural figure: two cups connected by shoulder straps and a band that fastened in the back. At first, the partners simply gave the new bras away with each dress they sold. As the popularity of their new undergarment grew, however, they gave up dressmaking altogether and focused exclusively on producing and selling bras, calling their new garment "Maidenform." In 1930 the Enid Manufacturing Company became the Maiden Form Brassiere Company to be more identified with its principal product. The firm survived both the Great Depression and Bisset's retirement and, by the end of the 1930s, department stores across the country and around the world were selling Maidenform bras.

While William focused on design—inventing standardized cup sizes, maternity and nursing bras, and adjustable straps—Ida ran the business, negotiating with unions and introducing assembly-line production. A marketing genius, she began an aggressive print and radio ad campaign, making Maidenform the first intimate apparel company to advertise. In 1949, Ida came up with the now-famous "I dreamed I... in my Maidenform bra" campaign, depicting brassiered women in a range of unexpected settings (like driving a chariot), which ran successfully for 20 years.

After William's death in 1958, Ida became the company's president and then chairman of the board. She continued working until she suffered a stroke in 1966, after which she stayed on as honorary chairman of the board until her death in 1973. Her daughter, Beatrice, inherited the multimillion dollar family company. Maidenform is now run by Ida's granddaughter, Elizabeth Coleman.

Text courtesy of the Jewish Women’s Archive

Ruth Mosko Handler 1916-2002

At the International American Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959, inventor Ruth Mosko Handler unveiled one of the most loved, emulated, and criticized toys of the 20th century. The Barbie Doll, named after Handler's 15-year-old daughter, and modeled after a sex toy called Lilli, which Handler had seen on a trip to Germany, rocketed the Mattel company to nearly overnight success and became an icon of American culture.

Although Barbie has been roundly condemned by feminists as promoting an unrealistic body shape to young girls, Handler originally conceived the doll as a way for girls to imagine their futures as adult women. "I believed it was important to a little girl's self-esteem," she later said, "to play with a doll that has breasts." The development of the doll was also influenced by Handler's daughter's preference for adult paper dolls over the baby dolls that then dominated the toy market. After the runaway success of Barbie, the company added Ken, named after Handler's son, and later additional dolls named for Handler's grandchildren.

After losing a breast to cancer in 1970, and leaving Mattel in 1975, Handler turned her attention to helping other breast cancer survivors. Unhappy with the available breast prostheses, she invented her own, which she sold through a new company called Nearly Me.

Handler received numerous awards for her accomplishments. The Los Angeles Times named her "Woman of the Year" in Business in 1967, the United Jewish Appeal named her its first "Woman of Distinction," and the Toy Industry Hall of Fame inducted her in 1985.

Ruth Mosko Handler died in 2002. Although often a subject of satire and social criticism, Barbie lives on, with more than 100 million sold annually. Professional outfits and ethnic Barbies have updated the original, but the grown-up doll continues to entrance both young girls and older collectors.

Text courtesy of the Jewish Women’s Archive

Ann Landers 1918-2002

Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, writing as Ann Landers, had her first advice column published in the Chicago Sun Times on October 16, 1955. By the end of Lederer’s life, Ann Landers had become the world’s most widely syndicated column, published in more than 1,200 publications and with more than 90 million readers around the world.

When Esther Lederer and her husband moved to Chicago in the 1950s, she contacted a family friend at the Chicago Sun Times to see whether the columnist Ann Landers needed any help in writing her column. The Sun Times was in the process of finding a replacement writer for the column, and Lederer took over as the new Landers, a name that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Because Lederer had been involved in politics and had volunteered extensively, she was very well connected, and her column reflected these connections. Lederer was able to solicit advice from experts in many different fields. From her column, Landers openly opposed racism and anti-Semitism, and devoted much space to fighting injustice. Lederer's identical twin sister, Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips gained equivalent renown as a sage advice-giver as author of the column "Dear Abby."

Lederer continued to write as Ann Landers for 46 years, until her death in 2002.

