PATH TO ACTIVISM:
Each of these women has followed her own path to activism. Some women started with political commitments and searched for a way to put them into action. Others began by looking for their niche in the community or in their professional work and discovered the cause that brought together their skills and their passion. For many, personal family examples showed them the path they needed to follow.
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I looked out the window and I couldn't believe it. At first I thought she fell and he's trying to help her and then when I saw it, I couldn't believe it. That’s what got us to think about the idea. (Tamar Friedman)
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SHALVA (Safe Homes Advice and Legal Aid for Victims of Abuse)
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[W]e said "Enough of you fat old Irishmen, we are going to run for office and we're serious about it."
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Joanne Alter
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[In Albania] I finally decided that I could no longer stand by, that as a humanitarian aid worker you always accept access for silence
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Lynn Amowitz
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The first chance I got in residency, I went to Africa and spent twelve weeks in a really remote, rural part of Africa, doing medical care
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Lynn Amowitz
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"What contributed to my becoming an activist was...being a Sephardic Jew in Argentina..."
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Rita Arditti
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"I became an activist at a fairly young age."
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Diane Balser
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Forty or fifty years ago, a Sisterhood Shabbat was planned. The Sisterhood President asked Rabbi Chiel if the women could be allowed to have part of the service, preferably the Haftarah reading. Rabbi Chiel asked which woman was able to do this. The Sisterhood President answered, 'Hadassah can.'
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Hadassah Blocker
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The turning point really had to do with my involvement not only in clinical aspects, but trying to work at the medical-legal, and doing expert testimony more often in criminal situations
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Renee Brant
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Brandeis was a political hotbed, and so I got swept along in the tide... There were civil rights marches, there were Vietnam war protests, in the Boston area and in Washington, DC
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Renee Brant
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I think my parents have had a huge influence on me in that ever since I was little I remember being maybe five or six years old , going to Bea Gaddy's [Food bank]
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Elana Brownstein
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So I did have children around the house and because they were watching television I watched what was on... And the networks were certainly not doing much
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Peggy Charren
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I started using my story in the training. We'd do our whole 'Teen Dating Violence 101'—what it consists of, the warning signs, etc. And then I'd ask, 'Is this real? Does this really happen?' They'd say, 'No,' or 'It only happens once in a while to stupid people.' And I'd say, 'Let me tell you something. I'm a Jewish girl, I went to a private school.' Then I'd tell my story and they'd be totally shocked. That was definitely a very effective tool.
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Rebecca Chernin
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Activism is not the right word. It is a feeling that people have responsibilities to other people.
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Ruth Clarke
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when I was about 16 years old, I started reading everything I could on the Holocaust and the development of the state of Israel.
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Pamela Cohen
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From 1969, I was centrally involved in Jewish feminism, but never thought of that as being political.
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Merle Feld
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My first political activities were at Cornell... I went to my first picket line, which was to support the sit-ins at the Woolworths counters in the South.
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Vicki Gabriner
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During the Vietnam war, David was stationed as a Navy Chaplain, in Yokosuka.
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Shannie Goldstein
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[Getting involved in breast cancer activism] was one of those things that evolved. I happened to be working for Susan Love, she happened to be working on putting together this coalition
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Judi Hirshfield-Bartek
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It was traveling once or twice a month, building a relationship with our statehouse, our legislators and within congress, working with legislators, educating them about breast cancer
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Judi Hirshfield-Bartek
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While I was trying to start the GSA and realizing it was going to take a while, I was like, 'Hmm, there must be other Jewish queer teens in the Boston area who don't have a place to be gay and Jewish
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Shulamit Izen
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When I came to New Jew I joined Amnesty, and we were talking about human rights and I was like, 'Hmm, part of Amnesty's agenda
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Shulamit Izen
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I always felt like I was a lesbian walking around New Jew before - like I was a lesbian-in-residence. But after that
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Shulamit Izen
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My son, Ira, and his wife, Martha, are strongly affiliated with Facing History and Ourselves [a Holocaust education program].
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Anne Jackson
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"The impetus for me becoming political happened when I was four and a half years-old. I was spending the day with my great aunt because my parents were at the hospital and my brother was being born. All of the older people in my family had blue numbers on their arm."
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Idit Klein
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Again, [The Last Empire, documentary about nuclear threat] was an example of us finding stuff that we were obsessively concerned with and making documentaries about it
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Margaret Lazarus
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I was interested increasingly in women, their representation in media, and also in how women intersect with medicine
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Margaret Lazarus
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I really backed into it... My son was a junior or senior at Cambridge School of Westin when they had a law day and somebody came and talked about the possibility of nuclear annihilation.
