Some are spectacularly successful businesswomen, entrepreneurs or scientists; others are political leaders, cultural icons, beloved authors or pioneering feminists. There are Hollywood stars almost as famous for their Jewish roots as they are for their Emmys, Grammys, Academy Awards and Tonys. Several are champions, historical and contemporary, of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

What all these American women share is pride in their Jewish identity and respect from their fellow members of the tribe, earning them “most-admired status” when, as part of our focus on 250 years of the American Jewish experience, we asked Hadassah Magazine readers for a list of their top five most admired American Jewish women from any era. We received hundreds of submissions, the majority of which we are sharing here.

Most nominees are globally renowned public personalities. They include “funny girls” Joan Rivers, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Sarah Silverman, Tiffany Haddish and Fran Drescher as well as author Judy Blume, newswoman Barbara Walters and sex therapist Dr. Ruth. Many are actors, among them, Debra Messing, Mayim Bialik, Scarlett Johansson, Hedy Lamarr and Tracee Ellis Ross as well as songstresses Eydie Gorme and Carole King.

Several are best known today in the Jewish world: author Dara Horn; activist Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of murdered Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin; musician Debbie Friedman; former antisemitism ambassador and academic Deborah Lipstadt; radio personality and early television star Gertrude Berg, of The Goldbergs fame; Sally Preisand, the first American woman ordained as a rabbi; and American-raised Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Others have achieved terrific career and financial success, like Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx; Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta; Bari Weiss, co-founder of The Free Press and editor-in-chief of CBS News; Ruth Handler, creator of Barbie; and cosmetics pioneer and magnate Estée Lauder.

Hadassah Magazine readers also nominated academics, scientists, political leaders, humorists and writers, including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Rosalyn Yalow; astronauts Judith Resnick and Jessica Meir; Secretary of State Madeline Albright; former Congresswomen Gabby Giffords and Bella Abzug; and writers Fran Lebowitz, Susan Sontag, Cynthia Ozick, Anita Diamant and Betty Friedan.

Welcoming Israeli women who now make their home in America, several readers nominated actor Gal Gadot and Hollywood producer and pro-Israel advocate Noa Tishby.

Below, we point the spotlight five of the women most nominated by your, our readers and followers.

The Torchlighter

In an issue dedicated to the 250th birthday of the United States, Emma Lazarus, born in 1849 to a prominent Sephardic family in New York City, deserves star status. Well educated and wealthy, she was an advocate for Jewish causes and wrote poetry that reflected her social progressivism. Lazarus’s most famous literary work, “The New Colossus,” a sonnet she wrote in 1883 to help raise funds for a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, reflects the Jewish belief in welcoming the strangers among us. Its most famous line—“Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—prophesied the millions of Jewish immigrants who would arrive in New York Harbor over the ensuing decades and glimpse Lady Liberty with relief, wonder and awe. Lazarus died young, aged 38, but her legacy lives on in those immortal lines of poetry that, since 1903, have emblazoned a brass plaque on the statue’s pedestal.

Her Eyes Looked to the Future

Searching “Henrietta Szold” on Hadassah Magazine’s website results in hundreds of hits for stories that dig deep into the renowned Hadassah founder’s personal life—born in Baltimore, she lived from 1860 to 1945—as well as articles that zero in on specific aspects of her philosophy that came to be known as “practical Zionism,” whether it was establishing a modern health care system in pre-state Israel or supporting children in Youth Aliyah villages. For Szold, traveling to Israel in 1909 to mend a broken heart proved to be lifechanging personally and professionally. The dire health conditions she observed inspired her fundraising to send two nurses to Jerusalem in 1913 and set in motion a nationwide organization—Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America—that continues to inspire hundreds of thousands of female activists. Fast-forward 113 years, and the medical care Szold helped establish is today the Hadassah Medical Organization, which treats one million patients per year regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.

Justice, Justice She Pursued

Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have undoubtedly felt proud to be on the same list as Henrietta Szold, a woman she herself admired. As the Supreme Court justice wrote to Szold biographer Dvora Hacohen in 2019, a year before her death at 87, “My mother hoped I would be inspired by Szold in caring about the well-being of members of my family, students and teachers at the schools I attended, people in the communities and world in which I live.” During her years on the bench and, earlier, as a civil rights attorney, RBG, as the Hadassah member and icon came to be known, championed gender equality, individual dignity and inclusivity. Her career success blazed a path for women who followed in her footsteps. RBG was one of only nine women in her first year at Harvard Law School in 1957; in 2025, 313 women were first years at the law school.

From Brooklyn to Stardom

One would think the sheer creative talent it requires to become an EGOT—an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award-winner—would quiet shallow criticism about a star’s appearance. Barbra Streisand thought so, as she revealed in her 2023 memoir, My Name Is Barbra: “I had already been told by several people that I should get a nose job and cap my teeth. I thought, ‘Isn’t my talent enough?’ ” Her formidable talent was certainly enough to see the Brooklyn-born Streisand succeed as Franny Brice and in numerous other roles on Broadway, in Hollywood in dozens of films, among them A Star Is Born and Yentl, as an actor and sometimes director, and on the radio with No. 1 hits like “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” performed with Erasmus High School classmate Neil Diamond. Throw in multiple trips to Israel and that legendary refusal to get a nose job, and Streisand, born in 1942, easily ranks among the most iconic living Jewish legends.

Rocker With Jewish Soul

This nice Jewish girl makes pots of homemade matzah ball soup, bakes challah, prepares her mother’s potato kugel recipe on TikTok—and performs onstage for her thousands of fans in skintight, revealing costumes while she sings loud rock anthems like “So What” and “Raise Your Glass,” both of which were Billboard No. 1 hits. Born Alecia Beth Moore in 1979 in Doylestown, Pa., P!nk is among the world’s most successful contemporary female rock stars, famous for her punk-inspired, tough-girl image. She is the daughter of a Catholic father and Jewish mother, and she proudly embraces her Irish, German and Lithuanian roots. In a Hanukkah-timed appearance with Hollywood producer and pro-Israel activist Noa Tishby in 2025, P!nk lamented the current climate of antisemitism and said she remained committed to publicly claiming her Jewish identity.

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Libby Barnea is deputy editor of Hadassah Magazine.