Week of March 9

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March 9, 1959

Ruth Mosko Handler Unveils Barbie Doll

March 10, 1893

Lillian Wald celebrates 26th birthday by opening settlement house

March 10, 1996

"Too Jewish?" exhibit opens, featuring work of artist Helène Aylon

March 11, 1999

Rachel Adler receives National Jewish Book Award

March 13, 1967

Public health pioneer Margaret Arnstein appointed dean of Yale School of Nursing

March 13, 1973

"New York Times" reviews "Our Bodies, Ourselves"

March 14, 1939

Yiddish actress Sara Adler honored for 50 years on the stage

March 14, 1972

Ezrat Nashim presents manifesto for women's equality to Conservative rabbis

March 14, 1977

"New York Times" reports on naming ceremonies for Jewish girls

March 15, 1820

New York Female Hebrew Benevolent Society created

 

March 9, 1959

Ruth Mosko Handler Unveils Barbie Doll

At the International American Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959, inventor Ruth Mosko Handler unveiled one of the most loved, emulated, and criticized toys of the 20^th century. The Barbie Doll, named after Handler's 15-year-old daughter, rocketed the Mattel company to nearly overnight success and became an icon of American culture.

Although Barbie has been roundly condemned by feminists as promoting an unrealistic body shape to young girls, Handler originally conceived the doll as a way for girls to imagine their futures as adult women. "I believed it was important to a little girl's self-esteem," she later said, "to play with a doll that has breasts." The development of the doll was also influenced by Handler's daughter's preference for adult paper dolls over the baby dolls that then dominated the toy market.

Although it was Mattel's first big success, the Barbie Doll was not the beginning of Handler's career as an inventor. While working at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, Handler first went into business with her husband producing picture frames. Mattel, named for Handler's husband and a business partner, was incorporated in 1945. In its early years, the company produced a toy ukulele and toy guns; it was among the first to market toys directly to children, sponsoring a year's run of the Mickey Mouse Club television show. After the runaway success of Barbie, the company added Ken, named after Handler's son, and later additional dolls named for Handler's grandchildren.

After losing a breast to cancer in 1970, and leaving Mattel in 1975, Handler turned her attention to helping other breast cancer survivors. Unhappy with the available breast prostheses, she invented her own, which she sold through a new company called Nearly Me.

Handler received numerous awards for her accomplishments. The Los Angeles Times named her Woman of the Year in Business in 1967, the United Jewish Appeal named her its first "Woman of Distinction," and the Toy Industry Hall of Fame inducted her in 1985.

Ruth Mosko Handler died in 2002. Although often a subject of satire and social criticism, Barbie lives on, with more than 100 million sold annually. Professional outfits and ethnic Barbies have updated the original, but the grown-up doll continues to entrance both young girls and older collectors.

Sources: Ruth Mosko Handler, Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story (Stamford, CT, 1994); http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/handler.htm; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 591-592; M.G. Lord, Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll (New York, 1994); Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1967, December 15, 1967; New York Times, April 29, 2002.

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March 10, 1893

Lillian Wald celebrates 26th birthday by opening settlement house

Born into a successful merchant family in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 10, 1867, and raised in Rochester, New York, Lillian Wald is remembered today as the founder of public health nursing and an influential pioneer in the settlement house movement of the early twentieth century.

Trained as a nurse at the New York Hospital, Wald began medical school at the Women's Medical College in New York, but was soon sidetracked into what would become her life's work. During a class project organizing a course in home nursing for immigrant families, Wald discovered the dire need for basic health care among tenement dwellers. She left medical school, in 1893, in order to bring affordable health care to the needy of the Lower East Side. Together with her friend Mary Brewster, she founded the organization that became the Visiting Nurse Service.

The Nurses' Settlement opened on Jefferson Street on Wald's 26th birthday, March 10, 1893. Two years later, in 1895, she moved her enterprise to Henry Street. In both locations, the settlement was dedicated to public health nursing, a term Wald coined to describe an organic relationship between health care and broader community needs. In the first year, the settlement cared for 4,500 patients.

Recognizing the interconnectedness of illness and poverty, Wald expanded the activities of the settlement over time. The renamed Henry Street Settlement House offered boys' and girls' clubs; classes in arts, crafts, homemaking and English; and vocational training. Health care remained important, with over 26,000 patients cared for by 100 Henry Street nurses in 1915.