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Sally Mack
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[My experience as a student in the Brookline Public Schools] was not one where my potentiality was part of the pedagogical focus. I never felt smart.... So during my eldest son and my younger son's passage through this same school system
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Susan Maze-Rothstein
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Earthome was founded in 1995... We see the whole issue of sustainability as the major challenge
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Shelley Morhaim
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[Beyond War] was basically an anti-nuclear war group when we first heard about it
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Shelley Morhaim
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I think as I learned about Judaism's stance about social activism and I saw it in my own family
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Shelley Morhaim
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[My film] The Next Industrial Revolution came out of a combination of work I'd been doing
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Shelley Morhaim
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[After being refused permission to emigrate] we got involved in an absolutely different life... I knew that the time was running out for us
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Galina Nizhnikov Veremkroit
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When I came to this country I had this feeling of guilt -- why had we received permission and not others who were even waiting longer? It was a drive for me, a real drive not to stop
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Galina Nizhnikov Veremkroit
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The Governor's Wellmobile program is a program that was started here
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Marla Oros
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I have spent [much of] my career on the streets of primarily West Baltimore
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Marla Oros
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I was more involved in what was going on in the world. In fact, when I was about eleven years old I was already
speaking on a street corner.
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Ruth Rothstein
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Because of this inbred love of Israel, we'd save dimes in an envelope.
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Madalyn Schenk
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If people trust you and know of your reputation...
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Florence Schornstein
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[The occupation] made [my Jewish identity] even stronger. I mean, the fact that we were singled out.
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Denise Schorr
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I had been very turned on by watching this organization [Planned Parenthood] and helping this organization grow and fulfill many strong roles in the community.
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Laurie Schwab Zabin
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The Community Action Agency movement was set up in each city in the United States under President Johnson [in the 1960s]. At the time we had the idea in Planned Parenthood that we ought to establish a Community Family Planning Center in another part of town, in a very poor part of town
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Laurie Schwab Zabin
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I joined the volunteer force [of Planned Parenthood in Baltimore] along with some other people who became close friends
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Laurie Schwab Zabin
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Patients said, 'No one has ever shown that they cared about me.' Imagine that they didn't have that ever in their lives. The first time they heard that was from a doctor at a time when they had a fatal illness.
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Abby Shevitz
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When [Gary, husband] was at medical school, I was student-teaching, and the school in which I did my student-teaching was the school at which I had been a grammar school student
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Betsy Shure Gross
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I have always had two passions in life. I've always been involved with women's stuff. Always, always, always, ever since I was a little girl, I was a leader of girls.
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Rivka Solomon
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In 1984, my kids were four and one. I was working, but I guess I felt like I'd been less active, doing the little kids thing. And the National Lawyers Guild was organizing a delegation to El Salvador
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Judy Somberg
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I graduated from the University of Illinois and Dr. Sacher asked me to stay on as a public relations [person] with Hillel.
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Marillyn Tallman
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The women [at Framingham Prison] were fantastic. They were smart; they were funny. It was more like walking into a community of women
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Jean Trounstine
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The secret to being a passionate activist is...
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Mollie Wallick
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You know what these guys ask me?
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Miriam Waltzer
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I believe it was seeing the pain, the pain that people were under
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Hanna Weinberg
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The work that I do now for Bikur Holim [visiting the sick]
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Hanna Weinberg
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Sixteen years ago I began to see that people were coming to Rabbi Weinberg [my husband] with these problems of domestic abuse
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Hanna Weinberg
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When they started [CHANA, the Counseling Helpline and Aid Network for Abused Women, Baltimore], at The Associated, they came to me
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Hanna Weinberg
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[My mother] was very involved in Jewish Federation and from a very young age, I attribute a lot of what I am today to her alerting me to interesting opportunities.
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Jill Weinberg
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It was clear to make the connection between slavery and the shoah and connecting two injustices.
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Anita Weinstein
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"Social justice has been my thing from the first time I was old enough to have a thing to have."
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Sue Wolf-Fordham
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I was a senior in college at the time that the sit-ins were occurring in the South. And I read about them and thought about them a lot. I was really excited about it
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Judy Frieze Wright
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When I moved up here the first thing I did to try to get oriented and to try to feel some sort of connection was to go to the Cambridge Women's Center
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Janet Yassen
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My father is a gay man and through the eighties he watched many (and we all watched many) of our friends die of AIDS.
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Rebecca Yenawine
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[I went to] a very small [high] school and once a week I would volunteer in the kindergarten
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Rebecca Yenawine
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I think [also] being an artist aligns you with people
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Rebecca Yenawine
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The original story of how I got interested in this stuff is that when I was 13 years old, a few months after my mother had died, I saw this made-for-TV movie called ¿Kill Me If You Can¿ and it was based on the case of Caryl Chessman
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Rebecca Young
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