"The American Jewess" begins publication

April 1, 1895

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"Not what has happened, but what is recorded makes history." —Rosa Sonneschein, first issue of The American Jewess.

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."

To learn more about Rosa Sonneschein, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: "The American Jewess", Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia; The American Jewess Project; The American Jewess on Liberation and Freedom, Go & Learn: Primary Documents and Lesson Plans; This Week in History for January 25, 1879, "Pioneers convene in St. Louis, forming early Jewish women's literary society"; Rosa Sonneschein on Twitter; American Jewess in Jewesses with Attitude.

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/.

Publication of Merle Feld's "A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey."

April 1, 1999

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Image courtesy Merle Feld, 2010.

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. A revised version of A Spiritual Life was published by SUNY Press in 2007. Her most recent book is Finding Words (URJ Press 2011), which was reviewed by Zeek in 2011 ("Merle Feld Finds Her Words," by Rachel Barenblat).

To learn more about Merle Feld, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution and in Women Who Dared.

See also: Reading Series Guides: Spiritual Journeys.

Sources: jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/bio.jsp?personID=pmfeld; Merle Feld, A Spiritual Life (2e, SUNY Press, Albany, 2007); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA024.

Frieda Caplan founds innovative specialty produce company

April 2, 1962

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Frieda's Inc., the first woman-owned and woman-operated American wholesale produce company, introduced exotic produce like the kiwi fruit to the United States. Photo courtesy of aWee.

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.

See also: Jewish Women "On the Map" - 7th Street Market, Los Angeles.

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.

Orthodox basketball star Naama Shafir led the University of Toledo to victory

April 2, 2011

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Naama Shafir is the first Orthodox Jewish woman to earn an NCAA scholarship and to play basketball at a Division I college. Image courtesy of the University of Toledo.

On Saturday, April 2, 2011, junior guard Naama Shafir scored a career-high 40 points, securing the University of Toledo’s victory over the University of Southern California in the final round of the Women’s National Invitational Tournament. Named the tournament’s MVP, Naama Shafir is the first Orthodox Jewish woman to earn an NCAA scholarship and to play basketball at a Division I college. After her championship win, Shafir walked two miles home in accordance with her observance of Shabbat.

“The game was one of the most incredible moments of my life,” Shafir told the Forward. “There were over 7,000 people there, and during those seconds when the game was over and the whole crowd ran to the court, I experienced an unbelievable high.”

Naama Shafir was born in Hoshaya in Emek Israel in the Galilee. She is the fourth of nine children. She began playing basketball in the Emek Israel girls’ basketball league when she was in the fourth grade. At 18, Shafir was recruited by the University of Toledo. When she arrived in Ohio, she knew very little English and almost no one in her new hometown.  A business major as well as star athlete, she had made friends and educated her peers about Israel and Judaism.

Naama Shafir received special dispensation to play, but not practice, basketball on Saturdays from Rabbi Rabbi Chaim Burgansky. He told the Forward: “Practice is in the category of ‘exercise’ and therefore forbidden, but the game itself is fun for the player. Who wants to sit on the bench?” Nevertheless, some people insisted that what she was doing is not right. “But I believe what I am doing is right," Shafir told ESPN,

As an Orthodox woman, Shafir faces additional challenges. The principles of tsnius, or modesty, dictate that women keep their knees and elbows covered. Shafir wears a t-shirt underneath her sleeveless basketball jersey. In June of 2011, Munich-based FIBA Europe refused to let her play in Europe unless she wore the standard sleeveless uniform. Eventually, FIBA agreed to permit Shafir to play if she wore skin-toned elastic sleeves.

The basketball program at the University of Toledo has been supportive of  Shafir’s religious commitments.  The team does not practice on Saturdays and if it has an away game, the whole team travels before sundown on Friday. They also make sure to pack frozen kosher meals. USA Today reported that a hotel in Hawaii heated up Shafir's kosher meal but refused to allow her to eat it in the dining room with the rest of her team. The team was shocked. The players moved their meal to the lobby so that they could eat together, chanting the Hebrew word for “team” that Shafir had taught them.

Naama Shafir believes that Orthodox observance need not hamper the ambitions of young women. She told the Forward, “If you have a dream, it’s not a question of ‘either-or.’ You can do both. You can be religious and fulfill your dreams.”

See also: This Week in History for November 4, 2009, Women’s basketball pioneer Nancy Lieberman becomes the first woman to coach a NBA D-League men’s basketball team and March 22, 1893, Senda Berenson officiates at first collegiate women's basketball game; Sports in the United States.

Sources: Naama Shafir Bio, University of Toledo Women's Basketball; An Orthodox Jew Leads Toledo to a Women's National Basketball Title, The Forward; At Tournament, Naama Shafir Wears Observance on Her Sleeves, The Forward's Sisterhood blog; Toledo's Naama Shafir balances beliefs, basketball, ESPN; Naama Shafir, Toledo share a religious experience, USAToday.com; FIBA Will Definitely Not Allow Naama Shafir To Wear Her Undershirt, Business Insider.

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

April 4, 1960

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Screenshot of Shelley Winters from the trailer for the film Tennessee Champ, 1954.

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.

To learn more about Shelley Winters, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Film Industry in the United States; This Week in History for December 14, 1962, Dramatization of Anne Frank's diary broadcast on the radio.

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.

James Graham Phelps Stokes announces engagement to Rose Pastor

April 5, 1905

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Labor activist Rose Pastor Stokes at her writing table.

Institution: U.S. Library of Congress

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.

To learn more about Rose Pastor Stokes, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: "Rose Pastor Stokes" by Regina Morantz-Sanchez on Jewesses with Attitude; Communism in the United States; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Kansas City, site of Rose Pastor Stokes' arrest.

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).

President Obama picked Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to lead Democratic National Committee

April 5, 2011

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz represents Florida's 20th Congressional District. She has served in Congress since 2005.

On April 5, 2011, the Democratic Party announced that President Obama had named Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the incoming chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, making her the first woman DNC chief in 15 years and the third in history. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the second Jewish woman to hold this post; Debra DeLee served as DNC chair from 1994-1995.

In an email to DNC members, Vice President Joe Biden wrote, “In selecting Debbie to lead our party, President Obama noted her tenacity, her strength, her fighting spirit and her ability to overcome adversity … President Obama expressed great admiration for her as a leader, and he was honored that she accepted this important challenge on behalf of the Democratic Party.”

A member of Congress since 2005, Debbie Wasserman Schultz represents Florida's 20^th congressional district. As DNC chairwoman, Wasserman Schultz will lead the party’s fund-raising and organizational efforts during the 2012 election cycle.

Jewish women have long been active in the organization. When the Democratic National Committee convened on June 26, 1928, Belle Moskowitz was the sole woman on the Executive Committee. In 1968, Geri M. Joseph was elected vice-chair of the DNC and continued in that role for four years. Through the 1980s, Jane Harman played an important role in the DNC, acting as counsel for the 1984 platform committee and chairing the DNC’s National Lawyer’s Council. On February 4, 2002, Ann F. Lewis was appointed National Chair of the DNC’s Women's Vote Center.

Rep. Wasserman Schultz is an outspoken and articulate advocate for women’s access to healthcare. In February 2011, she was the first congressperson to speak out against the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," which would make the Hyde Amendment (which prohibits  federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother's health) permanent and place additional restrictions on legal abortion. In part because of Wasserman Schultz’s opposition, the GOP dropped the “forcible rape” language from the bill.

She is also known for her service to the Jewish community. In 2005, Rep. Wasserman Schultz joined Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania in sponsoring a resolution to designate a month to honor Jewish American culture and heritage. Thanks to her advocacy, May is now Jewish American Heritage Month.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is also a breast cancer survivor and mother of three. A close friend of Rep.Gabrielle Giffords, Wasserman Schultz was often at her side through her recovery from a near-fatal shooting in January, 2011. 

See also: This Week in History for April 20, 2006, May designated Jewish American Heritage Month; Jewish Women in Politics; Jewish Women On the Map - Florida's 20th Congressional District.

