Born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, on May 17, 1938, Freedman earned a
Bachelor of Arts degree from
Bennington College and a
Master of Arts degree from
New York University. Between 1960 and 1967, she participated in the American
civil rights movement. She immigrated to Israel in 1969, where she became active in social and political causes. Freedman gained public attention for her efforts to reform
abortion laws and advance
feminist issues in Israel. In 1973, the Israeli
feminist movement chose to support
Shulamit Aloni’s
Ratz party, and Freedman was placed third on its electoral list. The party won three seats in the
1973 Israeli legislative election, resulting in Freedman’s election to the
Knesset. Ratz merged into
Ya’ad – Civil Rights Movement in 1975, but in 1976 Freedman and
Aryeh Eliav left to form the Social-Democratic Faction, later renamed the
Independent Socialist Faction. Freedman served as a member of the Knesset from 1973 to 1977. Freedman returned to the United States in 1981 and lived again in Israel between 1997 and 2002, during which she founded the Community of Learning Women, an organization focused on
women's studies and computer literacy. Her memoir,
Exile in the Promised Land, was dedicated to her father, whose example she cited as influential in her life. a Zionist organization supporting a two-state solution, which merged into
J Street in 2010. At the time of her death, she remained the only open lesbian to have served in the Knesset. ==See also==