Week of March 31

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April 1, 1895

"The American Jewess" begins publication

April 1, 1999

Merle Feld's "A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey" is published

April 2, 1962

Frieda Caplan founds innovative specialty produce company

April 4, 1960

Shelley Winters wins Academy Award for her role in "The Diary of Anne Frank"

April 5, 1905

James Graham Phelps Stokes announces engagement to Rose Pastor

April 6, 2000

Louise Nevelson stamps issued by U.S. Postal Service

 

April 1, 1895

"The American Jewess" begins publication

Published between April 1895 and August 1899, The American Jewess was the first English-language publication directed to American Jewish women. It covered an evocative range of topics, from demands for synagogue membership for women, to Zionism, to health and fashion tips, to the propriety of women riding bicycles. The publication's sense of possibility was captured in its title. Though strange and archaic to contemporary ears, the phrase "American Jewess," in the 1890s, described a new type of Jewish woman, one who could fully embrace the possibilities of both the religious and national aspects of her identity. The American Jewess set out to explore the challenges and possibilities inherent in this new identity. At its height, the magazine claimed a circulation of 31,000.

Rosa Sonneschein, who created, oversaw, and edited volumes 1–7 of The American Jewess, came to the United States from Hungary in the 1860s. After more than twenty years in St. Louis where her husband was a rabbi, Sonneschein left her husband and moved to Chicago where she was able to attend the Jewish Women's Congress held at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. As she later wrote, "then and there we conceived the impression that the time had come to establish a literary organ for the American Jewess, an organ which shall connect the sisters dwelling throughout ... this blessed country, concentrate the work of scattered charitable institutions, and bring them to the notice of the various communities as an imposing and powerful unit."

Sonneschein was the first American Jewish woman to offer a strong and consistent critique of gender inequities in worship and synagogue leadership. She demanded that Jewish women "thirsting for the word of God" be allowed to "drink directly from the fountain of Religion." Her written contributions to The American Jewess are also noteworthy for their early advocacy of Zionism by an American Jew.

Deflected by setbacks in both business and health, Sonneschein yielded control of the publication to an unidentified group of publishers in the summer of 1898. Despite the new publishers' assertion that the magazine would benefit from no longer having to depend for all aspects of its creation upon a single individual, it was clearly Sonneschein's energy that gave life to the endeavor. Although Sonneschein continued to appear frequently as a correspondent, the journal suffered from the loss of her sharp editorial perspective and vision. Five more monthly and two "quarterly" issues appeared after Sonneschein's departure as editor; the last issue is dated August 1899.

Rosa Sonneschein recognized that the progress of American Jewish women needed to be preserved in writing. As she observed in the first issue of the American Jewess, "Not what has happened, but what is recorded makes history."

Sources: American Jewess, vols. 1-9 (April 1895-August 1899); Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1289-1291.; www.hti.umich.edu/a/amjewess/.

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April 1, 1999

Merle Feld's "A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey" is published

Merle Feld's memoir, A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey was published on April 1, 1999. In the book, Feld combines poetry and prose to tell the story of her life from her childhood in an impoverished Brooklyn family to marriage and motherhood, involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peace work, and feminist activism.

Born in 1947, Feld was raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in an assimilated family. She developed an enduring connection to Jewish life through her involvement with the Hillel at Brooklyn College, where she earned her B.A. Though she was involved in the Jewish feminist movement from its earliest years, Feld did not think of herself as a political person until she spent a sabbatical year in Israel in 1989. In that year, Feld became involved in peace work, facilitating a dialogue group for Israeli Jewish and Palestinian women. Her experiences with that group, and with the anti-war group Women in Black, formed the basis for the play Across the Jordan, which was published in 1997, as part of the anthology Making a Scene.

Feld's peace work was honored in 2000, when she was named a "Woman Who Dared" by the Jewish Women's Archive. In interviews with the Jewish Women's Archive, she commented that "I don't really understand what political activity is about if it's not grounded in some sense of the importance of spirit in people's lives. And I certainly don't understand what spirituality is about that has no connection to or bearing on how we live in the world and what's happening to the people around us." Feld's own spiritual journey forms the thread that ties together A Spiritual Life; her search for meaning in her own biography, in political work, and in the everyday world is at the core of the story she tells in the memoir.

In addition to A Spiritual Life and Across the Jordan, Feld has published the play The Gates Are Closing. Her poetry has been widely anthologized, and has appeared in the magazines Tikkun, Lifecycles, and Lilith.

Sources: jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/bio.jsp?personID=pmfeld; Merle Feld, A Spiritual Life (Albany, 1999); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA024.

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April 2, 1962

Frieda Caplan founds innovative specialty produce company

If kiwis, spaghetti squash, and jicama are familiar sights in your local grocery store, you probably have entrepreneur Frieda Caplan to thank. Since April 2, 1962, Frieda's Inc. has introduced produce ranging from shitake mushrooms to mangos, from kiwifruit to chayote squash, to the American market, changing American tastes along the way.