On Jewesses with Attitude:
Mazel tov to the women of the Forward 50
Mazel Tov Debbie Wasserman Schultz, new chair of the DNC!
Jewish women and the Democratic National Committee
Debbie Wasserman Schultz stands up for women!
Rep. Wasserman Schultz on abortion: 'This is personal'
Rep. Allen West tells Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to "act like a Lady"
Battling breast cancer on Capitol Hill
Update: Rep. Giffords opens her eyes, sees strong women friends and mentors
Jewish Women Politicians: Progressively Passionate?

Sources: Debbie Wasserman Schultz picked as Democratic National Committee chair, Politico.com; Exclusive: Wasserman Schultz calls GOP abortion bill ‘a violent act against women’, Rawstory.com; Wasserman Schultz: Tell Scott to ‘stop playing politics with women’s health’, The Florida Independent.

First Episode of “Little Orphan Annie” Radio Show Aired

April 6, 1931

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An example of Little Orphan Annie’s enduring popularity. From the public domain.

Who's that little chatter box?
The one with pretty auburn locks?
Whom do you see?
It's Little Orphan Annie.
She and Sandy make a pair,
They never seem to have a care!
Cute little she,
It's Little Orphan Annie.
-Opening lyrics of “Little Orphan Annie” radio show song

In the midst of an economic depression, radio listeners across the United States needed a spot of sunshine. Little Orphan Annie began life as a comic strip character but found her voice in a ten-year-old Jewish girl named Shirley Bell. The radio show was first broadcast, with Ovaltine as sponsor, on April 6, 1931, with Shirley Bell playing the part of the adventurous, feisty red-head. For the next ten years, she helped make Little Orphan Annie a beloved American icon.

Shirley Bell was born in Chicago on February 21, 1920. According to her obituary, Shirley’s father walked out on the family when she was a little girl. Her mother, Irene, was reputedly an archetypal stage mother, making her two-year-old daughter sing and dance in any Chicago synagogue that would have her, until she won the part of “Little Orphan Annie.”

Shirley Bell Cole’s biographer Susan Cox told the New York Times: “She was the only one working, and she earned all the money for five immigrant Jewish families.” Shirley continued to play the iconic and peppy Annie throughout the 1930s. In 1941, the 21-year-old married businessman Irwin Cole. The marriage lasted until his death in 1998. Shirley died on January 12, 2010 at age 89. She kept her red Annie wig all her life and could produce that distinctive, high-pitched radio show voice until the end.

Source: Shirley Bell Cole, the Voice of Little Orphan Annie, Dies at 89, New York Times.

Louise Nevelson stamps issued by U.S. Postal Service

April 6, 2000

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Louise Nevelson and Neith Nevelson. This photo is in the public domain.

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.

To learn more about Louise Nevelson, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for September 22, 1941, "First solo show for sculptor Louise Nevelson"; Jewish Women On the Map - Louise Nevelson Plaza, the Nierendorf Gallery and "Sky Landscape"; Jewish Women Artists.

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

Passage of NY widows' pension bill advocated by Hannah Bachman Einstein

April 7, 1915

On April 7, 1915, New York's Governor Charles S. Whitman signed the Widowed Mothers Pension Act into law. The new statute, which provided state-funded pensions to qualifying women so that they could care for their children at home, was largely the result of the efforts of communal activist and reformer Hannah Bachman Einstein.

Born in 1862, Einstein grew up within New York City's Temple Emanu-El, a German Reform congregation. Both her parents and the Reform tradition in which she was raised emphasized social justice. As an adult, Einstein remained active in the Temple, and in 1897, she became president of the sisterhood, a position she held for twenty-five years.

One of Einstein's activities as sisterhood president was visiting the homes of recent immigrants. As a result of these visits, she became interested in the problems of widowed mothers, many of whom could not support themselves or their children because working would mean leaving young children at home alone.

During this time, Einstein was active in several charitable causes. She served as Chairman of the Committee on Philanthropy of the New York Council of Jewish Women, and as President of the New York Federation of Sisterhoods. In a move that recognized her commitment to social welfare and women's changing public roles, the New York United Hebrew Charities appointed her the first woman on its board, of which she eventually became Vice President. When that organization abandoned its program of aid to widowed mothers in 1909, Einstein resigned her position to create the Widowed Mothers' Fund Committee. She hoped to raise money to replace the United Hebrew Charities pensions so that mothers would not have to be separated from their children. Two hundred women attended the new Fund's first meeting.

Despite the success of her Committee, Einstein's growing conviction that the problems of widowed mothers could never be solved by private charity alone drew her into work beyond the Jewish community. Only government action, she decided, could alleviate the problems of the poor. Joining with other activists, Einstein lobbied the New York State legislature for widowed mothers' pensions, which would enable widowed women to care for their children without working outside the home. In 1913, she was appointed chair of the state committee to investigate the issue. Her committee wrote what became the Widowed Mothers Pension Act of 1915.

The Act created a system of local Child Welfare Boards, which would evaluate applicants for the pensions. By October, the New York City Board, which included Einstein, had received applications from over 3,000 women and requested a budget of $519,000. Yet by the following January, the City had appropriated only $100,000, and many children remained in institutions rather than with their mothers. The State Commission urged the legislature to amend the law to make it more effective. At the same time, Einstein went back to work raising money – this time for the estimated 80% of widows ineligible for the state pensions because their husbands were not citizens.

Despite these early obstacles, the Pension Act can be considered a success. It became a national model; by 1920, nearly every state had enacted similar legislation. It was also a classic example of women's work in this era; as women were becoming increasingly involved in political life under the rubric of "social housekeeping," their public efforts tended to focus on the welfare of women and children, long the type of issues considered to be in women's domain. Thus women like Einstein found their entry into public life eased by their focus on topics traditionally within women's sphere. In tackling these gender-specific issues, they came to have lasting impact on the American social welfare system.

In the wake of her committee's success, Einstein remained heavily involved in social welfare work. She became president of the New York State Association of Child Welfare Boards and helped found the National Union of Public Child Welfare Officers. Einstein died in New York City in 1929.

To learn more about Hannah Bachman Einstein, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Settlement Houses in the United States; Sisterhoods of Personal Service in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 367-368; Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/heinstein.html; New York Times, May 2, 1895, May 3, 1909, April 8 1915, May 21, 1915, October 6, 1915, January 10, 1916.

Debut of Beverly Sills at the Metropolitan Opera

April 7, 1975

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Beverly Sills, American opera singer. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.

The New York Times reported that although the Metropolitan Opera's staging of The Siege of Corinth was impressive, "everything ... was dwarfed by the presence of Miss [Beverly] Sills in her long-delayed and long-awaited Metropolitan debut" on April 7, 1975. The review went on to praise Sills as "beautiful to look at, graceful in movement, authoritative in style." The coloratura-voiced singer – and her fans – had waited a long time for this event.

Born in 1929 in Brooklyn, Sills had been singing in public since the age of four, when she appeared on the Uncle Bob's Rainbow Hour radio show. She began her formal musical training at age nine, under the tutelage of Estelle Liebling, who would remain her teacher until 1970. By the time she began studying with Liebling, Sills reportedly had memorized twenty-two operatic arias.

Although her father wanted her to go to college, Sills left school at sixteen to tour with a Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company. Her grand opera debut came in 1947, when she played the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen, with the Philadelphia Civic Opera. Though Sills had parts with many second-tier companies, she found no permanent position until she joined the New York City Opera Company (NYCO) in 1955. Although the NYCO was considered the city's "second" opera company, inferior to the Metropolitan, Sills's voice and acting ability brought the company new success and prestige. For the next two decades, with interruptions for the births of her two children, Sills was the NYCO's prima donna, performing a variety of roles, including some particularly unusual and difficult ones.

In 1975, Sills finally got the chance to sing at the city's premier opera house, when she sang the role of Pamira in The Siege of Corinth. She sang at the Met several times over the next few years, but retired from the stage in 1980. Her farewell gala was attended by two thousand fans at Lincoln Center and televised nationwide on PBS.

