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Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was born 192 years ago today; we share a birthday. I am 43. The late great suffragist once said: “Our job is not to make young women grateful. It’s to make them ungrateful so they keep going.” Much of my Jewish practice these days is about gratitude. But in light of our shared birthday this week, I’ve decided to dwell on some serious ingratitude.

I grew up in the 1970s listening to “Free to Be You and Me,” and singing joyfully that “Mommies Are People.” Who would have guessed, now that I’m one of those people, that the dilemmas my own working mother struggled with would become mine? In middle school, when I’d call home sick my mom would try to talk me into returning to class, so that she wouldn’t have to leave work or find a sitter. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’d do, too.

These days, the lack of affordable quality childcare options, combined with the continual calculation of income-to-babysitter-hours ratio, continues to make working parenthood — let’s face it, working motherhood primarily — a challenge, even for those of us who’ve got it good.

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Deborah Siegel is the author of “Sisterhood Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild.” This was originally posted at The Sisterhood, which crossposts regularly with Jewesses with Attitude.

In early January, JWA moved its offices to an historic building in Brookline Village, a half mile down Harvard Street from our home for the past six years. After weeks of packing and un-packing, we are settled in a bright and sunny space and finally know where things are. Since most of you may find it hard to drop in on us—although you are welcome anytime—we thought it would be fun to give you a short “virtual tour” and show you a few of the treasures we brought with us to the new space.

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As they walk through the door, JWA visitors are greeted by Rebecca Rubin, a nine-year-old Jewish American immigrant from 1914. Not to be confused with Rebecca Rubin, the fugitive, indicted for arson in 2006 according to her FBI WANTED poster, this Rebecca Rubin is the Jewish American Girl™ Doll. According to the story told in her companion book Meet Rebecca, Rebecca’s family emigrated from Russia to the Lower East Side in New York.

While JWA has no affiliation with American Girl™, and we feel uncomfortable with the doll’s stiff $105.00 price, we think she’s a starting point for discussion about Jewish American identity. Her hair and eye color sparked debates about what it means to “look Jewish,” and her story (she dreams of becoming an actress and, in one book, participates in a labor strike) raises questions about how we define the “typical” Jewish experience in America.

In 2004, JWA sponsored Andrea Kalinowski's Stories Untold: Jewish Pioneer Women 1850–1910 exhibition at the Boston Public Library as part of our 350th anniversary program events. Kalinowski’s multimedia canvases bring together quotations from diaries and news stories, photographs, and quilt patterns to tell stories from the lives of nine Jewish pioneer women. They also inspired the feature on jwa.org on Jewish women pioneers in the American West.

JWA was lucky to receive one of the pieces as a gift from Founding JWA Board Chair Barbara Dobkin—a quilt telling the story of Anna Marks. In 1880, Anna Marks and her husband immigrated to America and settled in Eureka City, a rich mining area 60 miles south of Salt Lake City. Anna Marks made a fortune in real estate and owned controlling interests in two mines near Eureka. She also invested money in diamonds. Not afraid to pull her guns on men who crossed her, Anna gained a reputation for being “the feistiest woman in the state.”

Today, Anna Marks’ quilt hangs in JWA’s conference room, inspiring us to live up to her fearless legacy.

In 1997, JWA completed its first oral history project conducting interviews with women of Temple Israel in Boston whose lives spanned the 20th century. The combination of oral history interviews, photographs, and works of art inspired by them earned JWA the Exceptional Program of 1997-1998 award from the JCC of Greater Boston. The Women Whose Lives Span the Century project inspired JWA’s next oral history endeavors in Baltimore and Seattle. These oral history projects were the basis for developing our oral history guide.

Today, this certificate is framed and displayed on a wall in our front hall where it reminds us how much we have done over the past 15 years to advance JWA's mission—to uncover, chronicle, and transmit to a broad public the rich history of American Jewish women.

In March 2005, JWA held its first New York gala—So Laugh a Little: An Evening of Jewish Women's Comedy Honoring Barbara Dobkin. The Founding Chair of the Jewish Women’s Archive, Barbara Dobkin has broken new ground in both Jewish and secular philanthropy. She is known for her cheeky sense of humor, so it made sense to honor her, and her contributions to JWA, with a night of comedy.

So Laugh a Little was held at the Copacabana in New York City. Each guest received a Barbara Dobkin mask and a pink feather boa. The event laid the foundation for JWA’s acclaimed documentary film about Jewish women in comedy, Making Trouble.