While running Henry Street, Wald also became involved in broader social welfare and political activities. In 1904, she helped found the National Child Labor Committee; she also spearheaded the campaign for a national Children's Bureau within the Department of Labor, which was created in 1912. She supported the Women's Trade Union League, worked on the New York Commission on Immigration, helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and campaigned for women's suffrage. She was also active in peace work, becoming a leader in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Ill with heart disease, Wald retired from Henry Street in 1933, and died in 1940. Her tireless work on behalf of the poor, children, and women has been well recognized. She won the gold medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences in 1912, and New York City's distinguished service certificate in 1937. She was elected to the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at New York University in 1965, and inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1993.

Wald's greatest monument is in the continuing work of the institutions she founded. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York, which traces its origins to Wald and Brewster, offers regular care to 115,000 patients. Still in its original buildings on the Lower East Side, the Henry Street Settlement today serves its racially diverse neighborhood through AIDS education, domestic violence prevention work, literacy training, advocacy for the homeless, and programs for youth and seniors.

Sources: Clare Coss, ed. Lillian D. Wald: Progressive Activist (New York, 1989); Doris Groshen, Always a Sister: The Feminism of Lillian D. Wald (New York, 1989); www.henrystreet.org; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1446-1449; jwa.org/exhibits/wov/wald/ Beatrice Siegel, Lillian Wald of Henry Street (New York, 1983); www.vnsny.org/mainsite/about/a_history.html.

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March 10, 1996

"Too Jewish?" exhibit opens, featuring work of artist Helène Aylon

Helène Aylon's The Liberation of G-d was first shown in the New York Jewish Museum's Too Jewish?: Challenging Traditional Identities exhibit, which opened on March 10, 1996. The work, which took six years to create, was made by covering every page of the five books of the Torah with transparent parchment, on which Aylon marked problematic passages with a pink pen. The marked passages were mostly those considered degrading to women, but also included negative references to homosexuality. This work was accompanied by commentary on the marked passages from a spectrum of Jewish scholars and rabbis. Liberation was typical of Aylon's work in combining Jewish and social justice themes.

Born in 1931, Aylon was raised in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and married young. It was only when her husband, a rabbi, died of cancer in 1961 that she began to paint. At the same time, she changed her name (from Fisch) and turned away from Judaism. Her first works were abstract paintings made by pouring linseed oil onto plexiglass. Later, she turned from painting to sculpture, creating installations and performances. In the 1980s, her work increasingly commented on issues of social justice and world peace. The 1985 Current, two sacs en route consisted of small sacs of seeds floating down Japanese rivers toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki to mark the 40^th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of those cities. The piece was videotaped, and in 1995 was shown on the Sony Jumbotron in New York's Times Square. Another piece from the 1980s, The Earth Ambulance, featured pillowcases filled with earth "rescued" from nuclear weapons sites around the world.

In the 1990s, Aylon began to focus her work on Jewish themes. Like The Liberation of G-d, these works highlighted gender inequities in Judaism. My Notebooks (1998) suggested a 1950s Orthodox girls' school classroom, with empty notebooks covering the walls to symbolize the absence of women's voices in the traditional texts taught to girls like Aylon. My Bridal Chamber (2001) focused on the laws of niddah—the ritual impurity of women during menstruation—and mikveh (ritual bath). Not surprisingly, many of these works caused considerable controversy. Although a critic for Art in America called The Liberation of G-d "an incisive and elegant deconstruction of Jewish texts," some visitors to the Jewish Museum called it "absolute garbage" and "disgusting" in the Museum's comment book. Similarly, reactions to My Bridal Chamber ranged from angry to enthusiastic, with at least one visitor calling it "offensive" while the curator saw it as "very healthy" and affirming.

Undeterred by the controversy her work creates, Aylon continues to create pieces that call attention to injustice and sexism, particularly within Judaism. The Digital Liberation of G-d (2004), exhibited in San Francisco, recreated the original Liberation with the addition of an interactive computer terminal where viewers can read the passages Aylon highlighted and add their own comments. Aylon's works are in the permanent collections of The Jewish Museum, the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, and elsewhere. In 2002, she was awarded the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's Visual Arts Award.