Caplan got her start as a produce broker, selling mushrooms in Los Angeles's 7th Street Market. In 1962, she began selling the New Zealand kiwi in the United States. In the first year, she sold just 2,400 pounds of the fruit, then called a Chinese Gooseberry. By 1986, Caplan alone was selling over 1 million pounds of the fruit a year, to restaurateurs, retail groceries, specialty groceries, and food service distributors. Since then, she has successfully introduced enoki mushrooms, alfalfa sprouts, shallots, and dozens of other fruits and vegetables to American markets and tables.

Caplan used innovative marketing concepts to introduce these products. Her innovations included offering directions and recipes on packaging – so that consumers would know how to store and prepare unfamiliar foods – and labeling produce with her brand name. Her labels also helped store clerks, who sometimes could not tell a Jerusalem artichoke from fresh ginger, to process new produce more quickly.

Frieda's Inc. was the first woman-owned and woman-operated American wholesale produce company. In a business sector dominated by men, Caplan's success is all the more remarkable. In 1972, the industry recognized her talents by electing her vice-president of the national Produce Marketing Association. In 1987, she was named an outstanding California Woman in Business. She has also received a Professional Achievement Award from UCLA.

Today, Frieda's Inc. remains a family-owned business, with Caplan's two daughters at the helm and Caplan herself remaining as Chair of the Board. From a warehouse in Los Angeles, they deliver specialty produce to customers across the United States and Canada. In addition, the company continues to seek out new edibles and to develop new recipes for the increasingly sophisticated American palate.

Sources: www.friedas.com; Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1961; New York Times, October 31, 1979, May 17, 1987; www.nawbola.org/about_us/2000_hof.php.

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April 4, 1960

Shelley Winters wins Academy Award for her role in "The Diary of Anne Frank"

The actress Shelley Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis in 1922 (some sources say 1920), moving with her family to Brooklyn when she was a young girl. In New York, the future actress soon developed an interest in the movies and in Broadway, never going to school again on Wednesday afternoons after she discovered the existence of Wednesday matinees.

Winters modeled, worked in the Borscht Belt, fought for stage roles, and was eventually noticed by a Hollywood scout. When she was in her early 20s, the Hollywood star-making machine was portraying her as a blonde bombshell and casting her in a series of rather forgettable movies. She won her first serious reviews for her role in A Double Life (1947) in which she was strangled by a callous boyfriend. Yearning to be taken seriously, Winters appeared frequently as a tragic murder victim. She had to convince director George Stevens of her ability to appear unglamorous to get him to cast her as the pregnant factory girl who would be drowned by Montgomery Clift so that he could marry the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951).

Although she was a regular subject of celebrity gossip, Winters took her craft quite seriously. She treasured the talented directors with whom she worked and was a longtime follower of the Actors Studio and its form of method acting. Her world was full both of Hollywood's leading men and serious intellectuals. In her memoir, for instance, she recalls how Norman Mailer helped prepare her for the Place in the Sun role by offering her a tutorial on An American Tragedy, the Theodore Dreiser novel upon which the movie was based.

When George Stevens, who had directed A Place in the Sun, asked Winters to play Mrs. Van Daan, the wife and mother of the Dutch Jewish family that hid from the Nazis with Anne Frank's family in an attic during World War II, the actress eagerly accepted. She fully felt the importance of sharing the lessons of human cruelty and human dignity contained within Anne Frank's tragic story. Winters later called The Diary of Anne Frank her "most important film" and attended its New York premiere with Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King, Jr., and their wives.

Playing Mrs. Van Daan sharpened Winters' perceptions of anti-Semitism and the long history of Jewish suffering. In her memoir, she recalled that on the evening of the last day of shooting for the film, she spoke at an Israel bonds event, asking the audience of successful Los Angeles Jews: "Who knows when you or your children or grandchildren will need the country of Israel?" The event raised millions of dollars. On April 4, 1960, Winters won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Mrs. Van Daan. Some years later, she donated the Oscar statuette to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.

After Anne Frank, Winters portrayed numerous mother roles, Jewish and otherwise, winning her second academy award for A Patch of Blue (1965), in which she portrays a bigoted mother who tries to separate her blind daughter from the black man (Sidney Poitier) who befriends her. Her last Academy Award nomination came for her role in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) in which she plays a Jewish grandmother who dies in a successful effort to lead her fellow passengers on a swim to safety.

Winters became deeply engaged in politics and the Civil Rights movement, working with Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others. In the 1980s, Winters wrote two memoirs, which recounted her experiences in the movies and on stage, her two brief marriages (one to an Italian movie star and one to an Italian-American movie star) and her numerous affairs with many of Hollywood's leading men. Winters became a particularly popular guest on television talk shows where she delighted audiences with tales of her sexual liaisons and her willingness to take on other guests whom she found sexist or condescending. She appeared in over 100 movies and never stopped acting. In the 1990s, she played the recurring role of Roseanne Barr's grandmother on Roseanne.

Shelley Winters died on January 14, 2006 in Beverly Hills.

