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Revisiting Betty Friedan’s Jewish legacy through the first biography of her in decades
(JTA) — When Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique” in 1963, she set fire to a simmering discontent among millions of American women, blowing up the myth that feminine fulfillment began and ended with a husband, children and a home. But 17 years after her death, many retrospectives have summed up Friedan as the leader of a women’s movement that outgrew her.
A new biography from Rachel Shteir, “Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter,” published Sept. 12 as part of Yale University’s ongoing Jewish Lives series, aims to offer a more comprehensive portrait of the complex, often controversial Jewish feminist. The first book on Friedan’s life since the 1990s shows the evolution of her Jewish identity, starting as a source of alienation that molded her rage against injustice. That identity, as Shteir explains, at first takes a backseat to her battle for women’s rights but eventually finds a stage at the center of Friedan’s public life.
“The Feminine Mystique” made Friedan a celebrity and catapulted her into the early leadership of second-wave feminism, fighting on the frontlines of workplace equality, women’s education and access to birth control and abortion. Friedan believed that suburban, middle-class housewives would make women’s rights acceptable to the American mainstream and become the key to vast social change. At the same time, her vision of the future of feminism left many people out: She became notorious for neglecting Black and working-class women in her manifesto and for excluding lesbians from the movement.
However, according to Shteir, the perception that Friedan’s movement left her behind overlooks the lasting influence of her ideas. While researching the activist, Shteir observed that many recent feminist writers have drawn from or reacted to Friedan, often without crediting her directly.
“She generated so many of the conversations that we take for granted,” Shteir told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Friedan built her ideals on the foundation of her personal life and experiences. She was born Bettye Goldstein to Jewish immigrants in Peoria, Illinois, in 1921. Her Russian father Harry Goldstein worked as a jeweler, and her Hungarian mother Miriam Horowitz Goldstein worked as a journalist until Bettye was born. Miriam gave up her work to be a wife and a mother, an ordinary sacrifice for the time that she never recovered from, according to her daughter.
“Nothing my father did, nothing he bought her, nothing we did ever seemed to satisfy her,” Friedan recalled in the 1976 book “It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement.” Friedan said that her mother pined to fill the emptiness in her life by joining social circles and buying material luxuries — things not guaranteed for a Jewish family in the Depression-era Midwest.
Friedan’s early experiences of antisemitism became another lens that defined her fury against injustice, said Joyce Antler, a scholar of Jewish feminism and former professor at Brandeis University.
“She said that antisemitism was the ‘dominant menace’ of her childhood,” Antler told the JTA. “Not being accepted socially, not being accepted in the high school sorority — all this gave her a sense of being an outsider. It was through her Jewishness that she had the vision, the foresight to understand women’s exclusion.”
As a brilliant student, Friedan studied psychology at Smith College and began postgraduate work at the University of California Berkeley, where she dropped the “e” from her first name. She abandoned her fellowship to preserve a relationship with the man she was dating, which ended anyway. From there she moved to New York and became a labor journalist, writing on union issues, Jim Crow laws and antisemitism.
In 1947 she married Carl Friedan, a would-be theater producer who held intermittent work. They had three children and moved to the Rockland County suburbs of New York. Although Friedan continued freelance writing for women’s magazines to support the family, she saw herself as a housewife.
It was at a Smith College reunion in 1957, talking with her classmates 15 years after they graduated, that Friedan found the spark of “The Feminine Mystique.” She interviewed women who had succeeded by the standards they knew — suburban homes, husbands, children and modern cleaning appliances — but still felt there was a hole in their lives. After building an entire identity around their families, some said they felt as if they “didn’t exist.”
“The Feminine Mystique,” inspired by these educated women and Friedan’s own experiences, instantly hit a nerve. At the time, women could not open bank accounts or credit cards in their own names, were shunned out of jobs and ridiculed for raising the notion of sex discrimination. The book was translated into over a dozen languages and sold more than three million copies, giving voice to an epidemic of unhappiness that Friedan called “the problem that has no name.”
“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women,” read her opening words. “It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone.”
Rachel Shteir is the head of the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism program at the Theatre School at DePaul University. (Yale Jewish Lives/Doug McGoldrick)
In 1966, Friedan joined Pauli Murray and Aileen Hernandez to found the National Organization for Women (NOW). She became the first president of the group, which remains one of the leading feminist organizations in the United States. Its goals included the enforcement of anti-discrimination law, subsidized child care for working mothers, legalized abortion and public accommodations protections. She also helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969, since renamed Reproductive Freedom for All, and the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971.
Her efforts changed hiring practices, gender pay inequality and credit-granting rules. But the ground shifted beneath her as younger, more diverse voices gained power. Friedan was fiery-tempered and fiercely resistant to those who disagreed with her, whether outside or inside her movement. She once described writer Gloria Steinem and Democratic Representative Bella Abzug (both Jewish) as “female chauvinist boors.” She dismissed the interests of younger bra-burning feminists — who centered sexual harassment and rape over marriage and child care — and she infamously called lesbian women the “lavender menace.”
Friedan believed the future of women’s rights depended on mainstream respectability, said Shteir. In embracing that model herself, she paid a high toll. She did not leave her physically abusive marriage for 22 years, despite black eyes that she covered with make-up for TV appearances.
She also did not talk publicly about her Jewishness until the 1970s.
Friedan stepped down from the presidency of NOW in 1970. But in her last speech as president, she announced the Women’s Strike for Equality, a nationwide action that drew tens of thousands of women to rallies in 40 American cities. On Fifth Avenue in New York City, 50,000 women marched for equal opportunity, free abortion and universal childcare.
Many of these women had little in common with the demographic she had imagined. Alongside the housewives marched radical feminists, lesbians, Black Power advocates, union women and pacifists. Standing before them in Bryant Park, Friedan addressed the crowd with a revised Jewish prayer, traditionally recited by Orthodox men every morning.
“Down the generations in history, my ancestor prayed, ‘I thank Thee, Lord, I was not created a woman,’” she said. “From this day forward women all over the world will be able to say, ‘I thank Thee, Lord, I was created a woman.’”
The moment was a breakthrough for Friedan, according to Antler. On that day, she finally tore through the “feminine mystique” to affirm her full identity in public — as both a feminist and a Jew. It was after this speech that Friedan revisited the role of Judaism in her work, turning her energies to fight antisemitism in the women’s movement and sexism in Jewish institutions. She also became more involved in Jewish life during the 1970s and 80s, said Shteir, giving many talks to Jewish groups and going to synagogue regularly until the end of life.
It turned out, as Friedan saw in the throng of people she herself had pulled to the streets during the Women’s Strike for Equality, that the future of feminism was broader than she knew. And many of the causes women marched for in 1970, from free child care to legalized abortions, remain out of reach for millions of Americans in 2023.
“When you read ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ it’s a little bit dismaying, because it feels like the women’s movement has stalled in certain ways,” said Shteir. “Basic things that Betty was really agitating for, we don’t have.”
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Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.