Sources: New York Times, 28 August 1992, 8 March 1996, 19 July 2001; www2.jewishculture.org/awards/awards_arts_aylon.html; Norman L. Kleeblatt, ed., Too Jewish?: Challenging Traditional Identities (New York, 1996); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA002.

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March 11, 1999

Rachel Adler receives National Jewish Book Award

Rachel Adler was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought on March 11, 1999. The award recognized Engendering Judaism: A New Theology and Ethics, which set forth a new model for integrating modern feminism with traditional Jewish theology.

Adler's work applies feminist theory to traditional Jewish texts. In perhaps her most radical integration of modern feminism and traditional Judaism, Adler's last chapter proposes a new marriage ceremony based on the Jewish laws of partnership. Adler suggests that rather than fighting for the inclusion of gay and lesbian Jews in the traditional Jewish wedding ritual, progressive Jews should question and replace the traditional ceremony which is about a groom taking ownership of his bride.

The book, while considered radical by some critics, was hailed as a groundbreaking contribution by others. The Journal of the American Academy of Religion called it "not only the most sophisticated and important book in the field of Jewish feminist thought but a study that can serve as a model for all feminist theological writings."

Adler is Professor of Modern Jewish Thought and Judaism and Gender at the School of Religion, University of Southern California and the Rabbinical School at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. In addition, she serves on the editorial boards of Tikkun, Shofar, and Nashim, and as a member of the academic board of the Institute for Progressive Halacha.

Sources: www.huc.edu/news/adleraward.html; www.jewishpub.org/product.php?isbn=9780827605848; Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Philadelphia, 1998); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA001.

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March 13, 1967

Public health pioneer Margaret Arnstein appointed dean of Yale School of Nursing

Born in New York City in 1904, Margaret Arnstein grew up in a family deeply involved in social health and welfare projects. Her uncle, Herbert Lehman, would serve as a U.S. Senator from New York. Her father was president of Mount Sinai Hospital and also New York City's welfare commissioner. Both parents were involved with the Henry Street Settlement, where they befriended nursing pioneer Lillian Wald. Perhaps with this inspiration, Margaret resisted her parents' desire for her to become a doctor and chose a career in nursing.

After graduating from Smith College in 1925, Arnstein earned nursing and public health degrees from New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University and the Johns Hopkins University. She spent eight years in the New York State Department of Health Communicable Disease Division. Believing that nurses should be involved in health policy and research in addition to direct care, Arnstein pioneered innovative nursing research at the Department. Arnstein taught public nursing for a few years at the University of Minnesota, but returned to New York where, as a state nursing officer during World War II, she organized emergency community squads that would be called into action in the case of epidemics or enemy attacks.

In 1943, Arnstein expanded her own horizons through public health work with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, serving as the chief nurse of its mission in the Balkans. From her role in developing nursing services for war refugees, she joined the U.S. Public Health Service in 1946, directing aspects of its public health nursing programs, and becoming head of its nursing division in 1960. During her years with the Public Health Service, she remained involved with international initiatives, directing the first International Conference on Nursing Studies.

After a few years as a professor of public health at the University of Michigan, Arnstein became dean of the Yale University School of Nursing on March 13, 1967. As dean, she brought Yale's nursing school into the forefront of nursing education. Arnstein's lifetime of work was well recognized in her later years. In 1966, she became the first woman to receive the prestigious Rockefeller Public Service Award. In 1971, she received the Sedgewick Memorial Medal, the American Public Health Association's highest honor. Arnstein died of cancer in 1972.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 65-66; New York Times, September 28, 1937, August 23, 1942, September 25, 1943, March 14, 1967, October 9, 1972.

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March 13, 1973

"New York Times" reviews "Our Bodies, Ourselves"

In 1969, a group of women began meeting in the Boston area to discuss women's health issues. They began the research and writing of a 138-page newsprint booklet, combining first-person accounts and careful research, titled "Women and Their Bodies," which they published in 1970. In 1971 the group was legally incorporated as the Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Of the 12 women participating in this incorporation, nine were Jewish, including Esther Rome, Paula Doress-Waters, and Nancy Miriam Hawley.