The year before her final performance, Sills took on a new role, as director of the NYCO. The first woman and the first performer to fill that job, Sills ran the company for the next decade. Her success as a fundraiser and public relations spokesperson enabled the Company to eliminate its debt. She also introduced innovations such as supertitles in English, enabling more people to enjoy opera. In addition, she emphasized casting American singers and staging American operas.

During her years at the helm of the NYCO, Sills also became a nationally-known spokesperson for the arts. She brought opera to a broader public, substituting on occasion for Johnny Carson as guest host of the Tonight Show and appearing in numerous specials including one called "Sills and Burnett at the Met" which was broadcast on Thanksgiving in 1976. Music critic Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times has described her as "a media natural who demystified the performing arts for average Americans."

Sills was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. When Sills left the NYCO, it was to become chair of the Lincoln Center board, where she was again the first woman and the first performer to hold the position. After retiring from Lincoln Center, Sills became chair of the board at the Metropolitan Opera in 2002, retiring from that post on January 25, 2005. Sills also served as longtime chair of the board of the March of Dimes.

Beverly Sills died of lung cancer on July 2, 2007.

To learn more about Beverly Sills, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for May 25, 1929, "Birth of opera star Beverly Sills."

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1252-1256; New York Times, April 8, 1975, March 20, 2005, July 3, 2007; Beverly Sills, Beverly: An Autobiography (New York, 1987); www.medaloffreedom.com/BeverlySills.htm.

First North American synagogue building dedicated with a traditional women's gallery

April 8, 1730

On April 8, 1730, Jews in New York City dedicated the first building in North America constructed specifically as a synagogue. Like the Spanish Portuguese synagogues in Amsterdam and London which may have served as models for Congregation Shearith Israel's Mill Street synagogue, the building included women's seating in a gallery. A 1744 visitor noted that the women of the congregation, "of whom some were very pritty, stood up in the gallery like a hen coop." As that comment suggests, non-Jewish visitors to Mill Street did not always approve of the synagogue's arrangements for female congregants. While men and women were separated in many colonial Christian churches, they would generally be seated on the same level. Less desirable seats in the rear or gallery were usually reserved for marginal members of the community such as indentured servants, black slaves, or the town poor.

Shearith Israel records from the 18th century suggest how American Jewish women began, even during the colonial era, to redefine their religious identities. Although many European Jewish women of this era attended their community synagogues on Saturday mornings, it would have been rare for unmarried women to be in attendance. But in New York, unmarried young women (sometimes with the help of their fathers) were fighting for seats in the gallery. In 1760, for instance, Mr. Mears went up into the gallery and forced Miss Josse Hays out of the seat claimed by his daughter. In 1786, Miss Mincke Judah was fined sixpence in civil court for sitting in a seat that had not been assigned to her. In general, the congregation was concerned about the many unmarried young women seeking seats in the front row of the gallery, as indicated by a 1792 resolution that would have barred any "unmarried lady except Rachel Pinto [who was 70 years old and wealthy]" from a front gallery seat.

The determination to find good seats suggests that these Jewish women understood that, in America, where women were a crucial presence in the churches, their own presence was important in the synagogue. American synagogues began to reflect this changing understanding with a shift in synagogue design. The synagogue dedicated in Newport in 1763 (see This Week in History for December 2, 1763) introduced an open women's gallery, which had the effect of making women seem less marginalized in the synagogue.

When Shearith Israel dedicated a new building on the Mill Street site in 1818, discussion of the women's gallery arose during the planning. Ultimately, the synagogue's board determined to build a women's gallery with an "open work" front as opposed to the "close front gallery" advocated by one member of the board. Since Shearith Israel was still the only synagogue in New York, the decision could not have been made in the interest of winning potential congregants from competing institutions. Instead, the change in architecture probably reflects the influence of American religious norms. Open galleries like the one in Newport and the 1818 Shearith Israel building became standard in synagogues across America in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Early American advocates of mixed-gender seating introduced family pews into synagogues after 1850.

See also: Jewish Women "On the Map" - Shearith Israel cemetery; Rebecca Phillips Machado; Tamar De Sola Pool.

Sources: Karla Goldman, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in America Judaism (Cambridge, MA, 2000); David and Tamar de Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel, 1654-1954 (New York, 1955).

Dancer Nora Kaye performs the role of Hagar in "Pillar of Fire"

April 8, 1942

Nora Kaye's performance as Hagar in the world premiere of Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, on April 8, 1942, was hailed by the New York Times as "superb." The Times reviewer wrote that Kaye danced the role "so beautifully that it is impossible to conceive of anybody else doing it." With that performance, Kaye launched a career as one of the world's prima ballerinas.

Born in 1920 and raised in New York City, Kaye began studying ballet at age five, and made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera's corps de ballet at fifteen. She also studied at the School of American Ballet. After dancing with the American Ballet, a company founded by Balanchine and Lincoln Kerstein, she left ballet for a few years to perform in musical comedies including Virginia (1937) and Stars in Your Eyes (1939). She also spent nine months in the Radio City Music Hall corps de ballet. Kaye returned to the ballet world in 1939, when she became a charter member of Ballet Theater, now called American Ballet Theater. Her first important character role came in 1941, in the Tudor ballet Gala Performance.

But it was her role in Pillar of Fire that catapulted Kaye to fame. Combining technical perfection with the ability to convey complex emotions through a remarkable economy of movement, Kaye gave what a critic called one of "the great examples of tragic acting of its generation." By the next year, she was dancing most of the principal female roles for Ballet Theater. In 1951, Kaye left Ballet Theater for the New York City Ballet, but stayed there only for three years, after which she returned to Ballet Theater. Although she retired from the stage in 1961, she remained involved with the company, serving as its associate artistic director from 1977 to 1983. During her later years, she also worked on film projects, producing or co-producing, among others, The Turning Point, The Seven Percent Solution, and Pennies From Heaven.

During her years on the stage, Kaye was known mainly for her roles in Antony Tudor's psychological dramas. However, she also danced a variety of other roles. Jerome Robbins, John Taras, and Herbert Ross all choreographed ballets specifically for Kaye. After her retirement, dramatic roles like the ones she excelled in became less popular, as American ballet returned to its classical roots. However, when Kaye died on February 28, 1987, she was remembered as a giant in her field. Tudor, whose ballets shaped so much of her career, put it simply, "there can be only one Nora Kaye."

See also: Dance Performance in the United States.

Sources: New York Times, April 9, 1942, March 1, 1987, March 15, 1987.

Jewish veterans of 1960s women’s movement convened at New York University

April 10, 2011

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"Women's Liberation Daughters: The Next Generation" panel.
From left to right: Tamara Cohen, Collier Meyerson, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, Irin Carmon, Jaclyn Friedman, and JWA's Judith Rosenbaum.

On April 10, 2011, Jewish veterans of the 1960s women’s liberation movement gathered at New York University for a conference on "Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity." Conceived and planned by Brandeis Professor Joyce Antler, Chair of JWA’s Academic Advisory Council, and co-sponsored by JWA and the Spencer Foundation's Initiative for Civic Learning and Civic Action, the program explored the interaction and tension between Jewish identity, culture, and tradition and the broader struggle for women’s rights.

High profile Jewish feminists, such as Susan Brownmiller, Gloria Feldt, Blu Greenberg, Susannah Heschel, and Alix Kates Shulman, joined lesser-known but equally committed activists, such as Arlene Agus, Vicki Gabriner, and Vivian Rothstein, to share their personal and political experiences as Jewish and/or radical feminists.

On the second day, a group of younger Jewish feminists, including Tamara Cohen, Collier Meyerson, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, Irin Carmon, Jaclyn Friedman, and JWA's Judith Rosenbaum, discussed feminism, Jewish identity, and activism today.

See also: Jewish Feminism and Feminist Jews: More Questions than Answers and Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity: Bringing it home on Jewesses with Attitude.