This is the first edition of the Our Bodies, Ourselves coursebook produced by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective in 1971. Of the 12 women who worked on the project, nine were Jewish, including Esther Rome, Joan Ditzion, Nancy Miriam Hawley, who is featured in JWA’s web exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, and Paula Doress-Waters who contributed a scan of the cover to the exhibit.

This framed image hangs in the office of Judith Rosenbaum, JWA’s Director of Public History. JWA presented it to Judith in September of 2005 in recognition of her work on the Feminism exhibit. Judith says she loves the image because it captures so beautifully how Our Bodies, Ourselves evolved.

“At some point in these early printings, we realized that the title ‘Women and Their Bodies’ was itself a sign of our alienation from our bodies,” Nancy Miriam Hawley told JWA. “We changed the title to ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’ because that was what we were really talking about.”

In JWA Executive Director Gail T. Reimer’s sunny office you will find this print by artist Joan Snyder. Commissioned by The Jewish Museum in New York City, it includes the names of every woman, Jewish and non Jewish, whose name appears in the Bible. Joan Snyder and a photograph of her print by Sheldan Collins are featured in JWA’s exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.

Before founding JWA in 1995, Gail T. Reimer conceived and co-edited the path-breaking anthology of Jewish women’s writings—Reading Ruth: Women Reclaim a Sacred Story. Working on this project led Gail to see that contemporary Jewish women’s stories were likely to suffer the same fate as Biblical women’s stories if something weren’t done about collecting and preserving them. That realization led to the founding of the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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Photo by John Loo.

Valentine's Day is not a Jewish holiday. These days it's a secular holiday associated with flowers, candy hearts, and, best of all, chocolate. I wasn't expecting to find a Jewish connection to Valentine's Day, but after looking through my copy of Gil Marks' Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, I discovered the that Jews actually played a significant role in the history of the chocolate trade.

Chocolate is created by fermenting, drying and roasting the beans of the evergreen cacao tree. The Aztecs, in whose culture chocolate played a central role, drank an unsweetened chocolate beverage that they called xocolatl (bitter water). Considered to be an aphrodisiac, they flavored it with red chilies and vanilla.

Although Columbus introduced cocoa beans to Spain, it was Hernando Cortes around 1528 who brought back the knowledge of how they could be used. It was because of this knowledge that chocolate’s popularity began to spread in Europe. Spaniards initially found chocolate too bitter, but after someone thought to add sugar to it, this drink became all the rage among the Spanish royal court. In Spain, this chocolate drink was commonly flavored with vanilla and cinnamon.

The Spanish kept the process of preparing chocolate a secret until the sixteenth century, when an Italian traveler discovered the process and introduced chocolate to Italy around 1606. Shortly after this, Sephardim associated with the Dutch took over the chocolate trade.

Sephardim and Conversos (Jews who converted to Catholicism, particularly in 14th or 15th century Spain and Portugal) living in Central America were able to learn the secrets of preparing chocolate and vanilla from the indigenous people who were willing to share this information. Because of this, Jews were able to enter the chocolate business (which was still seen as exotic) as both producers and middlemen.

Benjamin d’Acosta de Andrade was a Portuguese Converso who returned to Judaism upon reaching Central America. After arriving in French Martinique he established two sugar plantations, along with the first modernized cacao processing plant in the world. Using family connections as well as connections with other Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam and Europe, he began to export cacao. Other Sephardim soon did the same, and chocolate became the island’s biggest export.

After the Jews were expelled from French Martinique, they shifted their chocolate production to Dutch Curacao and English Jamaica. Jewish control of the European chocolate trade declined in the eighteenth century as cocoa production in Africa increased, making production in Central America extremely expensive.

Since Jews were familiar with chocolate and vanilla, these ingredients became a part of Jewish cuisine long before others used them. In 1832 a Jewish apprentice baker in Vienna, named Franz Sacher (at this time many Central European bakers happened to be Jewish) made an important contribution to the world of pastry. He created the famous sachertorte, a dense dry chocolate cake with a thin layer of apricot jam in the middle. More recently, popular chocolate houses were opened by Jewish chocolate makers, namely Elite in Israel and Bartons in New York.

With this in mind, why not make a chocolate dessert this Valentine’s Day? You can not only treat the people you love, but also commemorate the important role Jews have played in the history of chocolate.

