FAMILY UPBRINGING:
From political dinner-table discussions to family holiday celebrations to personal experiences of injustice, many such formative moments rooted the activist impulse in the Women Who Dared. The stories they were raised on and the historical events they lived through helped them imagine the social change they wanted to effect.
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I was never an activist, but my parents have always been the kind of people who have many guests at their Shabbat tables that most don’t want—-not guests to entertain, but people who are disturbed, on the fringes of society, very needy people. (Fayge Siegal)
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SHALVA (Safe Homes Advice and Legal Aid for Victims of Abuse)
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[My grandmother's] influence only was that she wanted her sons to go to college and her granddaughters to go to college
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Ruth Abrams
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Why [I got involved in human rights work] is probably because having listened to my relatives, which I loved to do - listening to what happened in Russia
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Lynn Amowitz
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"My grandmother, my mother's mother spoke Ladino."
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Rita Arditti
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I was working at Camp Pembroke. My father visited and he saw me reading from the Chumash. He said, 'Why don't you sing it?' I said, 'I don't know how!' He said, 'I'll send you a tape.'
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Hadassah Blocker
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My family is very Jewishly connected... Firstly, and I think most importantly we are very Zionistic.
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Elana Brownstein
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[McCarthyism] did [have a big impact] on the whole family. We thought our phone was being tapped. We belonged - as did a lot of people - to all those organizations that were on McCarthy's enemies list
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Peggy Charren
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The family is 100% shomrei shabbat ...and strongly Zionist
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Rebecca Chernin
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I was taught that religion is not meant to be a 'comfort.' Rather, religion is meant to be a 'challenge...'
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Ruth Clarke
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I think what I got from my parents was a very strong sense of moral responsibility. I think I got from my mother a very strong sense of communal and personal responsibility.
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Pamela Cohen
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I grew up in a home where my parents were politically conscious and politically active.
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Vicki Gabriner
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My father was a family practitioner, delivered babies on kitchen tables...
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Shannie Goldstein
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My grandmother on my father's side was very social action oriented. She grew up
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Judi Hirshfield-Bartek
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Since I was 12 I went to the women's spirituality conference with my mom at the JCC and that was always so powerful. The first time I went
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Shulamit Izen
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[My grandmother] has all these different observations about how the country changed. And it's an interesting thing to look at
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Hannah Jukovsky
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My mom and dad both are really interested in social justice issues and bigger ideas of
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Hannah Jukovsky
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"An important part of my identity growing up in my family has been being from Israel and the fact that we left Israel. That was always very significant."
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Idit Klein
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My dad was a member of the Young Socialists in college and my parents were very active in the [teacher's] union. And they were also very active in progressive - what we now term anti-racist - work...
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Margaret Lazarus
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Being African American in the United States is the experience of being the other and being outside. And being Jewish, has some simpatico with that. However, being Jewish in Brookline
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Susan Maze-Rothstein
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[My] great grandmother, Molly [Lifshutz] and her sister Fanny [Lorber] came to this country
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Shelley Morhaim
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My mother [Betty Luby Cole Waghelstein] has always been active
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Shelley Morhaim
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My grandmother [May Luby] was also a volunteer
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Shelley Morhaim
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In Russia, because of the situation of anti-Semitism, a lot of Jewish people tried to hide from their children their identity, which wasn't the case in our family.
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Galina Nizhnikov Veremkroit
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My father grew up very religious. He went to the Talmudical Academy
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Marla Oros
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My father worked primarily for the Department of Housing and Urban Development
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Marla Oros
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My mother and father truly believed that I could do anything.
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Ruth Rothstein
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I grew up in Chicago, you might say kind of like in a schtetl.
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Madalyn Schenk
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My family really was not involved in the Jewish community in an organized sense.
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Florence Schornstein
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Certainly not deeply identified [as Jews] but very, very committedly conscious of it. Always it was a matter of pride that we were [Jewish], although there was virtually no religious identification.
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Laurie Schwab Zabin
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"I had no Jewish education... But... I went to Jewish day camp."
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Abby Shevitz
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[I knew] maybe too much [about the war while growing up.] One of my father's college roommates was part of the Nuremberg legal staff and sent photographs
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Betsy Shure Gross
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We certainly were not observant. We held holidays, but the line was always if someone asked if we were religious, one of my aunts or uncles or somebody would say, 'Yes, we get together for the holidays and eat.'
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Betsy Shure Gross
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I think [the connection between my parents' activism and their Jewish heritage] became clear during the holidays. Their activism was year-round,
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Rivka Solomon
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My grandmother on my father's side was an early activist. I don't think she would think of herself quite that way, but she was a community organizer.
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Rivka Solomon
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My parents were middle-class former activists themselves... They were active before the war and during the war years
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Judy Somberg
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I think that my parents were very anxious to be up and aware of what was going on, particularly as immigrants.
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Marion Stone
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I was born in Decatur Illinois, Macon County, very close to Springfield.
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Marillyn Tallman
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I recall my childhood as a happy one...
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Mollie Wallick
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Steal with your eyes, that was his thing. Whatever you see, put it to your head.
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Miriam Waltzer
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My father was known, even as a young boy, as an excellent head and was in a Yeshiva -- a rabbinical school
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Hanna Weinberg
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My mother was really a Rebbetzin in the true sense of the word, she was there as a partner.
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Hanna Weinberg
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I think the best thing that ever happened to me was at age seven, in second grade, when we moved to the suburbs, my parents joined a Synagogue.
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Anita Weinstein
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"My grandparents were extremely active in orthodox circles."
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Judy Wolf
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There was definitely a pretty strong influence around community work [from my parents], although it was not really political work.
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Janet Yassen
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I was very close to my father's parents... We lived with [them] for a couple of years when I was a teeny baby, before we moved out.
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Janet Yassen
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[Judaism] was not ingrained in my daily life, it was much more of a cultural experience for me.
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Rebecca Yenawine
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I think my political sensibilities come mostly from my mother, who was very liberal. I remember being a little kid and her telling me stories about FDR
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Rebecca Young
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