Week of March 17

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March 18, 1922

Judith Kaplan celebrates first American bat mitzvah ceremony

March 19, 1970

Writer Grace Paley arrested at Vietnam protest

March 22, 1893

Senda Berenson officiates at first collegiate women's basketball game

March 22, 2005

Judith Lieber handbags featured in First Lady museum exhibit

March 23, 1962

The "New York Times" reports on Barbra Streisand's Broadway debut

 

March 18, 1922

Judith Kaplan celebrates first American bat mitzvah ceremony

Judith Kaplan, age 12, became the first American to celebrate a bat mitzvah on March 18, 1922. Judith was the oldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Believing that girls should have the same religious opportunities as their brothers, Rabbi Kaplan arranged for his daughter to read Torah on a Shabbat morning at his synagogue, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism.

The Kaplan bat mitzvah marked a turning point for Conservative Judaism in America. Always torn between tradition and modernity, the movement struggled for many decades with women's roles in the synagogue. Judith Kaplan herself did not read from the Torah scroll, as modern bat mitzvah celebrants do; instead, she read a passage in Hebrew and English from a printed Chumash (the first five books of the Bible) after the regular Torah service. Still, Rabbi Kaplan's innovation gained followers. By 1948, about a third of Conservative congregations had conducted bat mitzvah ceremonies. By the 1960s, bat mitzvah was a regular feature of Conservative congregational life; today it is a mainstay in synagogues from Reform to Modern Orthodox.

After her ground-breaking bat mitzvah, Kaplan Eisenstein (she married Ira Eisenstein who became Kaplan's successor in leading the Reconstructionist movement) went on to a successful career in Jewish music. After studying at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Julliard School) in New York, she attended the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) Teachers Institute and Columbia University's Teachers College, where she earned an M.A. in music education in 1932. She later earned a Ph.D. in the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR).

Kaplan Eisenstein taught music pedagogy and the history of Jewish music at JTS, HUC-JIR, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for many years. She also created the first Jewish songbook for children, Gateway to Jewish Song (1937). Her other published works include Festival Songs (1943) and Heritage of Music: The Music of the Jewish People (1972). In 1987, she created and broadcast a 13-hour radio series on the history of Jewish music. In 1992, at age 82, Kaplan Eisenstein celebrated a second bat mitzvah, surrounded by leaders of the modern Jewish feminist movement. This time, she read from a Torah scroll. Kaplan Eisenstein died on February 14, 1996.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 126-128, 370-371; New York Times, March 19, 1992, February 15, 1996.

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March 19, 1970

Writer Grace Paley arrested at Vietnam protest

On March 19, 1970, writer and activist Grace Paley was arrested with 181 other individuals for protesting the Vietnam draft in an act of mass civil disobedience. It was neither the first nor the last time she would be arrested for social protest. Acclaimed for her short stories, Paley is also well known for her activism in a range of social causes.

Born in New York in 1922 to Ukrainian socialist parents, Paley was raised in a family committed to social change. Both her parents had been arrested in Ukraine for participating in workers' demonstrations. However, by the time Paley was born, they were comfortably middle-class thanks to her father's successful medical practice. Paley herself became involved in politics as an extension of her work with the Parent-Teacher Associations at her children's schools.

Beginning with local activism, Paley came to make connections between local and national and, increasingly, global concerns. In the 1960s, hers was a prominent voice in the feminist movement. In that decade and the next, she was also a key figure in the antiwar movement. The New York Times described her as the "stage director" of the 1970 New York City draft board protests. In 1978, she was arrested with three other writers for unfurling a banner reading "No Nuclear Weapons—No Nuclear Power—U.S. or U.S.S.R." on the White House lawn. She also made a series of controversial trips to North Vietnam (1969), Chile (1972), and the Soviet Union (1973). Her commitment to visiting world trouble spots to call for peace continued with visits to Nicaragua and El Salvador in 1985 and to Israel in 1987.

While engaged in public activism, Paley was also writing. Her first short story collection, Little Disturbances of Man, was published in 1959. A reviewer praised the volume for its "all-too-infrequent literary virtue—the comic vision." A second collection, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, appeared in 1974. This collection was more explicitly political, containing stories about Vietnam protests, abused runaway teens, and a subway tragedy. Later the Same Day, Paley's third story collection, appeared in 1985. She has also published three volumes of poetry and a book of essays, articles, and lectures. In all her writing, political concerns are mixed with personal ones, as her characters and narrators struggle to work out both domestic and national power struggles and find their own roads to happiness.

Paley's work has received critical acclaim from the very beginning. After the success of Little Disturbances of Man, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship (1961) and a National Endowment for the Arts Award (1966). These were followed by a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for short story writing (1970) and a PEN/Faulkner Prize for fiction (1986). She taught for 22 years (1966-1988) at Sarah Lawrence College, and has also taught at Columbia, NYU, Syracuse University, and Dartmouth. Paley died in August 2007 at the age of 84.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1026-1029; New York Times, 19 April 1959, 20 March 1970, 2 February 1979, 19 April 1998; The Guardian (London), 30 October 2004; Jewish Women's Archive remembrance by Annelise Orleck, jwa.org/discover/weremember/paley.

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March 22, 1893

Senda Berenson officiates at first collegiate women's basketball game

Senda Berenson, the "Mother of Women's Basketball," officiated at the first women's basketball game on March 22, 1893, at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Born in Lithuania and raised in Boston, Berenson was weak and delicate as a child. An athletic career would have seemed unlikely for the woman whose poor health rendered her unable to complete her training at the Boston Conservatory of Music. But in 1890, she entered the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, in a bid to improve her strength and health. There, she trained in anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, and was hired by Smith College upon her graduation in 1892.