I chose this recipe not because it’s chocolatey (and because it’s similar to chocolate lava cake), but because this traditional Livornese dessert was developed when Livornese Jews began trading with Conversos who had opened a chocolate factory in Amsterdam. I can’t see a better reason to get in the kitchen to create a chocolate masterpiece this Valentine’s Day!

Almonds and Chocolate Pudding Cake (Budino di Mandorle e Cioccolata)
Adapted slightly from Joyce Goldstein’s Cucina Ebraica

½ cup unsalted butter
4 ½ ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 ¼ cup chopped blanched almonds or blanched slivered almonds
½ cup sugar
4 eggs separated
Whipped cream for serving (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees and butter 9 inch round cake pan or eight ¾ cup ramekins.
2. Combine the ½ cup butter and chocolate in the top pan of a double boiler placed over, but not touching the hot water in the lower pan. If you don’t have a double boiler, combine the butter and chocolate in a small metal bowl, which you can place over a small saucepan that has been filled with water. Again, you don’t want the bottom of the bowl to touch the water. Heat on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate and butter are melted and smooth.
3. At the same time, grind the almonds along with the sugar in a food processor. Place the almond mixture in a bowl and whisk in the chocolate mixture and the egg yolks.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until medium firm peaks form. Stir one third of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, and then fold in the remaining egg whites until no white streaks remain (do not over mix). Spoon the batter into the cake pan or the ramekins, and place them in a baking pan. Add hot water to the baking pan until it reaches half way up the sides of the cake pan or ramekins. Cover the baking pan with aluminum foil.
5. Bake until the center of the cake just set but not wet, about 35 to 45 minutes if using a 9-inch cake pan or about 25 minutes if using the ramekins. Let cool completely on a rack and invert onto a serving platter or onto individuals plates to unmold. Can be served with whipped cream if desired.

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Hanna Weinberg pioneered awareness of domestic abuse within the Jewish community and set up services to aid battered wives. She was a narrator in JWA's Weaving Women's Words: Baltimore Stories exhibit and JWA's Women Who Dared web exhibit. Photograph by Joan Roth.

For women in the Orthodox Jewish community, domestic abuse is still too often suffered in silence. Hanna Weinberg, who died January 23 at age 84, was called the "Harriet Tubman" of the Jewish domestic violence movement. She spent much of her adult life establishing safe houses for abuse victims. She also served as a consultant during the creation of CHANA (Counseling Helpline and Aid Network for Abused Women) in Baltimore, (named after Baltimore Jewish community leader Annette F. Lieberman, whose Hebrew name was Chana.)

The daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak Ruderman, who founded Baltimore's Ner Israel Rabbinical College in 1933, and the wife of Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, who taught at the college, Hanna became a Hebrew teacher and coordinated volunteer services at a Jewish convelecent home. But when women began coming to her husband with harrowing stories of abuse, she found her calling as an activist.  

"My father told me that in Europe, the windows were over a courtyard, and you could hear the slaps and screams and dishes breaking. `What did you do?' I asked. He closed the shutters. My work with domestic violence has been about opening the shutters."

And open them, she did. Hanna knew that if she was to change perceptions about domestic vioience within the Orthodox community, she would have to find ways to work with that community. She started by finding two homes outside the Jewish community that could turned into shelters, where women could go without fear of their husbands finding them. "They were regular homes," she said. "I never advertised, and nobody knew where they were."

Hannah was a narrator in JWA's Weaving Women's Words: Baltimore Stories oral history project and JWA's Women Who Dared exhibit of contemporary Jewish activism. She shared stories of how shocked people were that domestic violence even exisited in Jewish homes. "I had a woman who came to me at 12 o'clock at night. Her nose, it looked horrible. It turned out to be broken because I took her to the hospital. I had a man who would help me sometimes with these cases. I asked him to come at six o'clock in the morning to take her home...He called me up afterwards...and he said `How is this possible? I'm sitting next to this man in the synagogue for 13 years. He is so sweet tempered. If I hadn't seen it for myself, I wouldn't have believed it.' Many, many times, people couldn't believe it until they were up against it."

In her own way, Hanna saved many women and families from lives of silent suffering. And in doing so, she made rabbis, teachers and even law enforcement officials realize that when a woman from "a good family" speaks of violence, closing the shutters is never an option.

To read more about Hanna Weinberg's work, her Jewish background, and her path to activism in her own words, visit Women Who Dared.