Rosanna Dyer Osterman helps Confederacy retake Galveston

January 1, 1863

Rosanna Dyer Osterman, born in Germany, was living in Galveston, Texas, in 1862 when Union forces captured the city. She had come to Texas in 1838 to help her husband run his mercantile business. Eventually, she became a leading member of the Jewish community, helping to bring the first rabbi to Texas in 1852. When the Civil War broke out, Osterman, by then a widow, remained in Galveston. While many others left for the mainland, she stayed to nurse the sick and wounded, turning her home into a hospital. After the city was captured by Northern troops, she provided military information to Confederate officers in Houston. This information helped them to successfully recapture Galveston on January 1, 1863.

Just three years later, Osterman was killed in a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi River. In her will, she left her considerable fortune, over $200,000, to a host of Jewish and benevolent institutions. Gifts went to Jewish hospitals in New York, New Orleans, and Cincinnati, and enabled the establishment of a Hebrew Benevolent Society in Galveston, which cared for poor and sick people of all faiths. Osterman's bequests also funded synagogues in Houston and Galveston, a Widows and Orphans Home and a Sailors Home in Galveston, as well as a Jewish Foster Home in Philadelphia. In an obituary, the Galveston News lauded Osterman for her "unselfish devotion to the suffering and the sick" and said that "the history of Rosanna Osterman is more eloquently written in the untold charities that have been dispensed by her liberal hands than any eulogy man can bestow."

To learn more about Rosanna Dyer Osterman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Jewish Women "On the Map" - Home of Rosanna Dyer Osterman.

Sources: Jewish Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia, pp 1016-1017; Natalie Ornish, Pioneer Jewish Texans (Dallas, 1989), pp. 246-247.

Caroline Klein Simon sworn in as NY Secretary of State

January 1, 1959

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Though she claimed she was not a feminist, attorney and later judge Caroline Klein Simon said that for a woman to succeed she "must look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog." Her hard work was evident in her long career as a politician and public servant.

Institution: The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH, www.americanjewisharchives.org

On January 1, 1959, following Governor Nelson Rockefeller's inaugural address, his government appointees were sworn into office in a modest ceremony in the executive chamber of the New York State capitol building. Among them was Caroline Klein Simon, the second woman to hold the office of Secretary of State for New York.

Born in 1900, Simon earned a law degree at New York University in 1925. Unable to find a law firm willing to hire a woman, she worked for free for a year in order to prove that a woman could be a lawyer. At the end of the year, her law firm offered her a permanent job, but she chose to work for family planning groups and indigent clients instead. That choice marked the beginning of a lifelong dedication to public service.

In addition to volunteer work with the League of Women Voters, the Women's City Club, and the National Council of Jewish Women, Simon held paid positions as the executive director of the New York State Council of Jewish Women and as editor of the Birth Control Review. Simon was also active in city and state politics. In 1937, she spearheaded a campaign to allow women to serve on juries and became among the first women called to serve. A registered Republican, she worked on the campaigns of Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Dewey, and Fiorella LaGuardia.

Simon took up her first government post in 1943, when she became a member of the State War Council's Committee on Discrimination in Employment; later, she was the only woman member of the State Commission Against Discrimination, a position she held for more than ten years. In 1957, she became the first woman nominated for citywide office when the Republican party made her its candidate for president of the New York City Council. Although she lost the election, she ran some 100,000 votes ahead of the rest of the Republican ticket. Less than two years later, Nelson Rockefeller appointed her Secretary of State, a post she held until 1963; she then served on the New York Court of Claims until 1971. Simon continued to practice law into her nineties.

Throughout her years on the Commission Against Discrimination and in other state government posts, Simon was a strong voice for strengthening laws against discrimination in jobs and housing. She helped draft the first U.S. state law barring employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or nationality. Later, she led the way in barring racial "block-busting," a practice in which real estate agents exploited fears of racial integration to incite sales. Living out her credo of being simply "against discrimination in any form," Simon spent a lifetime working to bring down barriers. She died in July 1993, at age 92.

To learn more about Caroline Klein Simon, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for November 12, 1990, "Birth of Caroline Klein Simon, anti-discrimination pioneer."; Caroline Klein Simon in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1258-1260; New York Times, July 2, 1957, December 4, 1958, January 2, 1959, July 30, 1993.

