Francine Klagsbrun

Francine Klagsbrun, born Francine Lifton in 1931, is a writer and Jewish feminist activist. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, a Bachelor of Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a master's degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts. She edited The First Ms. Reader and Free to Be ... You and Me (1974). After years of discussion, the JTS faculty voted to ordain women as rabbis and as cantors in 1983.

In 1988, at the First International Jewish Feminist Conference in Jerusalem, a group of women organized a prayer service at the Western Wall and selected Klagsbrun to carry the Torah at the head of the group, making her the first woman to carry a Torah to the Western Wall.