Founding of Young Women's Hebrew Association in NY

February 6, 1902

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On February 6, 1902, Bella Epstein Unterberg held a meeting in her New York City home to discuss the founding of the first Young Women's Hebrew Association. At the meeting, at which she was unanimously elected president of the new association, a decision was made to establish a sister organization to the YMHA, a community center dedicated to the uplift—both social and spiritual—of young Jewish women.

Institution: 92nd Street Y, New York City

Although an earlier organization of the same name had existed beginning in 1888, the Young Women's Hebrew Association (YWHA) founded in New York City on February 6, 1902 was the first independent YWHA. Earlier organizations of similar focus and name had existed only as auxiliaries to Young Men's Hebrew Associations (YMHAs), which had been founded as early as the 1850s. The new organization, founded at the home and under the leadership of Bella Unterberg, combined religious, social, and cultural recreational activities in a way that redefined the possibilities of Jewish communal life.

Meant to serve the needs of young women, especially working girls, the New York YWHA's synthesis of social and religious aims distinguished it from the YMHA, which sought to bring Jewish men together within a secular Americanized setting. The new YWHA was a great success, recording an attendance of over 21,000 during its first year.

Emphasizing Judaism to a much greater degree than did the YMHA, New York's YWHA included a synagogue on its premises from an early date. The synagogue drew men and women from the neighborhood as well as the Jewish working girls who were the Y's prime constituency. The YWHA also sponsored dancing, athletics, music, and summer camping programs, and inspired a national network of similar institutions, particularly in the Northeast.

Although the YWHAs were pioneers in creating institutions that were true community centers, their success was soon imitated or taken over by other institutions. Numerous synagogues in the 1910s and 1920s remade themselves as “synagogue centers,” incorporating the religious and secular activities first combined by YWHAs. Moreover, most of the existing independent YWHAs lost their autonomy during this same period. In the early 1920s, many YWHAs merged with their local YMHAs, while others were taken over by the Jewish Welfare Board and its local affiliates. Most of these mergers meant the loss of female leadership within these organizations.

Bella Unterberg remained the president of the New York YWHA until 1929 and served as the only woman on the national organizations—the Council of Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Associations and the Jewish Welfare Board—that fostered the creation of a Jewish Community Center movement. The New York YWHA resisted the merging trend until 1942 when its activities were transferred to the 92nd Street YMHA. The two organizations formally merged in 1945, as the Young Men’s And Young Women’s Hebrew Association.

Few realize that the vibrant 92nd Street Y, which describes itself as “offer[ing] something for everyone,” as well as Jewish Community Centers around North America, owe much of their vision to the model of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association.

To learn more about the Young Women's Hebrew Association, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Frieda Schiff Warburg.

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1536-1540; David Kaufman, Shul with a Pool: The "Synagogue-Center" in American Jewish History (Hanover, NH: 1999); www.92y.org/content/frequently_asked_questions.asp.

Creation of the Women's Rabbinical Alliance

February 8, 1976

On February 8, 1976, 15 female rabbis and rabbinical students from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College gathered "to investigate topics of general concern."

By the end of the meeting, the Women's Rabbinical Alliance (WRA) was born. Though centered in New York and Philadelphia, the early WRA reached out to female rabbinical students on HUC-JIR's Cincinnati and Los Angeles campuses as well. In 1980, the WRA dissolved and was replaced by the Women's Rabbinic Network (WRN). Unlike the original group, the WRN was—and remains—specifically tied to the Reform movement.

Initially, the WRN remained so small that members joked that meetings "could be held in the women's restroom during conventions of the Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR, the North American Reform movement's organization for North American rabbis]." In fact, at the 1981 CCAR conference in Jerusalem, the WRN meeting took place at a Turkish bath. Four women were present.

Not surprisingly, many women rabbis faced hostility in filling a historically exclusively male position. The WRN offered an important forum for addressing shared issues and was a critical force in opening formerly all male Reform hierarchies to female participation. It also played a critical role in challenging a professional model for the rabbinate that made little room for the personal realities of women’s lives. WRN helped, for example, to develop standards for maternity leaves within the rabbinate.

Women's growing numbers within the rabbinate (with more than 500 Reform women rabbis since 1972) have meant a greater diversity of age, experience, opinion, and personality in the WRN. Yet the goals of the Network remained essentially the same: to address the particular challenges faced by women in the rabbinate, especially the issue of gaining acceptance in mainstream congregations, and to provide opportunities for discussion among women rabbis. Still firmly tied to the CCAR, WRN has been central in raising issues—such as the role of part-time rabbis or the question of whether Reform rabbis should officiate at same-sex weddings—that are of concern to male as well as female rabbis.

Sources: Balin, Carole B. "From Periphery to Center: A History of the Women's Rabbinic Network," CCAR Journal, Summer 1997, data.ccarnet.org/journal/997db.html; www.religioustolerance.org/hom_jref.htm.

Claudia Dreifus speaks on art of the political interview

February 9, 1999

On February 9, 1999, the National Archives and Records Administration featured a talk at the National Archives by Claudia Dreifus on the art of the political interview. Few journalists could be more qualified to speak on this subject than Dreifus, who has built her career by conducting intriguing interviews.