Historian Deborah Lipstadt is vindicated in libel suit brought by Holocaust denier

April 11, 2000

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After publication of her seminal work Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt was sued by a historian whom she had accused of denying the Holocaust. To disprove his claim she had to demonstate that the events he denied had actually occurred. Thus a court case about libel ultimately served to put the truth of the Holocaust on trial, and to catapult Professor Lipstadt from "academic" to "celebrity."

Photographer: Jillian Edelstein; Institution: Deborah Lipstadt

When Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt published Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory in 1994, she did not expect her analysis of Holocaust deniers to land her in a British courtroom. But widely read writer David Irving, whom Lipstadt cited as one of the most prominent deniers, sued her and Penguin Books for libel, choosing England as the venue because British libel law put the burden of proof on Lipstadt to show that what she had written was true. On April 11, 2000, Lipstadt was vindicated when Judge Charles Gray found in her favor, calling Irving "a right-wing, pro-Nazi polemicist" and "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist."

Irving hoped that the trial, by offering a platform for his beliefs, would convince a broad public to question the authenticity of the Holocaust as a historical fact. Lipstadt, not wanting to offer Irving that platform, refused to testify at the trial. Her defense, however, presented eminent historians who combed through Irving's public and private writings and research with intense attention to the way his personal prejudices distorted his historical accounts. The trial's outcome was considered a resounding victory for history and free inquiry. London's Daily Telegraph newspaper said the trial had "done for the new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did for earlier generations."

Although the trial brought Lipstadt international fame, she was a well-established Holocaust scholar well before she went to court. Her 1986 book, Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, examined the ways the American press covered the persecution of European Jews between 1933 and 1945. She was appointed to two consecutive terms on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, helping design the section of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum devoted to the American response. From 1996 to 1999, she also served as a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom, where she advised the Secretary of State on matters of religious persecution abroad.

After the three-month-long trial, the culmination of a six-year legal battle between Lipstadt and Irving, Lipstadt returned to Emory University, where she is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and the Director of the Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies. In January 2005, she was part of the official U.S. delegation to the ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. She was also the 2005 winner of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs' Al Chernin Award, given to the person who best exemplifies protection of the First Amendment. Lipstadt's account of her legal battle, History on Trial, was released by HarperCollins in early 2005.

In February 2006, Irving was sentenced to serve three years in an Austrian jail for having denied the existence of the Holocaust in a speech and interview given in Austria in 1989; he was released after serving thirteen months of his sentence.

To learn more about Deborah Lipstadt, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Judaic Studies in the United States.

Sources: www.religion.emory.edu/faculty/lipstadt.html; Emory Magazine, Autumn 2000; Emory Report, April 2000; Deborah Lipstadt, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving (New York, 2005); Transcripts of the trial can be found at www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/judgment-00-00.html; news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4733820.stm.

Launch of Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community (AWP)

April 12, 2001

Reflecting frustration with the Jewish communal world's persistent glass ceiling, Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community (AWP) launched its first efforts on April 12, 2001. A project of the Trust for Jewish Philanthropy, itself founded by the United Jewish Communities (UJC), AWP was begun under the direction of founding President Shifra Bronznick and funded by New York philanthropists Barbara and Eric Dobkin.

AWP was launched out of recognition that although women had made significant gains in the business and secular non-profit world, female professionals still faced a long uphill battle in the field of Jewish communal service. When AWP began its work, only one of America's 40 largest Jewish Federations had a female CEO. A 1998 study of 45 major American Jewish organizations had revealed that fewer than half of them had ever had a single woman president or board chair. A 2000 study found only two women CEOs among 40 major Jewish agencies; the same study found that more than half of these agencies had no women in their top five salaried positions.

Bronznick explained that the "ultimate goals of the program are to help the Jewish community identify, attract, recruit, advance, and retain women in executive and management positions." AWP not only seeks to further individual women's careers, it works from the premise that enlarging the field of qualified Jewish communal leadership will help and strengthen the Jewish community as a whole. In a 2003 article in The Forward, Bronznick argued that women in leadership positions would likely help Jewish organizations "embrace diversity, flexibility and innovation," qualities that would be vital to the survival of organized Jewish life in America.

Within two years of AWP's creation, five major Jewish organizations (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Museum, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and the Jewish Agency for Israel) had elected a woman as president or chair, each for the first time in that organization's history. Bronznick called this development "the beginning of a historic change."

In 2008, AWP published Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, a how-to guide for championing gender equity in the workplace.

To learn more about Shifra Bronznick, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.

See also: Leveling the Playing Field at Jewesses With Attitude.

Sources: www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=10464; www.forward.com/articles/9507; www.advancingwomen.org.

Aline Milton Bernstein Saarinen becomes first woman to head overseas U.S. TV news bureau

April 13, 1971

Aline Milton Bernstein Saarinen became the first woman to head an overseas television news bureau when she became chief of the National Broadcasting Company's Paris bureau on April 13, 1971.

Although Saarinen, the wife of famed architect Eero Saarinen, made headlines with her appointment as NBC's Paris bureau chief, most of her career was spent as an art critic. After earning degrees at Vassar College and New York University, she became the managing editor of Art News. In 1947, she joined the New York Times, where she served as associate art editor and then associate art critic until 1959. In 1958, Saarinen wrote The Proud Possessors, a book about American art collectors. The book became a best-seller.

Saarinen's television career began in 1962, when she was interviewed about a Rembrandt painting on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two years later, she was named an NBC correspondent. Her informal and gregarious style brought art criticism into American homes on a regular basis for the first time.

Just 15 months after taking charge of NBC's Paris bureau, Saarinen died of a brain tumor at age 58. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, one of the art collectors profiled in her 1958 book, memorialized Saarinen as "one of the world's ablest critics," who had left behind "a glorious legacy" of bringing art criticism to a wide public.

To learn more about Aline Saarinen, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: New York Times, April 14, 1971; July 15, 1972; Sept. 15, 1972.

Review of Mary Antin's "The Promised Land" appears in the "New York Times"

April 14, 1912

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“I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life’s story?” So begins Mary Antin's The Promised Land, one of the best-known autobiographies penned by an American Jewish woman. Antin celebrated the immigrant experience and the boundless opportunity of America, the land in which she, "Mashke, the granddaughter of Raphael the Russian... should be free to fashion my own life, and should dream my dreams in English phrases.”

Institution: The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH, www.americanjewisharchives.org and the New York Public Library.

Only 30 years old when she published her autobiography, The Promised Land, Mary Antin captured the dreams and experiences of turn-of-the-century Russian Jewish immigrants. The book, which was reviewed in the New York Times on April 14, 1912, recounted Antin's early life in Russia, her immigration to the United States at age 13, her successes in the Boston public school system, and her subsequent marriage and entry into the American middle class.

The Promised Land was the second book by this precocious writer. At thirteen, she had written a series of long letters to an uncle, chronicling her journey from Polotsk, Russia, to Boston. At the urging of a local Jewish communal leader, the collected letters were translated from Yiddish and published as From Plotzk to Boston in 1899. Income from sales of the book helped support Antin's family, and allowed her to finish her education.

After her 1901 marriage to geologist Amadeus Grabau, Antin studied at Columbia University's Teachers College and at Barnard College, but did not finish a degree. In New York, Antin continued to write both poetry and prose. Most of her poems remained unpublished, but a short story was printed by the Atlantic Monthly in 1911. Just two months later, the magazine began serializing what became The Promised Land, which was eventually published in book form by Houghton Mifflin. The book celebrates the promise of America, contrasting the abundant opportunities of the United States to the economic and cultural oppression faced by Jews in Europe. Making Antin an instant celebrity, the book sold almost 85,000 copies over the next four decades. Despite its rosy picture of the American dream, The Promised Land was one of the first books to present the stark realities of the immigrant experience to an American audience in English.

After the publication of The Promised Land, Antin campaigned for Theodore Roosevelt's (unsuccessful) presidential bid, and then traveled the country speaking about the themes of her book. Roosevelt later said that his support of women's suffrage came from his association with Antin and women like her. Despite Antin's zeal for Americanization, she was also a dedicated Zionist, arguing that Zionism was "in no sense incompatible with complete civic devotion" to the United States.

