Marcia Freedman

Marcia Freedman was born in 1938 in Newark

Marcia Freedman was born Marcia Prince to a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, in 1938. She earned a BA from Bennington College and an MA from New York University. She took part in the American civil rights movement in the 1960s and married Bill Freedman in 1961. They had one daughter.

In 1969 she moved to Israel with her family and taught philosophy at the University of Haifa. She helped found the feminist movement in Israel. In 1973 she was placed third on Shulamit Aloni's Ratz list and entered the Knesset.

In the Knesset she raised issues such as violence against women, incest, breast cancer and abortion rights. In 1976 she left with Aryeh Eliav to form a new faction, later called the Independent Socialist Faction. In 1977 she founded the Women's Party and co-founded the first shelter for battered women in Israel, in Haifa.

After her term she came out as a lesbian and worked for gay rights. She returned to the United States in 1981 and lived in Israel again from 1997 to 2002, founding the Community of Learning Women. She was founding president of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, which backed a two-state solution. She died in 2021.