09/03/2026
“The truth will set you free, but first it will p**s you off.”
Today, we mourn Gloria Steinem - writer, organizer, and feminist icon whose work helped transform the possibilities of American life.
Born in 1934 to a Jewish father and a Presbyterian mother, Steinem grew up with a complicated relationship to Jewish identity, later speaking more openly about her Jewish heritage and the antisemitism that shaped her family’s history.
As a journalist during the 1960s, Steinem’s coverage of a public hearing on abortion was the turning point which propelled her towards the women’s movement. In 1969 she became a true spokesperson for the feminist movement, mobilizing a generation to advance the cause of women’s liberation. In 1971 she co-founded Ms. Magazine, the first feminist periodical with a national readership. She helped bring feminist ideas into the mainstream while building coalitions across movements for racial, economic, reproductive, and LGBTQ+ justice.
Her influence on Jewish feminism was both direct and generational: Steinem helped create a space for questioning inherited gender roles, challenging patriarchal institutions, and imagining women as authors of their own lives.
May her memory be for a revolution.