In 1914, Antin published They Who Knock at Our Gates, a passionate defense of the immigrant and an argument against immigration restriction. When the U.S. entered World War I, in 1917, she lectured on behalf of the Allied cause, but her activism led to an estrangement from her husband, a German sympathizer. By 1919, they had separated permanently. Around this time, Antin retired from public life, but continued to publish occasional essays. She died of cancer in 1949.

To learn more about Mary Antin, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Autobiography in the United States.

See also: Jewish Women "On the Map" - Boston Latin Girls School, the education of Mary Antin.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 55-57; New York Times, April 14, 1912, June 30, 1912, May 18, 1949.

Annette Greenfield Strauss becomes first elected female mayor of Dallas

April 18, 1987

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Starting as a volunteer fund-raiser for the United Jewish Appeal, Annette Greenfield Strauss went on to raise more than twenty million dollars for various institutions in a career that included her election as the first female and the first Jewish mayor of Dallas, Texas.

Institution: Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Participation, Austin, Texas

Although Adlene Harrison had won appointment as mayor of Dallas in 1976, Annette Greenfield Strauss became the city's first elected woman mayor on April 18, 1987, two weeks after winning a plurality of the vote in a mayoral primary.

The election capped Strauss's long history of involvement in civic affairs in Dallas. Although she did not become a member of the Dallas City Council until 1983, her engagement with city affairs started in 1947, when she began volunteering as a fundraiser for the United Jewish Appeal (UJA). Her success with the UJA led to a well-recognized career as Dallas's most effective volunteer fundraiser. Over four decades, she worked on behalf of causes ranging from the Dallas Symphony to the Baylor University Medical Center, and from the Dallas Black Dance Theatre to the United Way. By one estimate, she raised over $20 million for citywide campaigns and projects.

When she turned to the political arena, Strauss's long experience of networking for fundraising helped her to win votes. Promising to be the "mayor of all the people," she pulled together a coalition that included both affluent white voters and poor black and Latino voters. Together, their votes enabled Strauss to defeat her main challenger, who was supported by the Dallas business establishment that had traditionally anointed the city's leaders.

Strauss served as mayor of Dallas until 1991 and then became a public relations consultant. As mayor, she was noted for her ability to build consensus across political lines and across economic strata. After her term, she was appointed ambassador-at-large for Dallas, a position she held until her death in December 1998. In the intervening years, she continued to be active in social and philanthropic causes, and was frequently honored for her work. In 1996, she was awarded the first Annette G. Strauss Humanitarian Award by a homeless shelter she had previously helped to found. She was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame and received the University of Texas's Distinguished Alumnus Award. Today, an arts commons in Dallas, a lecture series at Southern Methodist University, and an Institute for Civic Participation at UT-Austin are named in her honor.

To learn more about Annette Greenfield Strauss, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for February 11, 1976, "Adlene Harrison becomes first Jewish female big-city mayor"; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Dallas Texas Mayor's Office.

Sources: communication.utexas.edu/strauss/legacy.html; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 1348; New York Times, April 6, 1987, April 20, 1987.

Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" acquired by the Brooklyn Museum

April 18, 2002

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Judy Chicago.

Photographer: Donald Woodman 2004; Institution: Judy Chicago

Artist Judy Chicago is best known for her monumental mixed-media sculpture, The Dinner Party, which was first exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979. A symbolic history of women in Western civilization, the piece comprises an enormous triangular table with thirty-nine place settings commemorating women such as the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Sojourner Truth, and Virginia Woolf. The table stands on a tile floor marked with the names of an additional 999 women. A landmark in feminist art, The Dinner Party was controversial for its use of sexual female imagery. Since 1979, the piece has been seen by more than one million people in a variety of venues. On April 18, 2002, The Dinner Party was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum for its permanent collection. The permanent installation opened on March 23, 2007 as the centerpiece of the new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The Dinner Party remains a powerful reminder of the transformative power of inviting the legacy and heritage of women's achievements into one's life and consciousness. Boston's Fenway Community Health Center, for instance, sponsors an annual fundraiser inspired initially by Chicago's work. The fifteenth installment of "The Women's Dinner Party" gathered more than 1,100 women in support of the health center's outreach to HIV-positive clients and to the LGBT community in April 2006. Another indication of the continuing evocative power of this work is in the way that some schools have used the dinner party concept as an educational tool. The Blue Oak School in Napa, California, for instance, presented "The Dinner Party Art Exhibit" in May 2005. Blue Oak School's students from kindergarten through the sixth grade honored historic women by creating ceramic plates and place settings representing women from the fields of cooking, writing, inventing, athletics, and art, and of general achievement in the United States and around the world.

A descendant of 23 generations of rabbis, including the eighteenth-century Lithuanian rabbi the Gaon of Vilna, Chicago was educated at the Art Institute of Chicago and at UCLA, where she earned a master's degree in 1964. Her work has always explored questions of gender and power. Significantly, many of Chicago's creations have involved the collaborative work of dozens, even hundreds, of women volunteers. Her first major exhibit, Womanhouse (1972), was a joint creation of the members of the Fresno Feminist Art Program, which Chicago created at California State University in 1970.

The Birth Project (1980-1985) grew out of Chicago's realization that the birthing process was rarely a subject of Western art. For this piece, Chicago designed images of women in labor, which were then translated into needlework by women around the U.S. Needlework is also the medium for Chicago's Resolutions: A Stitch in Time (1994-2000), which reinterprets traditional proverbs. Other mixed-media projects, combining paint, photography, and bronze relief, include Powerplay and The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (1985-1993).

Chicago has also taught courses at Indiana University, Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and Pitzer College in California. Currently, Chicago offers classes through her non-profit Through the Flower foundation, based in New Mexico.

To learn more about Judy Chicago, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: In Focus: Jewish Women Artists; On the Map:The Dinner Party on display at the Brooklyn Museum.

Sources: www.judychicago.com; www.brooklynmuseum.com; jwa.org/discover/infocus/artists/chicago;Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 217-219; Amelia Jones, Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History (Berkeley, 1996); Edward Lucie-Smith, Judy Chicago: An American Vision (New York, 2000); Gail Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago, A Biography of the Artist (New York, 2007); Letter from Adriana Guitierrez to the Jewish Women's Archive, March 7, 2005; Boston Spirit Magazine, April/May 2006; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution: jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA013; Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation (New York, 2007).

Ten works by Diane Arbus are featured in Venice Biennale

April 19, 1972

Photographer Diane Arbus got her start in fashion photography in the 1940s. However, by the time ten of her works were chosen for the Venice Biennale on April 19, 1972, a year after her death, she was much better known for her photographs of people on society's margins.

Born Diane Nemerov in New York City in 1923 and educated at the Ethical Culture School, she married photographer Allan Arbus when she was 18. In collaboration with her husband, who took care of the technical aspects while she styled the photo shoots, she became a successful fashion photographer. In the late 1950s, tired of the fashion world, Arbus turned her camera to social outcasts and misfits. Her disturbing images included photos of "freaks," carnival performers, twins, children, nudists and the residents of a home for retarded women. Arbus's work was distinctive in portraying her subjects looking directly at the camera, a pose that made them appear vulnerable but which was tempered with what a critic called "an extraordinary candor and sympathy."

Arbus's career took off when Esquire magazine published six of her photos in a special July 1960 issue on New York City. Over the next eleven years, Arbus published over 250 photographs in more than seventy magazine articles. Her work appeared in Harper's Bazaar, New York, Essence, Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times, and the (London) Sunday Times Magazine. Unusually for a photographer, Arbus was able to combine commercial success in magazines with success as an independent artist. Beginning in 1965, she had several shows at the Museum of Modern Art. She was also awarded two Guggenheim fellowships, in 1963 and 1966.