Carolyn Leigh inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame

January 1, 1985

Carolyn Leigh wrote hundreds of tunes for Broadway, TV, and film and was twice nominated for a Tony award. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame two years after her death. New York-born Leigh began her music career early, writing her first songs at the age of nine. By the time she was 25, she had already written more than 200 songs. Her first hit was “Young At Heart,” originally written for Johnny Richards but popularized by Frank Sinatra.

After her success with “Young at Heart,” Leigh went on to write songs for such musical greats as Rosemary Clooney, Pat Boone, and Peggy Lee. Among her most famous works are the songs she co-wrote for the Broadway show “Peter Pan” starring Mary Martin, including the classic “I Won't Grow Up.”

Leigh formed an often rocky partnership with composer Cy Coleman on Broadway shows “Wildcat” and “Little Me”; the pair was nominated for a 1963 Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for “Little Me,” which was also nominated for Best Musical. Following her stormy relationship with Coleman, Leigh went on to work with composer Elmer Bernstein on the score of the Broadway show “How Now, Dow Jones,” which was based on her story ideas. The show initially received poor reviews, but Leigh and Bernstein received a 1968 Tony Award nomination for Best Composer and Lyricist.

Leigh was not limited to Broadway; her work also appeared in a number of movies and in the TV special “Heidi.” Although she originally penned the hit “The Best is Yet to Come” for Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and Michael Bublé have all recorded it.

Carolyn Leigh died of a heart attack in 1983 while working with Marvin Hamlisch on a musical adaptation of the film “Smile.”

Sources: Big Bands Database Plus; Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Ruth Seid wins prize for novel, "Wasteland"

January 2, 1946

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Cover of Wasteland, winner of the Harper Prize in 1946. Wasteland was written by Ruth Seid under the ambiguous pen name Jo Sinclair.

Ruth Seid, writing under the ethnically neutral and gender-ambiguous pen name Jo Sinclair, won the $10,000 Harper Prize for new writers on January 2, 1946. Seid had supported her writing through the generosity of a personal patron, sharing her $10 a week stipend with her parents, Russian immigrants living in Cleveland.

Like most of Seid's later fiction, Wasteland centers upon questions of Jewish and gender identity. The novel's main character is a Jewish photojournalist who passes as a gentile in order to gain social and professional acceptance. As Seid presents the photographer's attempts to understand his relationship to his immigrant family, Seid explores her mixed feelings about her Jewish identity and her own family. The book's sympathetic portrayal of the photographer's apparently lesbian sister further explores central questions of identity and belonging that reflected Seid's own experience.

When she won the Harper prize, Seid was already hard at work on a second novel. In this and her later works, she consistently focused on the theme of oppression in its many forms: anti-Semitism, racism, Jewish self-hatred, poverty, homophobia, and marginalization. Her most well-known novel, The Changelings, depicts a Jewish neighborhood in the process of becoming an African-American neighborhood. It takes the long history of Jewish oppression as a touchstone for exploring the prejudice faced by African Americans. Published in 1955, The Changelings won the 1956 Jewish Book Council of America annual fiction award, and was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Seid later published several more novels and a memoir, The Seasons: Death and Transfiguration (1992). Growing scholarly and popular interest in women's and ethnic literature in the 1980s and 1990s has revived interest in Seid's work. She died in 1995.

To learn more about Ruth Seid, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Enyclopedia.

See also: Lesbianism; Ruth Seid in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: New York Times, January 3, 5, 1946; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1262-1263.

Opening of Joan Rivers's first Broadway play

January 2, 1972

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Joan Rivers at Musto's 25th Anniversary, 2010. Photo by David Shankbone.

Joan Rivers's first Broadway play, Fun City, opened on January 2, 1972. Though a New York Times critic panned the production as "frenetic to the point of being frazzled," the same reviewer praised Rivers as "a deft comedy writer" and "a very funny lady." Although Fun City, which Rivers both co-wrote and starred in, met with only tepid success, Rivers went on to make an indelible mark on American comedy.

Born in Brooklyn on June 8, 1933, and raised by Russian Jewish immigrants, Rivers was educated at Barnard College, where she earned a B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1954. Rivers aspired to a career in theater from a young age. Defying the wishes of her mother and father, who wanted Rivers to marry and settle down in "polite society," Rivers worked as an office temp after college while auditioning for Off- and Off-Off-Broadway plays. She got her first big break in 1961, when she joined the Second City Comedy troupe of Chicago.