The first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves appeared in 1971, and an expanded mass-market version was published by Simon and Schuster in 1973. Like the prototype booklet, Our Bodies, Ourselves combined women's authentic voices with solid medical information gathered from published research and an understanding that women's health issues involved social, economic, and political factors as well as narrowly defined medical ones. It was the first book to address women's health issues frankly, in common-sense language, and from the perspectives of women themselves. It was also timely, appearing just as abortion was becoming legal and soon after the birth control pill became widely available, sparking a revolution in American sexual mores. The book was an instant hit. Though condemned by some public figures as pornographic, and banned from some schools, the first edition sold more than 350,000 copies. A New York Times review published on March 13, 1973, called the book "lucidly informative;" the (male) reviewer added, "I don't see how any sensible woman-even an antifeminist one-could fail to be enlightened" by it. Our Bodies, Ourselves pioneered what became an international women's health movement. Today, the book is in its eighth edition (2005, subtitled A New Edition for A New Era). To date, it has sold (in all editions) more than four million copies and been translated and/or culturally adapted into 19 languages and Braille.

Sources: New York Times, March 13, 1973, June 27, 1995, June 22, 1997; www.bwhbc.org; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1162-1163; Joyce Antler, The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America (New York, 1997), p. 282; communications to JWA from Judy Norsigian and Sally Whelan, February 2006; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA034.

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March 14, 1939

Yiddish actress Sara Adler honored for 50 years on the stage

Born in Odessa in 1858, Sara Adler became an actress who helped to change the face of Yiddish theatre in America. Although she made her stage debut at age eight, she initially studied voice at the Odessa Conservatory and appeared as a between-acts singer for the Jewish Theater Circle. Deciding on a theater career, she learned Yiddish and joined a Yiddish theater troupe. A Russian ban on Yiddish theater prompted the troupe to move to London, and then to America in 1883.

In the U.S., Adler became the leading actress in a Yiddish theatre troupe. The group's manager, actor Jacob Adler, became her second husband in 1891. At the time, Yiddish theater was dominated by vaudeville acts and melodrama. Jacob Adler changed that when he staged a Jacob Gordin drama called Siberia in 1891. This performance is considered the beginning of serious Yiddish theater. Adler went on to stage Der Yidisher Kenig Lear [The Jewish King Lear], in which Sara Adler played the role of Teitele for over 30 years.

Over the next three decades, Sara Adler created many of the most important women's roles in Yiddish theater, winning great public acclaim. The Adlers were able to achieve financial success in New York. Over these decades, Adler also gave birth to five children, all of whom went on to successful theater careers of their own. Her daughter Stella became a noted actress, director, and teacher of acting. Sara Adler continued to perform actively until 1928, and then occasionally appeared until she turned 80. Her 50 years of work on the stage were celebrated in a gala event at the National Theater on March 14, 1939, during which she performed the third act of Tolstoy's Resurrection. Adler died in New York on April 28, 1953.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 18-19; New York Times, March 14, 1939.

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March 14, 1972

Ezrat Nashim presents manifesto for women's equality to Conservative rabbis

A small New York study group, founded in 1971 to study the status of women in Judaism, presented Conservative rabbis with a manifesto for change at the Rabbinical Assembly convention on March 14, 1972. Adopting the name Ezrat Nashim (the name for the women's section of a synagogue, which can also be translated as "help of women"), early members of the group included many founding pioneers of Jewish feminism such as Martha Ackelsberg, Dina Rosenfeld, Arlene Agus, Elizabeth Koltun, and Paula Hyman.

Ezrat Nashim was started from within the countercultural New York Havurah by a small group of young, well-educated Jewish women, most educated within the Conservative movement. Their 1972 manifesto, entitled "Jewish Women Call for Change," demanded that women be counted in the minyan (prayer quorum), be allowed full participation in religious observances, be allowed to initiate divorce proceedings and be counted as witnesses under Jewish law, and be admitted to rabbinical and cantorial schools. Recognizing that many of the traditional restrictions on women's participation in Jewish ritual stem from their exemption from many mitzvot (commandments) incumbent upon men, the document also asked that women be considered bound equally with men in the fulfillment of mitzvot.