Losing a long-standing battle with depression, Arbus committed suicide on July 26, 1971. In the wake of her death, however, her fame grew. A review of her exhibit at the Venice Biennale called her photos "extremely powerful and very strange." The reviewer concluded that the ten photos on display were "enough to make us eager to see the full range of this amazing camera artist." After the Biennale, a major retrospective of her work was mounted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1972.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art mounted the first major overview of her work since the early 1970s in Fall, 2003. The exhibit also appeared at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in Spring 2005. Michael Kimmelman's review of the New York exhibit observed that Arbus's most memorable work "was all about heart – a ferocious audacious heart. It transformed the art of photography ... and it lent a fresh dignity to the forgotten and neglected people in whom she invested so much of herself."

Arbus's estate presented the artist's complete personal and professional archive to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2007.

To learn more about Diane Arbus, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 58-61; Patricia Bosworth, Diane Arbus: A Biography (New York, 1984); New York Times, August 22, 1971, April 20, 1972, June 17, 1972, March 11, 2005, December 18, 2007.

Paula Hyman discusses publication of "The Jewish Woman in America"

April 20, 1976

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The noted social historian Paula E. Hyman has focused her scholarly exposition on her two primary areas of interest, the Jews of France and Jewish women. Her work as co-editor of both Jewish Women in America and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia reflects a commitment to Jewish feminism that is both personal and academic.

Photographer: Michael Marsland

When Paula Hyman, Charlotte Baum, and Sonya Michel published The Jewish Woman in America in 1976, it was a groundbreaking work. This book represented one of the first efforts to offer a systematic consideration of Jewish women's history in the United States and was considered a pioneering work of Jewish feminism. Consequently, it received a great deal of attention. On April 20, 1976, Paula Hyman spoke about the book—and the topic of Jewish women's history—on New York City radio station WEVD, on the half-hour Postscripts program hosted by Katharine Balfour.

In a recent interview, Hyman recalled that The Jewish Woman in America grew out of “our passion as feminists.” It was “just simply something that we felt had to be done.” Hyman is careful to note that The Jewish Woman in America was not the first book on the subject, but it was the first to approach it from a feminist orientation. As Hyman says, “it was clearly a book with a mission... we felt it was going to tell a story that hadn’t been widely recognized.” Taking on such a broad and weighty subject might have been daunting for two young graduate students and an older woman returning to school for her BA, but they were empowered by feminism: “We said: ‘well we can do this and began to work.’” The Jewish Woman in America, Hyman notes, “is the only book for which I received fan letters, often from housewives who said ‘I get up early to read this book, it’s been so important to me, and thank you for writing it.’”

The Jewish Woman in America, published when Hyman was still a graduate student, was the first of three ambitious collaborative projects that have punctuated her career. Each of these projects has redefined the horizons of our knowledge about Jewish women’s history. In 1997, Hyman co-edited (with Deborah Dash Moore) Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, a comprehensive work which offered unprecedented access to information on a broad range of American Jewish women's achievements and contributions. This work has proven invaluable to those attempting to expand public knowledge about American Jewish women, serving as a central resource, for example, in the creation of the Jewish Women's Archive's This Week in History feature.

In 2006, Alice and Moshe Shalvi of Shalvi Publishing Ltd. released the CD-ROM version of Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, co-edited by Hyman and Hebrew University historian Dalia Ofer and sponsored by the Jewish Women’s Archive. Three years later, in March 2009, the Jewish Women’s Archive launched the online version of Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia equivalent to a four-volume printed work. Drawing on Jewish Studies scholars from around the world, the new encyclopedia, with its coverage of as many regions and eras of Jewish history as was possible, has once again reframed our knowledge of Jewish and Jewish women’s history.

Hyman’s individual scholarly work focused on both Jewish women’s history and the history of French Jews. Among her books are The Emancipation of the Jews of Alsace: Acculturation and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (1991), and Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women (1995). In 2002, she edited My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland, a memoir by Puah Rakovska. Hyman taught at Yale University, where she was the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History, a position she held from 1986 until 2011. Paula Hyman passed away on December 15, 2011.

To learn more about Paula Hyman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.

See also: This Week in History for March 14, 1972; Paula Hyman: 30 Years of Shaping Jewish Women's History.

Sources: New York Times, April 20, 1976; www.yale.edu/religiousstudies/facultypages/cvph.html; www.hds.harvard.edu/wsrp/people/Advisory/hyman.htm; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution: jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA039; JWA interview, February 8, 2007.

May designated Jewish American Heritage Month

April 20, 2006

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In 2005 Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania introduced a resolution to designate a month to honor Jewish American culture and heritage. The official designation was primarily the result of advocacy by the Jewish Museum of Florida and Jewish community leaders in South Florida, who sought to recognize the more than 350 years of Jewish contributions to American history and culture.

Both Houses of Congress passed the resolutions unanimously. On April 20, 2006, President George W. Bush signed an official document declaring the month of May Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM). In May of that year, a number of national organizations, including the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, participated in JAHM by raising consciousness about the many contributions Jewish Americans have made.

In March 2007 a group of major national Jewish historical and cultural organizations, including the Jewish Women’s Archive, formed the JAHM Coalition.

For the 2008 celebration of JAHM, the Jewish Women's Archive launched This Day of Jewish American Heritage, a daily online feature that connects every day in May to significant moments in the history of American Jewish women.

The Coalition named Abby Schwartz as the first national JAHM coordinator in 2009. It also welcomed the Manischewitz Company as a corporate sponsor and partnered with SuperValu Foods to promote the 2010 celebration.

In May, 2010, Jewish women were front and center at the first ever White House reception marking Jewish American Heritage month. JWA's Executive Director Gail Twersky Reimer was in attendance.

To learn more about Jewish American Heritage month, visit Discover: Jewish American History Month.

See also: JAHM official website; JWA’s “This Day of Jewish American Heritage”; Video: Rep. Wasserman Schultz Recognizes Jewish American Heritage Month 2009; Jewish Women in Politics; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Celebrating Jewish American Heritage at the White House.

Sources: www.jewishamericanheritagemonth.us/index.aspx; www.jewishheritagemonth.gov; jwa.org/discover/throughtheyear/may/jahm.

Yiddish theater impresario Dora Wasserman receives Order of Canada

April 21, 1993

Yiddish theater producer and advocate Dora Wasserman received the Order of Canada, the highest honor bestowed on civilians by the Canadian government, on April 21, 1993.

Born in Ukraine in 1920 [some sources say 1919], Wasserman studied at Moscow's Yiddish Art Theatre and acted with the Kiev State Theatre and Kazakhstan State Theatre before Stalinist repression closed down most Yiddish theatres in the Soviet Union. In 1950, she fled the U.S.S.R. with her husband and two young daughters. After stints in Poland and a displaced persons camp in Vienna, Austria, Wasserman and her family arrived in Montreal, where she would spend the rest of her life.

In Montreal, Wasserman at first taught drama to Jewish schoolchildren, many of them Yiddish-speaking refugees like her, and performed as a singer, pianist, and guitarist. After six years, she formed the Yiddish Drama Group, an adult amateur ensemble that later became the Yiddish Theatre and then was renamed the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre. The Group's first production, The Innkeeper, was staged in 1957.

Although her troupe was not made up of professional actors, Wasserman insisted on a high level of both performance and dedication and was rewarded with the loyalty of her actors and the high praise of critics and fans. The more than 70 plays she directed over four decades earned her the title of grande dame of the Yiddish theatre.

Among the Yiddish Theatre's productions were classics by well-known Yiddish writers like Sholom Aleichem and Sholem Asch; modern works translated into Yiddish for her company, like Montreal playwright Michel Tremblay's classic Les Belles Soeurs (the Sisters-in-Law); and new works written especially for her troupe. The most successful of these was A Bintel Brief, based on immigrants' letters to the advice column of the Jewish Daily Forward. Tremblay called her production of Les Belles Soeurs the best interpretation in any foreign language.

Wasserman's theatre reached an audience beyond the population of native Yiddish-speakers, which grew smaller with each passing decade. She believed that, "if [a play] is good, you will feel it. You don't need to understand the language on the stage." Still by providing supertitles in English and French, the Theatre's works became accessible to a wide audience in Quebec, and on tours in Israel, the United States, Austria, and Russia. In addition, Wasserman traveled frequently to Jewish schools to lead extracurricular programs designed to instill a love of both theatre and Yiddish. These programs reached some 3,000 students each year.

