Marcia Freedman, who was the first American-born woman to serve in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), and who helped lead the feminist movement in Israel in the 1970s, died Sept. 21 at her home in South Berkeley, CA. She was 83.

Ms. Freedman had been pursuing her doctorate in philosophy at Stanford when, in 1967, she received an offer to spend a year in Israel teaching at Haifa University. She became part of Israel’s nascent feminist movement and ended up staying 14 years.

As an active feminist, Ms. Freedman caught the attention of Shulait Aloni, a left-wing champion of civil liberties, and her Ratz party, known as the Civil Rights Movement. Ms. Aloni asked Ms. Freedman to join her party’s slate and, in 1973, the party won three seats, one of which went to Ms. Freedman. She served through 1977. Ms. Freedman made her name by raising issues like domestic violence, breast cancer, rape, incest and teenage prostitution.

Starting in the early 1980s, Ms. Freedman divided her time between Israel and the San Francisco Bay area. In the U.S., she was the founding president of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, established in 2002. It organized American Jews on behalf of a two-state negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace and, in 2010, merged with the advocacy group J Street, which has carried on that mission.