Denied their request to address the Rabbinical Assembly, Ezrat Nashim did have their “call” included in the packets distributed to the rabbis, and they invited those rabbis' wives who were attending the convention to a special meeting on March 14. The New York Times, which printed an extensive account of the group's efforts, reported that the call had been well received at the convention. However, the Conservative movement did not act on the recommendations immediately. When the Jewish Theological Seminary finally voted to admit women to the rabbinical school, in 1983, Ezrat Nashim members celebrated the decision for recognizing "the compelling moral claim of women's equality as well as the changed status of women in the modern world."

Like other Jewish feminist groups, Ezrat Nashim drew on a combined legacy of dedication to Judaism and involvement in the second wave of American feminism. Sensitized to women's second-class status within traditional Judaism, and educated in political activism through the women's movement, these women turned their considerable intelligence and energy toward changing gender norms within their own religious tradition.

Although today's Jewish feminists continue to work for further change, the ordination of women rabbis and cantors within Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Judaism, and the growth of bat mitzvah, baby naming, and other ceremonies for girls in all American denominations, demonstrate the impact of Ezrat Nashim and similar groups.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 694-698; New York Times, June 12, 1972; Ezrat Nashim documents: "Jewish Women Call For Change," "To All Women at the R. A. convention", provided by Paula Hyman, Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA039.

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March 14, 1977

"New York Times" reports on naming ceremonies for Jewish girls

Noting that the new Reform Jewish prayerbook, published in February, 1977, included a naming ceremony for baby girls for the first time, and that Ezrat Nashim a small feminist activist collective, was about to publish a booklet entitled “Blessing the Birth of a Daughter: Jewish Naming Ceremonies for Girls,” the New York Times reported on March 14, 1977, that such ceremonies were becoming common in all branches of Judaism.

While Jewish boys had always been welcomed into the world with a brit milah (a ceremony for circumcision) on the eighth day of life, no parallel ceremony for baby girls had existed until American Jewish feminists began to invent them. As the Times reported, naming ceremonies (often called simchat bat, or rejoicing in a daughter) violated no strictures of traditional Judaism, so women could blend Judaism and feminism in new rituals without creating conflict with rabbinic authorities.

As Paula Hyman explained, speaking for many women, “as feminists … we believe that egalitarianism must begin at birth.” Many naming ceremonies—which differ from synagogue to synagogue and family to family—express a belief in egalitarianism also by giving prominent roles to mothers and grandmothers, whereas the father traditionally takes the lead in a brit milah.

Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, now a well-known supporter of Jewish Orthodox feminism, told the Times that he saw the boom in naming ceremonies as evidence of a larger change in the relationship between Jewish feminists and tradition. While previously, he said, Jewish feminists were turning their backs on religion, “now they are demanding the expression of feminism in religious life.” In this sense, the profusion of naming ceremonies can be categorized with the growth in women’s Passover seders around the same time, as an effort to transform tradition in ways that keep its integrity yet bring women fully into the ritual circle. Today, girls’ naming ceremonies are common enough not to elicit any notice from the media, whether performed at home or in a synagogue, from a printed text or a newly imagined one.

Sources: New York Times, March 14, 1977; Maralee Gordon contribution to Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA028.

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March 15, 1820

New York Female Hebrew Benevolent Society created

On March 15, 1820, just a year after Rebecca Gratz established the country's first Female Hebrew Benevolent Society in Philadelphia, Richa Levy led a group of women that established a Female Hebrew Benevolent Society at New York's Shearith Israel congregation. At that time, Shearith Israel was the only synagogue in New York City.

Although women had long been involved in individual acts of generosity toward their neighbors in need, the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society hoped to work collectively as an organized body "for relief of indigent females and their families." As Richa Levy, the first director of the Society, wrote to synagogue trustees, the Society's primary focus was on helping impoverished women, but they hoped also to "occasionally give assistance to families whose situation may render them objects of charity."

In order to raise funds for their charity, the women of Shearith Israel gained permission to receive "offerings" at synagogue services. In addition, they augmented their funds by holding dinner-dances at which men spoke of the Society's goals between a dinner and festive dancing. One such ball, on December 2, 1847, raised $1,350 for the Society.

The Society was formally incorporated in 1854, at which time its purpose was defined as "to afford the aged and indigent female members of said congregation a comfortable residence, support, employment, medical and other necessary care." In 1870, the Society merged with the formally all-male Hebrew Relief Society, and ceased to exist as an independent organization.

Source: David and Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel, 1654-1954 (New York, 1955).

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