Rise up! Jewish activists from Westphalia in the first women’s movement

The Jewish Museum The Jewish Museum of Westphalia in Dorsten, Germany, shows an exhibition on Jewish women in the first women’s movement.

Do you vote? Did you attend school and receive vocational training, perhaps even go to university? All a matter of course, right? Not always, and not for everyone: many of the basic prerequisites for equal participation in our society were hard-won in the first women’s movement. Access to education and employment, the right to vote, fair working conditions, and control over their own bodies were issues that concerned women at that time. Jewish women were well represented in this movement: they were active both within and outside Jewish associations and also focused on the role of women in Jewish communities. The multiple discrimination they faced—as women and as Jews—led in some cases to a specifically Jewish activism.

We present nine of these Jewish activists from Westphalia, who are brought to life in the exhibition through artistic interpretations by students at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences. Get to know these women, learn more about the issues that moved them, and explore interactive stations to discover what the first women’s movement has to do with us today! Because perhaps we have not yet reached the end of the road to equal, democratic participation?