My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland

Puah Rakovsky

1942

As for me, my youth began very early. At the age of ten, I was already a grownup, a Polner mentsh, as the Jews said. Besides my diligent studies, back then I was a “God-seeker.” I felt confined, and something was raging in me; I wanted something more than study. At the age of thirteen, every Sabbath day I would gather all the serving maids of the…

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Creator Bio

Puah Rakovsky

1865–1955

Puah Rakovsky was born into an observant Jewish family in Bialystok in 1865 and given both a religious and a general education. Fluent in several languages, she began her career as a translator and later trained as a teacher. A strong advocate for women’s education and equality, Rakovsky went to Mandatory Palestine in 1920, where she helped establish the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) as well as a vocational school for girls. She settled there permanently in 1935 and wrote her memoir, which provides a feminist perspective on Polish Jewry. She died in Haifa.

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