Within a few years, Rivers built on her success with Second City to become a regular in New York City comedy clubs. She also wrote comedy scripts for others, including for the Phyllis Diller Show and Candid Camera. In 1965, she was introduced to a national audience in a dialogue with Johnny Carson on Carson's Tonight Show, where she also became a writer. Rivers's act was marked by a combination of unsettling frankness and an unthreatening ingénue image. She adopted the monologue style of male comedians, but used it to challenge social conventions. She was, for instance, among the first mainstream comedians to talk frankly about sex, which she did with a sharp wit that both shocked and endeared her to audiences.

In the 1970s, Rivers branched out into new media. After the mixed reaction to Fun City, her 1973 comic TV movie The Girl Most Likely To was the most successful made-for-TV movie of its time. Two books, Having a Baby Can Be a Scream (1975) and The Life and Times of Heidi Abramowitz (1984) were also great successes. While Rivers served as a permanent guest host for Johnny Carson from 1983 through 1986, her own attempted late-night television program on Fox, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, was a failure. The 1990s saw Rivers addressing more serious themes. In the NBC movie Tears and Laughter, in which Rivers played herself, and a Broadway play, Sally Marr and Her Escorts (both 1994), she addressed the price that artists pay for their celebrity. Tears and Laughter addresses the suicide of Rivers' husband, producer Edgar Rosenberg, while Sally Marr is based on the life of Lenny Bruce's mother. Rivers remains active as a comedian, often promotes her own line of jewelry on the QVC cable network, and serves as an occasional fashion commentator with her daughter Melissa.

Rivers is profiled in Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women (2007), a documentary produced by the Jewish Women's Archive.

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

See also: Jewish Women in Comedy; Television in the United States; Joan Rivers: Spitfire of her own roast, Rethinking the question: "Why are there so few women in comedy?", Comedy, Cultural Memory & Legacy, and Joan Rivers as Yoda, Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1154-1156; New York Times, January 3, 1972; Joan Rivers, Enter Talking (New York, 1986) and Still Talking (New York, 1991); Susan Blacher Cohen, Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor (Bloomington, IN, 1987); www.joanrivers.com/AllAboutJoan/; Making Trouble - www.makingtrouble.com.

Wall Street pioneer Mickie Siebert rings closing bell of New York Stock Exchange

January 5, 1998

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Muriel "Mickie" Siebert was the first woman to own her own seat and the first to own her own brokerage, Muriel Siebert & Co. This image is the cover of her book, Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick (2002).

Known as the "First Woman of Finance," Muriel "Mickie" Siebert rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on January 5, 1998 to commemorate her 30 years as a member. She was the first woman to own her own seat and the first to own her own brokerage, Muriel Siebert & Co.

A dentist's daughter from Cleveland, OH, Siebert never graduated from college. Still, by lying about her education, she was able to get a low-level job at a prominent Wall Street firm where she eventually became partner before striking out on her own. In 1967, after being rejected by nine of the first ten men she asked to sponsor her application, Siebert became the first woman to purchase a seat on the NYSE. A decade later, New York Governor Hugh Carey appointed Siebert the first woman New York State Superintendent of Banking, a post she held for five years. After an unsuccessful 1982 bid for a United States Senate seat, Siebert returned to Wall Street, where she became an outspoken critic of business and financial practices.

Throughout her career, Siebert worked on behalf of women in business and politics, donating millions of dollars from her brokerage and securities underwriting business to help other women break into the world of business and high finance. She is a founding member and former president of the Women's Forum, an international women's leadership network, and a member of the Committee of 200, a group of over 445 leading American businesswomen. Siebert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.

Sources: www.siebertnet.com/html/StartAboutMickie.aspx; New York Times, November 6, 1994, February 11, 1996, August 29, 1999.

Debbie Friedman played Carnegie Hall

January 7, 1996

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This image is the album cover of the milestone recording of Debbie Friedman's sold out concert at Carnegie Hall on January 7, 1996.

On January 7, 1996, Debbie Friedman gave a sold out concert at Carnegie Hall, commemorating twenty-five years as one of the Jewish community's most well-known and influential contemporary musicians. Known for her folky and "singer-friendly" style, Friedman recorded over twenty albums that sold over 200,000 copies.

Friedman began recording on her own label in 1972, appealing largely to Reform Jews and those interested in Jewish Renewal. Now, her music is sung in synagogues across the United States and has become so widespread that, in many places, it is thought of as "traditional." Since its release in 1993, her "Mi Sheberach" prayer (for healing) has become the fastest adopted liturgical melody in both the Reform and Conservative movements.