Berenson, the director of the physical education department at Smith, first heard about a new game called "Basket Ball" soon after her arrival in Northampton. Invented as a class exercise for boys, the game—like most team sports—was considered too strenuous for girls, who were instead encouraged to participate in individual sports like swimming, archery, and horseback riding. Berenson observed the game being played in nearby Springfield, and met its inventor, Dr. James Naismith, who encouraged her to adopt the game as exercise for her female students.

At the first basketball game on March 22, 1893 (some sources cite March 21), Smith freshmen were pitted against Smith sophomores, with no male spectators allowed. With rules intended to avoid the roughness of the men's game, the new game became a hit, and soon swept the country. By 1895, there were hundreds of women's basketball teams, and these teams helped open the door to other team sports programs for women. Berenson wrote the first official rulebook for women's college basketball, as well as a number of articles on the new sport. She continued to edit the rules until the 1916-17 season, and many of the rules she developed remained standard until the 1980s. Berenson died in 1954. Over 30 years later, in 1985, she was the first woman to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA.

Senda Berenson's brother was the noted art critic Bernhard Berenson.

Sources: www.hoophall.com/halloffamers/bhof-senda-berneson.html; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 137-139; Joan Hult and Marianna Trekell, eds., A Century of Women's Basketball: From Frailty to Final Four (Reston, VA, 1991); Guide to Senda Berenson Papers, Sophia Smith Collection (clio.fivecolleges.edu/smith/berenson/).

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March 22, 2005

Judith Lieber handbags featured in First Lady museum exhibit

When the New-York Historical Society opened its "First Ladies of New York and the Nation" exhibit on March 22, 2005, four handbags created by Judith Lieber were among the unusual items on display.

Born in Hungary on January 11, 1921, Lieber was the first woman to become an apprentice and then master in the Hungarian handbag guild. Having survived World War II in hiding, she met her husband—an American soldier—on the streets of Budapest as the Allies were liberating the city. A GI Bride, she moved to the United States and began working as a pattern maker and later foreman at a handbag company before launching her own company in 1963. Lieber's small firm quickly grew, and she soon opened a factory to produce her designs.

Today, Lieber's handbags, still made in the United States by skilled artisans, are cherished by celebrities and collectors alike. In 1953, throngs of guests and reporters turned out to see the Judith Lieber bag carried by Maimie Eisenhower at her husband's inauguration; every first lady since Nancy Reagan has carried one.

Although she retired from designing handbags in 1998, many of Lieber's most famous lines, including the classic beaded Chatelaine, are still in production. They are among the few luxury goods still made by hand in the United States. The Judith Lieber line has also been extended to include shoes, eyewear, and gloves. Lieber bags have been featured in numerous art exhibitions and are included in the collections of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., among others.

Sources: bushlibrary.tamu.edu/exhibits/2004-fashioning_art/ ; www.nyhistory.org/web/default.php?section=exhibits_collections&page=exhibit_detail&id=6542122; www.judith-leiber.com/profile/.

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March 23, 1962

The "New York Times" reports on Barbra Streisand's Broadway debut

"The evening's find is Barbra Streisand, a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh. Miss Streisand is a natural comedienne," proclaimed the March 23, 1962, New York Times review of the Broadway musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale.

By the time Streisand made her Broadway debut in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, she had already developed a loyal following as a singer. In performances at the Lion Club, one of New York City's premier gay clubs, and in other clubs around the country, the young Streisand developed her trademark outsider persona, impromptu one-liners, and theatrical delivery that brought audiences to their feet.

Streisand's performance as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale was so successful that the role was expanded for her, with new songs added. Despite national acclaim for her performance, she was considered too Jewish, too eccentric, too unattractive, and too marked by her Brooklyn upbringing for a record contract. Streisand established a permanent claim on American pop culture, however, with the premiere of Funny Girl on Broadway on March 26, 1964. A New York Times review reported that her impersonation of comedienne Fanny Brice had "knocked New York on its ear." Streisand, the reviewer noted, "at the tremulously tender age of 22" was "Broadway's newest star." When Columbia Records released The Barbra Streisand Album in 1964, it remained on the charts for 18 months. Streisand's movie debut in a film version of Funny Girl in 1968, won Streisand an Oscar and cemented her place among the stars of American theatre and film.

After Funny Girl, Streisand went on to star in 15 more movies, including Funny Lady, The Way We Were, Yentl, and The Prince of Tides, the latter two of which she also directed. Not all of Streisand's projects have been successful. Hello, Dolly! and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever were box-office flops, and The Mirror Has Two Faces was reviewed unfavorably. However, Streisand's successes have vastly overshadowed these missteps. She has won ten Golden Globe Awards, eight Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards, Oscars, and a special Tony award, and has sold more records than any singers except the Beatles. Her 49 gold albums are exceeded only by Elvis.

Saying that "I have enough money, thank God, and the only reason I want it is to give it away," Streisand has been generous to a variety of causes. Through the Streisand Foundation, she has supported Jewish charities in the U.S. and in Israel, environmental projects, AIDS education and care, and Democratic politicians. As importantly, Streisand has changed the face of the female movie star. Never afraid to be emphatically Jewish and herself, she has opened the door to other actresses who look more ethnic than the Hollywood mainstream. She has also challenged Hollywood's gender norms, directing three of her own movies, and insisting on total control of all her projects.

Streisand has also spoken out through her television work. Her company, Barwood Films, has made television dramas about gun control and about military harassment of gay and lesbian Americans. Her humanitarian and political work has been recognized by the AIDS Project Los Angeles, which honored her with its Commitment to Life Award in 1992, and by the ACLU, which gave her its Bill of Rights Award. In 2004, she was awarded the Humanitarian Award from the Human Rights Campaign.

Sources: www.barbrastreisand.com; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1349-1353; New York Times, March 26, 1962.

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