Born in New York City in 1944, she earned a degree in Dramatic Arts at New York University, and almost immediately went to work as a journalist. Following a ten-year stint as an interviewer for Newsday's Sunday magazine, Dreifus moved in the late 1970s to Playboy, where her interviewees included author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, columnist William Safire, and then-Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. A move to the New York Times allowed her to continue her work interviewing and writing about cultural and political luminaries.

During her many decades of political reporting, she wrote about conversations with such figures as Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, U.S. General Colin Powell, the Dalai Lama, Burmese democracy activist and political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, writers Isaac Bashevis Singer and Toni Morrison, and fellow journalist Dan Rather. Rather once said that Dreifus's interviews were "like playing tennis with Steffi Graf: do your best, and you'll learn a lot; anything less, and she'll pave the court with you."

A new era for Dreifus began in the late 1990s, when she joined the staff of the Times science department as an editor. In this position, Dreifus became well-known as the author of the popular "A Conversation With…" column. Her interviewees for the "Science" section have included Jane Goodall, the biologist who revolutionized animal research by applying anthropology to the study of chimpanzees, and Marie Philbin, an Irish scientist studying the regeneration of nerve cells. Her interviews have been collected and published as Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from the New York Times (2001).

Dreifus continues to write regularly for the New York Times. She is also a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, and writes for a variety of other publications, including Ms. Magazine, Town and Country, Playboy, and TV Guide. In addition, she is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at The New School University, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Sources:www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/1999/nr99-35.html; http://www.worldpolicy.org/wpi/claudia_dreifus.html; cuny.tv/series/jewish350/educational.lasso.

Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" performed at Madison Square Garden

February 10, 2001

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This image is from a 2006 performance of The Vagina Monologues at Tufts University's Cohen Auditorium. Image by Presta.

The February 10, 2001, performance of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues was cheered by 18,000 men and women at New York City's Madison Square Garden. The event raised $1 million for Ensler's V-Day movement, which works to end violence against women and girls.

The Vagina Monologues, first performed in 1996, won an Obie Award in 1997, and has been translated into over 35 languages and run in theaters all over the world. The play consists of a series of monologues drawn from interviews in which Ensler asked hundreds of women to share their thoughts and feelings about their vaginas. Funny, painful, angry: the monologues run the gamut of emotion, and are told in diverse voices, ranging from a sex worker to a victim of mass rape, a 65-year-old to a young lesbian.

In performing Monologues around the world, Ensler says, she was inspired to create V-Day as a way of working to stop violence against women and girls. In order to draw attention to rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation, and sexual slavery, annual V-Day events — including performances of Monologues — raise money for the organization, which then distributes it to anti-violence groups around the world. Since its inception in 1998, V-Day has raised more than $50 million. In 2008, V-Day's tenth anniversary was celebrated at the New Orleans Superdome on April 11 and 12. It included an international and star-studded cast performance of The Vagina Monologues and was preceded by two weeks of local activities meant to bring attention and assistance to efforts to help women and girls of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in rebuilding their lives after Katrina.

To learn more about Eve Ensler, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.

See also: "Well-behaved vaginas rarely make history", Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: www.vday.org; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA022.

Adlene Harrison becomes first Jewish female big-city mayor

February 11, 1976

On February 11, 1976, Adlene Harrison became the acting mayor of Dallas after the presiding mayor's resignation. She was the first Jewish woman to become mayor of a major American city, as well as the first woman mayor of Dallas. Harrison, who had been a Democratic city councilwoman since 1973 and mayor pro tem, succeeded Wes Wise, who resigned to run for Congress. Harrison served only until the election of a new mayor at the end of the year.

Always an activist for environmental causes, Harrison, while on the city council, had co-sponsored an ordinance to establish a city environmental committee and supported a strict air pollution ordinance. In addition, she was a member of the National League of Cities' Steering Committee for Environmental Quality. As mayor, she continued her work for the environment, as well as encouraging legislation for historic preservation in the city.

Following her tenure as mayor, Harrison was appointed an Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator in 1977, responsible for directing the EPA's anti-pollution efforts in five states. She held this position until 1981, when she became chair of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority Board.

Harrison's other civic involvements have included work on the boards of the Women's Museum, the Women's Center of Dallas, the Dallas Jewish Coalition, the Metropolitan YWCA and the Dallas Arboretum. Harrison has been awarded the Women's Council of Dallas Distinguished Service Award, and Southern Methodist University's Profiles in Leadership Award. In addition, she was awarded a Special Honor Award for furthering the EPA's affirmative action program.

See also: This Week in History for April 18, 1987, "Annette Greenfield Strauss becomes first elected female mayor of Dallas."

Sources:www.dallashistory.org/history/dallas/1970s.htm; www.epa.gov/history/admin/reg06/harrison.htm; www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/women.htm; www.smu.edu/newsinfo/releases/00229.html; www.texaslegacy.org/bb/transcripts/harrisonadlenetxt.html.