The 1999 release of Friedman's English-language album, "It's You," marked the singer/songwriter's first effort to reach a broader, not-necessarily-Jewish audience. That same year, Hallmark began releasing a series of Jewish holiday cards featuring Friedman's lyrics. A committed Jewish feminist, Friedman also composed all the music for the tremendously popular Ma'yan Women's Seder. She was famous for her inspiring live concerts, performing and teaching in communities, synagogues, schools and Federations throughout Europe, Israel, Canada, and the U.S.

In 2006 a movie was made about Friedman by producer Ann Coppel entitled "A Journey of Spirit." In 2007, Friedman accepted an appointment to the faculty of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion's School of Sacred Music in New York where she instructed both rabbinic and cantorial students. Debbie Friedman died on January 9, 2011.

To learn more about Debbie Friedman, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.

See also: Jewish Feminism in the United States; Jewish Women and Jewish Music in America; Ritual: A Feminist Approach.

On JWA's blog, Jewesses with Attitude: Arise, Arise: A New Wave of Jewish Women Musicians; Debbie Friedman: in our thoughts; By Spirit Alone: Remembering Debbie Friedman.

Sources: Billboard Magazine, March 1, 1997, March 6, 1999, July 24, 1999; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA025.

Sandra Feldman elected UFT President

January 8, 1986

When Sandra Feldman declared that "Just because kids are poor, and maybe come from uneducated parents, and live in an urban setting, doesn't mean they shouldn't have teachers who are paid as well, and whose lives are as comfortable professionally, as teachers from the richest suburbs," she spoke from personal experience as both a student and teacher in New York's public schools. The daughter of a milkman and bakery worker from Coney Island, Feldman herself attended Public School 188 and, later, Brooklyn College. With her mother often ill, she became responsible for caring for her two younger siblings. School and the public library became intellectual and cultural refuges for her, which she credited with "creating my future."

While at Brooklyn College, Feldman met Bayard Rustin and became actively involved in the Civil Rights movement. When, in the mid-1960s, she began teaching fourth grade on Manhattan's Lower East Side, she was one of only two union members working at the school. On Rustin's recommendation, she was hired as a full time field representative of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and quickly worked her way through the ranks of the organization. On January 8, 1986, New York City teachers elected Feldman union president, putting her in charge of the largest union local in the world. She was the first woman to head the UFT.

After a decade heading the UFT, Feldman was elected president of the American Federation of Teachers in May 1997, a position she held until her retirement in 2004. She was the first woman to head the union since 1930, and only the second in the organization's history. A recognized authority on urban education and a former teacher herself, Feldman also served on the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO.

A passionate advocate for children with an intense commitment to social justice, Feldman was involved in numerous community organizations. She co-chaired the Child Labor Coalition and headed the AFL-CIO Committee on Social Policy. In addition, she served on the board of the Jewish Labor Committee, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the United States Committee for UNICEF.

To mark her health-related retirement from the AFT in 2004, Congress passed a resolution honoring Feldman for "her tireless efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning." Sandra Feldman died on September 18, 2005 at the age of 66.

To learn more about Sandra Feldman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Labor Movement in the United States.

Sources: www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/winter05-06/tributeintro.htm;www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hr108-714;Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, pp. 404-405; Sandra Feldman, Correspondence to Jewish Women's Archive, May 2004; www.uft.org/news/sandra_feldman.

Birth of Ida Cohen Rosenthal, co-founder of Maidenform

January 9, 1886

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A vintage Maidenform advertisement. Photo courtesy of Lobstar28 via Flickr.

Ida Cohen Rosenthal, co-founder of Maidenform, the first company to make modern bras, was born on January 9, 1886 in Tsarist Russia. Shortly after immigrating to New Jersey in 1904, she married William Rosenthal. With little money in her pocket, she bought herself a Singer sewing machine on the installment plan and began working as an independent seamstress.

Ida's sewing business boomed during World War I, and soon she and her husband, along with business partner Enid Bisset, opened a custom dress shop called Enid Frocks. The popular "flapper" style of the day demanded a flat-chested look, which women achieved by wearing uncomfortable bandeaux. But the Rosenthals disliked the way their dresses fit women with artificially flat chests, and so they developed a new undergarment that would support and accentuate woman's natural figure: two cups connected by shoulder straps and a band that fastened in the back. At first, the partners simply gave the new bras away with each dress they sold. As the popularity of their new undergarment grew, however, they gave up dressmaking altogether and focused exclusively on producing and selling bras. To distinguish their product from the "boyish form" bandeaux, they called their new garment "Maidenform." The new company was called the Enid Manufacturing Company until, in 1930, it became the Maiden Form Brassiere Company to be more identified with its principal product. The firm survived both the Great Depression and Bisset's retirement and, by the end of the 1930s, department stores across the country and around the world were selling Maidenform bras.