Sources: Shelley Winters, Shelley, also Known as Shirley (New York, 1980); Shelley Winters, Shelley II: The Middle of My Century (New York, 1989); www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0148797.html; New York Times, January 15, 2006.

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April 5, 1905

James Graham Phelps Stokes announces engagement to Rose Pastor

James Graham Phelps Stokes announced his engagement to Rose Pastor in a press conference on April 5, 1905. The next morning, the engagement was front-page news. The New York Times headline described Stokes as a "member of Old New York Family" and Pastor as a "young Jewess." Elsewhere, the article referred to Pastor as the "Cinderella of the Sweatshops." The marriage of the prominent Protestant philanthropist and the immigrant Jewish journalist and former cigar roller had all the elements of a classic American romance, in which love overcame the obstacles of class and religious difference.

Born in Russian Poland in 1879, Pastor moved with her family to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1890, where Pastor began twelve years of work in a cigar factory. Through this work, she supported her mother and four siblings. Responding to a call for information from factory workers, she submitted a letter to the English page of the Yidishes Tageblat newspaper in 1901. The paper not only printed her letter, but soon asked her to become a regular contributor. Pastor moved to New York in 1903. She was writing a series on settlement house workers for the paper when she interviewed Stokes who had taken up an interest in the settlement house movement.

After their marriage on July 18, 1905, Stokes and Pastor became disillusioned with the settlement house movement, and both joined the Socialist party. Pastor became a fixture on the Socialist lecture circuit. Although she argued that Jews had a special responsibility to fight for social and economic justice, she defined herself by her association with the working class, refusing to get involved with Jewish organizations. In addition to organizing workers, Pastor became a birth control activist, agitating in support of Margaret Sanger and writing two pro-birth-control plays.

Pastor was also active in the antiwar movement, and in 1918 she was arrested under the Espionage Act for an antiwar speech she gave in Kansas City, Missouri. Although she was convicted, the conviction was later overturned on appeal. Though Stokes paid Pastor's bail in this case, her growing radicalism strained their marriage. Stokes withdrew from the Socialist Party in 1917, ending his affiliation with leftist politics, while Pastor joined the American Communist Party, and became a member of its executive committee. Within the party, she was active in supporting the causes of African Americans and women. In 1926, the fairytale marriage between the reform-minded millionaire and the immigrant laborer ended in divorce. Pastor died of cancer in 1933.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1341-1344; New York Times, April 6, 1905; Arthur Zipser and Pearl Zipser, Fire and Grace: The Life of Rose Pastor Stokes (Athens, GA, 1989).

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April 6, 2000

Louise Nevelson stamps issued by U.S. Postal Service

On April 6, 2000, the United States Postal Service issued five stamps honoring and depicting the work of sculptor Louise Nevelson. The stamps were formally dedicated as part of the Postage Stamp Mega Event in New York City. Postal Service Vice President Anita Bizzotto said that Nevelson had "left an indelible impression on this country" and that it was "not only her artistic creation, but her spirit of perseverance and determination" that the stamps were meant to honor.

Born in 1899 in Ukraine, she came to the United States with her family in 1905, and settled in Maine. After excelling in her high school art classes, Nevelson married and moved in 1920 to New York. In 1928, she began studying at the Art Students League. Separating from her husband in 1931, Nevelson traveled to study in Germany and around Europe, returning in 1932 to New York where she worked on a mural project with Diego Rivera.

After her work was shown in the Young Sculptors exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 1935, Nevelson earned her first solo gallery show in 1941. Although she sold no works from this show or three subsequent shows, they garnered positive reviews and helped establish Nevelson as a presence in the art world. In the 1950s, Nevelson began studying Mayan art. Her subsequent work integrated elements of Mayan art with dream imagery, and themes of marriage, royalty, and death.

Although she was influenced by cubism and modernism, and created etchings and terra cotta sculptures, Nevelson is best known for her wall sculptures. She created the first of these in 1958, with a work called Sky Cathedral. Composed of stacked boxes enclosing found architectural fragments, the work reversed the usual relationship between sculpture and viewer. Rather than the viewer walking around the sculpture, Nevelson's wall sculptures surrounded the viewer with an environment of the artist's creation.

With the success of Sky Cathedral, Nevelson entered a period of critical and public acclaim, in which many of her works were sold to museums and she received commissions from a range of institutions. Among her commissions were projects for synagogues, a church, the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, and for the cities of Scottsdale, Arizona, and New York. During this period, Nevelson was also active in artists' organizations, becoming president of National Artists Equity (1965), vice president of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors (1965), and vice president of the International Association of Artists (1966). In 1979, Nevelson was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among her most important works are Atmosphere and Environment XIII: Windows to the West (1973), and Dawn's Wedding Feast (1959). The Whitney Museum in New York now holds the largest collection of her works. Nevelson died in 1988.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 988-991; www.scottsdalepublicart.org/about_history.php; jwa.org/discover/infocus/artists/nevelson.

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