London artists lend their creative chutzpah to inspiring new book on Jewish women

One of her favourite women to illustrate was Doña Gracia Nasi, a Portuguese Jewish philanthropist who saved hundreds of Jewish conversos from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, and a woman with whom Crowne discovered she has a remarkable personal connection.

“The descendants of the people Doña Gracia saved are now members of the congregation that I'm a part of at Bevis Marks Synagogue,” said Crowne. “So I know people whose families were directly saved by her, came to Amsterdam, came to London, formed part of this global network of people who had escaped the Inquisitions.

"There's a historic prayer that was said at the time of the Inquisition for Jews who were being held hostage and we, since October 7, have revived the prayer and we have been saying it in synagogue each week.”

Doña Gracia, illustrated by Tilla Crowne for 'Chutzpah Girls'.[Missing Credit]

Crowne aptly described this connection of past to present as an “echo throughout history,” demonstrating the powerful lasting impact of Jewish changemakers from any era.

“ Pretty much all of the women in the book have these extraordinary lives and also an extraordinary impact on the lives that we all lead as Jewish women now,” said Crowne.

Tilla Crowne, one of two London-based artists to contribute to 'Chutzpah Girls'. (Photo: Habie Schwartz)[Missing Credit]

Chutzpah Girls features several British women, including Anne Ross, Judith Montefiore, Claudia Roden, Eliza Davis, Grace Aguilar, and the Rothschild women.

Visual artist Jacqueline Nicholls, the other London-based contributor to the book, typically engages with traditional Jewish texts in her multi-media artwork, and Chutzpah Girls offered an opportunity to explore Jewishness from a different artistic angle.

The Chess-playing Polgar sisters, illustrated by artist Jacqueline Nicholls for 'Chutzpah Girls'.[Missing Credit]Judith Montefiore, illustrated by Jacqueline Nicholls for 'Chutzpah Girls'.[Missing Credit]

“ What I found really interesting about this project is that I wasn't dealing with a traditional Jewish text, but I was rather dealing with lives - it was like relating to these women as kind of living texts to learn from and explore and interpret.”

Nicholls, who also works in adult Jewish education, illustrated the portraits of Judith Montefiore, Maria Altmann and the Polgar sisters, among others. She reflected that for some of the women included in Chutzpah Girls, “the challenges and the barriers they have to overcome are very clearly because of the gendered society that they're in, and for some of them, it's the barrier of their Jewishness they're overcoming.”

But for many, Nicholls noted: “Their Jewishness was their source of joy and strength, and it's not a barrier to overcome, but rather something to very positively express.”

London-based artist Jacqueline Nicholls, a contributor to 'Chutzpah Girls'. (Photo: Diego Riveria)[Missing Credit]

Crowne believes the figures in Chutzpah Girls will be especially interesting to young girls looking for inspiration as they consider who they want to be in the future.

“The women in this book were active, prominent people, they weren’t background figures, and that's the idea behind the title of ‘chutzpah girls’: having that drive and that forwardness and that mold-breaking quality.”

Chutzpah Girls: 100 Tales of Daring Jewish Women, which sold out on its first print run in just four days, was released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in November 2024. It is available for purchase on Amazon UK, in Jewish bookstores and Waterstones.