Text courtesy of the Jewish Women’s Archive

Garrett E. Reisman (Ph.D.) b. 1968

Born in New Jersey, Reisman studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and at California Institute of Technology, where he earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1997. While at Caltech, his multiphase fluid mechanics research provided the first experimental evidence of the presence of shock waves in unsteady cloud cavitation. While employed at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, Reisman designed the thruster-based attitude control system for the NASA Aqua Spacecraft. Reisman was selected by NASA as a Mission Specialist in June 1998. In June 2003, he was a crewmember on NEEMO V, living on the bottom of the sea in the Aquarius habitat for two weeks. During his first space mission in 2008, Reisman served with both the Expedition-16 and the Expedition-17 crews as flight engineer aboard the International Space Station. Most recently, he served as Mission Specialist 1 aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis which launched on May 14, 2010. During this mission, Reisman operated the Space Station robotic arm and installed the Russian-built Mini Research Module to the Space Station. He also carried with him the 2006 presidential proclamation declaring May Jewish American Heritage Month. Upon its return from space, the document was given by the Jewish Museum of Florida to the National Museum of Jewish American History in Philadelphia.

Sophie Tucker 1884-1966

Sophie Tucker, known as the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” was a popular vaudeville performer during the early and mid-twentieth century. Her humorous, slightly bawdy renditions of Yiddish and English songs captivated large audiences on the stage, radio, and television. Tucker was born in Russia and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. Her musical career was launched when she began singing for customers in her parents’ kosher restaurant. After marrying Louis Tuck in 1903, she changed her name to “Tucker.” During World War II, copies of Tucker’s recordings of “My Yiddishe Momme” were destroyed by the Nazis in an effort to wipe out any traces of nostalgia for Jewish culture. Although she is less well-known today, Tucker provided the inspiration for comedian Bette Midler’s stage persona and performance style.

Text courtesy of Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford

Haym Salomon 1740-1785

Haym Salomon was born in Lesno, Poland. His parents were refugees from Portugal, having escaped religious persecution there. Following a decade of travel through Europe in his early twenties, he returned to Poland to join in that country's war with Russia. After earning enough money to pay for his passage to America, he sailed in 1772, arriving in New York City during the winter. In 1772, New York was a thriving colonial city with a population of about 14,000. Salomon soon learned that the colonies were in political turmoil over the issue of taxation without representation. Salomon soon started a brokerage company which became very successful. He brokered many large financial transactions that kept American soldiers clothed and armed during the Revolutionary War. He went on to make numerous personal loans to members of the United States’ fledgling government, and raised money to bail out the debt-ridden government.

In 1975, a year before our nation's bicentennial, the United States Post Office issued a commemorative stamp which honored Haym Salomon as a Revolutionary War hero. The front of the stamp depicted Salomon seated at his desk with the words "Financial Hero." For the second time in 143 years of U.S. stamps, a message appeared on the back of the stamp, in pale green ink, reading: "Businessman and broker Haym Salomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." Many historians who have studied the story of Haym Salomon suggest that without his contribution to the cause, there would be no America today.

Text courtesy of Dr. Alan Laskow; http://www.revolutionarywararchives.org/salomon.html; and I.C.H.S

Gertrude Elion 1918-1999

Gertrude Elion's exceptional accomplishments include the development of the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, the first effective anti-viral medication, and treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases. With her research partner, George Hitchings, she revolutionized the way drugs were developed, and her efforts have saved or improved the lives of countless individuals. Elion stated: "It's amazing how much you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit." Gertrude Belle Elion was born in New York City on January 23, 1918. Soon after graduating from high school, young Gertrude watched her beloved grandfather die painfully of stomach cancer, and deciding: "nobody should suffer that much," she dedicated herself to finding a cure for cancer. In 1937, at the age of 19, Elion graduated from Hunter College summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. In June 1944, Elion was interviewed by Dr. George Hitching of Burroughs Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline), the pharmaceutical company. Elion was intrigued by Hitchings' research project; and he was impressed by the young woman's intelligence and energy. Over the next decades, the Hitchings-Elion partnership proved immensely fruitful. In 1964, Gertrude Elion received the first of her 25 honorary doctorates from George Washington University, and in 1988, Dr. Elion received the Nobel Prize in Medicine "for discoveries of important principles for drug treatment," together with Dr. Hitchings and Sir James Black. Few Nobels have gone to scientists working in the drug industry or those without Ph.D.s, even fewer to women; Elion was only the fifth female Nobel laureate in Medicine, the ninth in science in general. Gertrude Elion was inducted into The Jewish-American Hall of Fame in 2011.

Text courtesy of The Jewish-American Hall of Fame