Week of June 9

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June 9, 1939

Birth of feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin

June 15, 1961

European Debut of Judith Malina's Living Theatre

 

June 9, 1939

Birth of feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who has become one of the most well-known figures in both the Jewish and secular feminist movements, was born on June 9, 1939. Raised in an observant Conservative household in Queens, New York, she turned her back on Judaism when she was barred from the kaddish minyan at her mother's death in 1955. Although she rejected the rituals she saw as patriarchal and exclusive, she maintained a connection to Jewish home life and holidays. However, she would not rejoin organized Judaism for almost two decades.

In the meantime, after earning a B.A. at Brandeis University (1959), Pogrebin became active in the American feminist movement. In 1971, she was one of the founding editors of Ms. magazine, where she worked for seventeen years, and where her name continues to appear on the masthead. She was a consultant on Free To Be You And Me, the 1975 album of non-sexist children's stories and songs, published How to Make It in a Man's World (1970), and edited Stories for Free Children (1982). She also co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus.

A turning point for Pogrebin came in 1975, when the United Nations International Women's Decade Conference in Mexico City passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. That declaration, Pogrebin later wrote, "was the initial 'click' that started me on my life as a Jewish-feminist." Realizing that she needed to combat anti-Semitism within the women's movement just as she fought sexism within Judaism, Pogrebin embarked on a lifelong journey to integrate both parts of her identity and, in turn, push both Jews and feminists toward greater inclusivity and sensitivity. Her 1991 memoir, Deborah, Golda, and Me, tells the story of both her alienation from Judaism and her efforts to reclaim it as a feminist.

Over the last three decades, Pogrebin has been a fixture in feminist, Jewish, and Jewish-feminist causes, as well as an outspoken political activist. She has been influential in founding or shaping MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, the Jewish Fund for Justice, the New Israel Fund, and the American Jewish Congress Commission on Women's Equality. She is also a past president of Americans for Peace Now, and spent five years in a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue project. She has also been active in Black-Jewish dialogue efforts.

In addition, Pogrebin is a prolific author. She has addressed topics ranging from friendship (Among Friends: Who We Like, Why We Like Them, and What We Do With Them, 1986) to parenthood (Growing Up Free: Raising Your Child in the 80s, 1980), and from the job market (Getting Yours: How to Make the System Work for the Working Woman, 1975) to personal politics (Family Politics: Love and Power on an Intimate Frontier, 1983). Getting Over Getting Older (1996) deals candidly with the trials and joys of aging. Pogrebin's first novel, Three Daughters, loosely based on her own family, was published in 2003. She continues to be active in progressive and feminist politics, and lectures frequently. She is also a regular contributor to Moment magazine.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1087-1089; Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America (New York, 1991); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA102.

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June 15, 1961

European Debut of Judith Malina's Living Theatre

In performances that were hailed as "good quality directed with great intelligence," "admirable for subtle expressiveness and intelligent composure," and "exceptional," the off-Broadway Living Theatre troupe made its European debut in Rome on June 15, 1961. By the time of the Living Theatre's European tour, co-directors Judith Malina and Julian Beck had been directing off-Broadway plays for over a decade.

Born in 1926, Malina never finished high school, but studied acting at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She made her acting debut in 1945. Just three years later, in April 1948, Malina and Beck incorporated the Living Theatre. Malina and Beck married six months later. The Living Theatre, which sought to break down the barriers between cast and audience, actor and character, art and politics, eventually produced more than 75 plays. The troupe was noted for its use of mime, improvisation, and audience participation. Among the Theatre's notable successes were Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and Its Double, Jack Gelber's The Connection, and the premiere of William Carlos Williams' Many Lives. Malina and Beck acted in most of the Theatre's plays, as well as directing them.

Although successful in a 14th Street loft, the Living Theatre did not stay permanently in New York. Malina and her troupe toured France in 1965, and performed street theatre in Brazil in 1971. When the company was expelled from Brazil as "incendiary," the troupe spent twelve years in self-imposed exile in France before returning to the U.S. While in France for the initial tour, Malina directed two collective creations of the company, Frankenstein and The Mysteries, and helped to create Paradise Now, based on the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.

As the theme of Paradise Now suggests, Malina was active in progressive politics both through and alongside her theatre work. She was a member of Women Strike for Peace, the U.S. Committee for Latin American Political Prisoners, the War Resisters League, and the Industrial Workers of the World. The themes of peace and politics also appear in Malina's essays and in her poems, which were published as Poems of a Wandering Jewess (1982).

Malina has taught at New York University and Columbia University, appeared in the movies Enemies: A Love Story, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Addams Family, and been a New York State writer-in-residence. She has been awarded six Obie Awards, a Paris Critics Circle Medallion, a New England Theater Conference Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other prizes.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 883-885; New York Times, June 16, 1961, September 10, 1961; John Tytell, The Living Theatre: Art, Exile, and Outrage (New York, 1995).

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