In 1973, the troupe moved to the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal, where it is now the only permanent resident Yiddish theatre in North America. It is also one of only four Yiddish theatres in the world – the others are in New York, Warsaw, and Tel Aviv. Wasserman passed leadership of the theatre to her daughter, Bryna Wasserman, in 1996, after a disabling stroke. The elder Wasserman died in 2003. Her headstone in a Montreal cemetery reads, "with love and magic, Dora founded the miracle of Yiddish Theatre in Montreal, a bridge to the Jewish people's continuity."

To learn more about Dora Wasserman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Yiddish Theater in the United States.

Sources:Lilith, 19:4 (December 31, 1994); The Forward, December 26, 2003; New York Jewish Week, December 26, 2003; Canadian Jewish News, January 1, 2004, November 11, 2004; www.segalcentre.org/en/yiddish_theatre/; www.folksbiene.org; www.gg.ca/honours/nat-ord/oc/index_e.asp.

Wage Earners' League for Woman Suffrage holds first mass rally

April 22, 1912

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Courtesy of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Archives, Kheel Center Collection, Cornell University.

The year-old Wage Earners' League for Woman Suffrage held its first mass rally on April 22, 1912, at New York's Cooper Union's Great Hall of the People. Founded by the young veteran organizers Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and three others, the League sought to encourage working women to join the political process as well as to agitate for the right to vote. Lemlich, a shirtwaist maker, became the League's vice president.

Drawing on their background in the Socialist movement, the founders of the Wage Earners' League emphasized the special concerns of working women. They argued in speeches and pamphlets that women needed the vote in order to secure basic human rights like safe working conditions. In doing so, League leaders came into conflict with both Socialist men and middle-class women. The men who counted on female allies in Socialist causes bluntly suggested that suffrage activists return to their kitchens. Middle-class women showed their class bias in suggesting that their wealth and education made them more capable activists than these working women. Wary of having their specific concerns sidestepped, League members agreed that any woman could join their group, but that only workers could vote, ensuring that working women would remain in control of the League's agenda and tactics.

The April 22, 1912, Cooper Union rally brought together thousands of cheering women to listen to arguments for women's suffrage. The location was symbolic; Cooper Union was the site of the rally that had kicked off the "Uprising of the 20,000," one of the first and most influential strikes of industrial garment workers, just three years before. Despite a large and enthusiastic turnout at the rally, the League dissolved soon afterward. Lacking a full-time organizer and a steady source of funding, the League ceased to be active. Schneiderman went on a speaking tour for another suffrage organization; her colleagues likewise turned their energies to other groups. Ultimately, the fight for suffrage would depend on alliances across class and gender lines.

To learn more about Rose Schneiderman and Clara Lemlich, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for November 22, 1909; Rose Schneiderman poster; 10 Things You Should Know About Clara Lemlich and 10 Things You Should Know About Rose Schneiderman on Jewesses with Attitude; In Focus: Jewish Women In Politics.

Sources: Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (Chapel Hill, 1995); New York Times, April 23, 1912.

Barbara Tuchman delivers Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities

April 24, 1980

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Translated into thirteen languages, the eminently readable, meticulously researched histories by Barbara Tuchman won two Pulitzer Prizes and a loyal audience that made them best-sellers.

Institution: American Jewish Historical Society

Barbara Tuchman, who was born in 1912, never earned a graduate degree in history, but her best-selling books made history come alive for millions of readers and earned two Pulitzer Prizes for their author.

Raised in a privileged New York family, Tuchman traveled extensively with her parents before attending Radcliffe College, where she studied history and literature. After her graduation, she wrote about the Spanish Civil War for The Nation, and then worked at the Office of War Information during World War II, traveling in Asia. These reporting stints sparked Tuchman's interest in the history of war.

Tuchman's first book, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour (1956), expressed strong sympathy for Zionism. She is best known, however, for two books that won Pulitzer Prizes: The Guns of August (1962), about the First World War, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (1972). The Guns of August was later made into a movie of the same name.

Although her relationships with professional historians were sometimes strained, Tuchman did garner recognition, serving as the president of the Society of American Historians (1970-1973), and as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1979).

Tuchman was the first woman invited to deliver the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities. An invitation to give the Jefferson Lecture is the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. In her lecture, presented on April 24, 1980, Tuchman took "Mankind's Better Moments" as her title and theme, reflecting her general optimism about the human condition. Tuchman repeated the lecture in London a week later, the first time that a Jefferson Lecture had been repeated abroad, marking her international renown as a writer. Tuchman published her last book, The First Salute, just a year before her death in 1989.

To learn more about Barbara Tuchman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1414-1416; New York Times, February 28, 1980, April 25, 1980; www.neh.gov/whoweare/jefflect.html.

First meeting of The United Order of True Sisters

April 25, 1846

Organized at Temple Emanu-El in New York City, the United Order of True Sisters (UOTS) held its first meeting on April 25, 1846. Conceived as a female counterpart to the male Jewish B'nai B'rith organization (founded in 1843), but functioning separately, UOTS claims to be the first independent national women's organization in the United States.

Some of the Order's goals resembled those of earlier Jewish women's mutual aid and charitable societies. The Sisters sought "refinement of the heart and mind and moral improvement," and paid regular dues to be used for burial fees and material aid to members struck by illness or sudden poverty.

Unlike earlier charitable women's organizations, however, the UOTS also had explicitly political goals. In the words of the group's 1864 constitution, the Order sought "particularly the development of free, independent and well-considered action of its members. The women are to expand their activities, without neglecting their obligations as housekeepers, in such a manner, that if necessary they can participate in public meetings and discussions." The structure of the lodge, with secret passwords, degrees of membership, and closely-guarded rituals, mirrored the organization of men's fraternal organizations like B'nai B'rith, the Masons, and the Odd Fellows.

The members of UOTS were mostly middle-class German-Jewish women, as evidenced by the fact that meetings at most lodges were conducted in German until the end of the First World War. Many members were wives of B'nai B'rith members. The UOTS provided these women a place to exercise their leadership abilities and develop a role in the public sphere, without being subject to the authority of men. Although most probably did not fear material want, the system of mutual aid provided an unusual degree of security and independence.

Initiated under the leadership of Henriette Bruckman, and founded with just ten other members, the original lodge counted over 100 members by 1851. In the same year, the UOTS established a Grand Lodge as an umbrella organization to connect lodges in different cities and to centralize authority. By the mid-1860s, lodges existed in Philadelphia, New Haven, and Albany as well as New York. Active in public life from the beginning, the UOTS established its own newspaper, Der Vereinsote, in 1884.

Today, the UOTS continues to maintain chapters across the country, although its focus has changed and is no longer identified as an exclusively Jewish organization. Since 1947, the main activities of the Order have been raising money for cancer research and providing support to cancer patients. The most recent chapter was formed in Suffolk County, New York, in 1978.

Sources:Cornelia Wilheim, "The Independent Order of True Sisters: Friendship, Fraternity, and a Model of Modernity for Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Womanhood," American Jewish Archives Journal 54:1 (2002), http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/journal/PDF/Article54v1-Wilhelm.pdf; http://www.uots.org; http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FindingAids/uots.htm.

"New York Times" profiles entrepreneur Lillian Vernon

April 26, 1978

In a New York Times profile published on April 26, 1978, Lillian Vernon was described as "the first lady of mail order catalogues," a designation she had earned through more than two decades of entrepreneurship and steady growth of her eponymous business.

Born Lilly Menasche in Leipzig, Germany, in 1927, Lillian Vernon fled with her family first to Amsterdam and then to New York to escape Hitler. In the U.S., her father manufactured leather goods, which would become the base of Vernon's first foray into mail-order.