While William focused on design—inventing standardized cup sizes, maternity and nursing bras, and adjustable straps—Ida ran the business, negotiating with unions and introducing assembly-line production. A marketing genius, she began an aggressive print and radio ad campaign, making Maidenform the first intimate apparel company to advertise. In 1949, Ida came up with the now-famous "I dreamed I... in my Maidenform bra" campaign, depicting brassiered women in a range of unexpected settings (like driving a chariot), which ran successfully for 20 years.

After William's death in 1958, Ida became the company's president and then chairman of the board. She continued working until she suffered a stroke in 1966, after which she stayed on as honorary chairman of the board until her death in 1973. Her daughter, Beatrice, inherited the multimillion dollar family company. Maidenform is now run by Ida's granddaughter, Elizabeth Coleman.

To learn more about Ida Cohen Rosenthal, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Jewesses With Attitude - "I dreamed I blogged in my Maidenform bra" and "What would Ida Cohen Rosenthal think of your bra as a symbol for breast cancer awareness?"; Advertising and Consumer Culture in the United States.

Sources: www.sil.si.edu/exhibitions/doodles/innov_rosenthal.htm; www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/rosenthal_hi.html; www.csupomona.edu/~plin/inventors/rosenthal.html; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 1181-2.

Gertrude Berg's "The Goldbergs" premieres on television

January 10, 1949

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The quintessential Jewish mother to millions of television viewers, "Molly Goldberg" (Gertrude Berg) is shown here in a scene from the film Molly, presumably giving out a taste of chicken soup.

Institution: Private collection

Gertrude Berg's popular radio program, The Goldbergs, about an upwardly mobile American Jewish family moved to television on January 10, 1949. Berg developed the original show as a series of live sketches to entertain guests at her family's Catskills hotel. In November 1929, the show began airing as The Rise of the Goldbergs on NBC radio. It was produced in recurrent runs as a daily 15-minute program on NBC and other networks for nearly two decades before shifting to TV. On both radio and TV, Gertrude Berg served as the program's sole writer, producer, and star.

Throughout its 30 years on radio and television, as well as in presentations on Broadway and on film, The Goldbergs dealt explicitly with Jewish life in the United States, joking about the cultural differences between "old world" immigrants and their American-born offspring. Berg’s Molly became a cultural touchstone, a figure who combined old world wisdom, new world common sense, and a mother’s humanity in confronting the perplexities of American life. Scholar Donald Weber has described the character as “an immigrant keeper of the American dream.” Over the show's three decades, the Goldberg family moved from a New York City tenement to the Bronx and later to suburban Connecticut, mirroring the upward progression of many Jews into the American mainstream.

Although Berg continued to produce The Goldbergs into the 1950s, the show's popularity declined. The demise of The Goldbergs reflects the homogenizing trend in postwar American society. As millions of ethnic Americans fled their traditional urban enclaves in search of un-hyphenated, simply "American" identities in the suburbs, programming explicitly grounded in ethnic cultures gave way to ostensibly generic programming like Leave it To Beaver and Father Knows Best. The Goldbergs went off the air in 1955.

To learn more about Gertrude Berg, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History October 18, 1948, Molly Goldberg makes her television debut; November 20, 1929, Gertrude Berg debuts in "The Goldbergs"; Television in the United States; Gertrude Berg in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/goldbergsth/goldbergsth.htm; www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/berggertrude/berggertrud.htm; www.radiohof.org/comedy/goldbergs.html.

Women of Faith conference convened

January 11, 1984

Religious women of many backgrounds gathered on January 11, 1984 for a Women of Faith conference at Marymount College in Virginia. The three-day conference was sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and brought together 100 Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish women. Those in attendance shared personal stories of bias and exclusion within their churches and synagogues and searched for new ways to empower women within communities of faith, linking the struggles of women for parity in religious settings to the broader feminist struggle for economic and political justice.

