An effort to bring more Jewish women’s stories to young readers has grown into a book whose first printing sold out in four days. Chutzpah Girls: 100 Tales of Daring Jewish Women, written by Tami Schlossberg Pruwer and Julie Silverstein, has recently been translated into French and Hebrew, with further languages planned. Its text is also being adapted for theater and screens.
For Schlossberg Pruwer, 40, the project began with a gap she noticed after becoming a mother. Books celebrating women arrived as gifts while she was home with her young daughter, Amalia, but she found Jewish experiences missing. “But they were lacking in Jewish stories,” she says. She began searching for alternatives and developed a proposal for a book of her own.
Silverstein, then living in San Francisco and now based in Israel, independently envisioned a similar project. While researching whether such a book existed, she discovered Schlossberg Pruwer’s proposal through a Jewish literary organization and obtained her contact details. The two began collaborating on September 1, 2019. A publisher expressed interest, but the COVID lockdown delayed their planned contract signing. They continued researching and eventually completed the manuscript.
The events of October 7 prompted the authors to include two women whose actions they wanted to recognize: Inbal Lieberman and Rachel Edri. Lieberman, who led Nir Am’s security team, helped defend her kibbutz. In Ofakim, Edri served terrorists coffee, tea and cookies, keeping them calm while communicating with police. The authors saw their experiences as examples of resilience for another generation of Jewish women.
Alongside its biographies, the book contains 100 original prints created by 12 women artists. Those portraits are traveling internationally for display in public libraries, synagogues, churches and other venues, extending the project beyond its published editions.
Schlossberg Pruwer’s own background spans several countries and languages. She spent her first three years in Milan before moving to Antwerp, where she lived for the next 16 years. Italian and English were spoken at home, while school added French, Flemish and Hebrew. Her family, Zionist Jewish community and a year of study at Michlalah-Jerusalem College helped shape her decision to immigrate to Israel in 2005.
She studied political science and French literature at Bar-Ilan University, then pursued a master’s degree in government at IDC Herzliya, now Reichman University. Her subsequent advertising work at Baumann Ber Rivnay included projects for FedEx and Google. She also became involved in corporate responsibility initiatives, including Google’s work with small businesses in Israel’s periphery and the World Health Organization’s World Heart Day.
Now raising Amalia, 8, and Judah, 5, with her husband, David Pruwer, she remains committed to living in Israel. She also identifies practical difficulties, including the importance of personal connections and an education system she considers overly bureaucratic. A school day ending at 1 p.m. presents challenges for working parents, she says. Her family supplements the children’s schooling with extracurricular activities and tutoring.