Married and pregnant, Vernon began the business that would become Lillian Vernon, Inc., in 1951. She took $495 of her wedding gift money to place an advertisement for personalized belts and handbags in Seventeen magazine. Her father's company manufactured the belts and bags, and Vernon embossed, packaged, and shipped them. The ad brought in over $32,000 worth of sales, and Vernon's company was born. She mailed her first catalogue two years later.

Taking monogramming as its trademark, and catering mainly to women, Lillian Vernon mail-order grew rapidly, generating $200,000 in sales in 1956, the year Vernon opened her first manufacturing plant. By 1990, sales had risen to $238 million, and the mailing list had grown to 17 million names.

After pioneering her successful mail-order business, Vernon continued to keep the company at the forefront of commercial changes. She began opening retail outlets in 1985, and went online a decade later. Hers was also the first woman-owned business to be listed on the American Stock Exchange. The company continues to introduce new catalogs regularly, and now produces special lines of items for children, teens, and gardening, as well as its traditional products for the home.

Vernon has used her wealth to support over 500 charities, and has been recognized by, among others, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which awarded her its National Hero Award. She has also received the NAACP Medal of Honor, and has been inducted into the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 1997, she was named one of 50 leading women entrepreneurs by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners. Though she no longer embossed items herself, Vernon was active as the CEO of her company and as its main spokesperson until 2006.

See also: On the Map: Hometown of Lillian Vernon's First Mail Order Business.

Sources: www.harrywalker.com/speakers_template.cfm?Spea_ID=224&SubcatID=195; www.lillianvernon.com; New York Times, April 26, 1978, May 24, 1998; Jeannette Oppedisano, Historical Encyclopedia of Women Entrepreneurs: 1776 to the Present (Westport, CT, 2000); Lillian Vernon, An Eye for Winners: How I Built One of America's Greatest Direct-Mail Businesses (New York, 1996).

Helene Deutsch publishes first volume of "The Psychology of Women"

April 27, 1944

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Psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch expanded on theories of her mentor, Sigmund Freud, to develop her own outlook on women’s psychology, writing the first book with a psychoanalytic perspective on the subject.

Institution: Gidal-Bildarchiv im Salomon Ludwig Steinheim-Bildarchiv für deutsch-jüdische Geshichte e.g., Duisberg

Born in Poland and trained in psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, Helene Deutsch immigrated to Boston in 1935, where she joined the faculty of the newly established Boston Psychoanalytic Training Institute. Already established as an important psychoanalyst in Vienna, Deutsch found further success in the United States.

In Vienna, Deutsch had been the first woman analyst to be analyzed by Freud, and then became the first woman to head a psychoanalysis clinic, when in 1924 she took the helm of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute. There, she trained students and also published several important articles and a book, Psychoanalysis of the Neuroses (1930).

In Boston, Deutsch continued to train students and to write. From 1939 to 1941, she also served as president of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. On April 27, 1944, she published the first volume of The Psychology of Women, a two-volume work that explained her theory of women's psychological development. While adhering in large part to classical Freudian theory, Deutsch's book also drew from her own clinical experience. Among other things, she argued that women were trapped by a conflict between motherliness and eroticism, and wrote that the three essential traits of femininity are narcissism, passivity, and masochism.

At its publication, The Psychology of Women was the most comprehensive treatment of that subject, and it remained so for several decades. However, Deutsch's work became increasingly controversial as the modern feminist movement gained adherents. Feminists who blamed Freud for providing a rationale for the subjugation of women similarly blamed Deutsch for perpetuating the idea that femininity equates with passivity and masculinity with action. Feminist writer Susan Brownmiller called Deutsch "a pioneer, but a traitor to her sex." Deutsch rejected these criticisms, arguing that her views of women were actually positive.

In her personal life, Deutsch was an activist for many causes dear to feminists. She was, for instance, an outspoken supporter of legalized abortion. In Europe, she had worked to organize women workers and picketed the University of Vienna Law School in protest of its ban on women students. She believed that her use of Freudian theory helped liberate women to choose their own paths. However, her more lasting contribution is probably in the field of borderline personality disorders, where she defined the "as if" personality. Deutsch died in Cambridge, MA, in 1982.

To learn more about Helene Deutsch, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also Habsburg Monarchy: Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 329-331; New York Times, April 27, 1944, July 30, 1978, April 1, 1982; Paul Roazen, Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life (Garden City, NY, 1985).

Reform Judaism leader Jane Evans argues for ordination of women rabbis

April 29, 1957

On April 29, 1957, Jane Evans spoke to 1,000 delegates in favor of ordaining women rabbis at a biennial general assembly meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) – renamed the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) – the synagogue federation arm of the Reform movement, and of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS). Evans was the executive director of NFTS. In her speech at a special session of the meeting, Evans told her audience that "women are uniquely suited by temperament, intuition, and spiritual sensitivity to be rabbis." Although the New York Times called Evans's speech a "strong plea," the UAHC took no action.

Evans, however, continued her advocacy of women's ordination. At its 1963 biennial assembly, NFTS approved a resolution calling on the UAHC, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (the Reform movement's rabbinical seminary) to move forward on the ordination of women. Although some delegates were ambivalent, Evans was said to have the support of Jean Wise May, the daughter of the founder of American Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise. Nevertheless, the Reform movement in the U.S. did not ordain a woman rabbi until 1972, when Sally Priesand graduated from Hebrew Union College.

Women's rabbinic ordination was not the only progressive issue that Evans championed during her long career at the head of the NFTS. Hired as the first full-time executive director in 1933, Evans led the organization to pass resolutions supporting civil rights, access to birth control, fair employment practices, child labor legislation, the elimination of capital punishment, and de-escalation of the Vietnam War. A committed pacifist who became president of the National Peace Conference in 1950, Evans insisted that the NFTS encourage its members to speak out on national political issues as well as on issues concerning Reform Judaism specifically. She served as NFTS executive director until 1976, but she remained a central figure in the Reform movement as an activist and adviser to other movement leaders until her death in 2004.

See also: This Week in History for January 21, 1913 and June 3, 1972; National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 979-982; New York Times, April 30, 1957, November 20, 1963, January 15, 1950; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism.

Lifetime achievement award for cookbook author Joan Nathan

April 30, 2001

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Acclaimed cookbook author, Joan Nathan

Acclaimed cookbook author Joan Nathan found her way to food writing from a very different, if related, field. Armed with a master's degree in French Literature, she took a job as foreign press officer to Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. Inspired by his habit of conducting meetings over meals, Nathan wrote and published her first cookbook, The Flavor of Jerusalem, in 1975.

The success of Nathan's first book was followed by the publication of The Jewish Holiday Kitchen in 1979, An American Folklife Cookbook in 1984, and Jewish Cooking in America in 1994. Jewish Cooking in America was an instant hit, winning both the Julia Child Best Cookbook Award and the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. In addition to writing cookbooks, Nathan helped found New York City's Ninth Avenue Food Festival. In March, 2001, Nathan published The Foods of Israel Today, which contains recipes from Muslim and Christian as well as Jewish traditions.

On April 30, 2001, she was awarded the Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America award for lifetime achievement from the James Beard Foundation.

Nathan is the host of the PBS television show Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan, based on her award-winning book. The show combines recipes, history, and visits to chefs. Nathan contributes articles to Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Hadassah Magazine, and the New York Times. Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook (2004) combines and updates the earlier Jewish Holiday Baker (1997) and Jewish Holiday Kitchen (1979).

In 2005, Nathan utilized the research for her book The New American Cooking: An American Folklife Cookbook in her role as guest curator of Food Culture USA at the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The New American Cooking won the 2006 International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award in the American category. Her latest book is called, Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (2010).

To learn more about Joan Nathan, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Go & Learn Primary Documents and Lesson Plans: Jewish diversity and innovation: The view from the kitchen; Food in the United States; Eating Jewish: North African Salads, Eating Jewish: Shabbat Bread Done Differently, Eating Jewish: Cream Cheese Rugelah and Eating Jewish: Coconut Jam, Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: www.pbs.org/mpt/jewishcooking; www.jamesbeard.org/visual/index.php?q=james_beard_awards_whos_who.