The conference reflected two important and growing trends. On the one hand, many of the women found that their faith influenced their thinking as feminists and their commitment to broad social change. At the same time, they brought their critical feminist thought to both their understanding and practice of religion. As women began to look at religion through feminist lenses, they insisted—not always successfully—that communities of faith adopt a less hierarchical, more egalitarian approach, and were adamant that the views and needs of women be taken seriously. According to conference organizer Inge Gabel, many women in fact became more involved in religion because of their feminist social activism. She explained, "It isn't just that women are dealing with emotions, but we have something just as important to say intellectually, theologically, politically, and morally."

Sources: New York Times, January 14, 1984; jwa.org/feminism.

Opening of art exhibit of work by Holocaust survivor Daisy Brand

January 13, 2006

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"Arrival #9" by Daisy Brand, 1999. This piece was part of an exhibit that opened January 13, 2006 at the Northern Clay Center in Minnesota. It was sponsored by the Northern Clay Center and the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Image courtesy of the Northern Clay Center.

The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Northern Clay Center sponsored an exhibit of works by ceramicist Daisy Brand, which opened at the Center on January 13, 2006. Brand grew up in a middle-class family in eastern Czechoslovakia. At the age of 14, she was deported with her family to Auschwitz. She was later sent to a slave labor camp in Riga, and subsequently to five other camps. She was the only member of her family to survive the war.

After liberation, Brand moved to Israel and then to the U.S. In 1963, she enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she majored in ceramics. She later studied at Boston University School for the Arts. Brand continues to maintain a studio in Boston.

Brand's work is rooted in her Holocaust experiences, but does not feature traditional images of the war and genocide. Instead, she draws from her memories of the particular landscapes and architecture that surrounded her. She says her references are "suggestive and deliberately ambiguous." While her work is rooted in the personal, the personal experiences behind it are not always obvious. Brand believes the sentiments that her work evokes are as universal as they are particular.

Brand's exhibit in Minneapolis was just one of many group and individual shows of her work. She has exhibited her works at the DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), the Biennale Internationale de Ceramique d'Art (Vallauris, France), the American Craft Council Gallery (New York, NY), and in other venues.

See also: Art in the United States; Jewish women "On the Map" - Daisy Brand exhibit at the Northern Clay Center; Art in the United States.

Sources: cla.umn.edu/pdf/DaisyBrand122005.pdf; chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/brand.

NY Times hails Carnegie Hall performance by Rosina and Josef Lhévinne

January 14, 1939

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Rosina Lhévinne (far left) with Russian conductor and pedagogue Vasily Ilyich Safonov (1852—1918) and other pupils from Moscow Conservatory (from left to right): Alexander Goedicke, Elena Beckman-Schcherbina, Olimpiada Kartasheva and Aglaida Fridman.

Critics hailed Rosina and Josef Lhévinne's two-piano recital, held at Carnegie Hall on January 14, 1939, for its "remarkable precision, subtle tinting, and the most carefully perfected detail." The concert by the husband-and-wife team marked both their 40th wedding anniversary and the 40th anniversary of their musical collaboration. The audience full of "many prominent musicians of the city" paid tribute to their long careers as musicians and teachers.

Born in Kiev on March 29, 1880, Rosina Bessie began her piano studies at age six. At age nine, she entered the Moscow Conservatory, where her classmates included Sergei Rachmaninoff. She met her future husband when her regular teacher became ill and Josef, five years older than she, filled in. Over the next nine years, she perfected her piano technique, graduating in 1898 with the school's gold medal.

The Lhévinnes were married after Rosina's graduation. Rosina then abandoned her fledging solo performance career in order to keep her husband, already an accomplished pianist and teacher, in the spotlight. However, she did not abandon the performance circuit altogether, often playing two-piano concerts with her husband. The Lhévinnes toured the U.S. together for the first time in 1907, and moved permanently to New York immediately after World War I. In 1924, they joined the faculty of the newly established Juilliard Graduate School, where they shared a studio. In addition to teaching, they gave regular concerts together in New York and around the country. They met with both popular and critical acclaim, with one critic calling their playing "brilliant, resourceful, and poetic."

After Josef Lhévinne's death in 1944, Rosina continued to teach at Juilliard, where her students included such promising musicians as Van Cliburn, David Bar-Ilan, James Levine, and Arthur Gold. As her students made their mark in national and international piano competitions, Lhévinne's fame grew. However, it was only in 1956, at the age of 76, that Lhévinne resumed her own solo piano career. Her first concert was with the Aspen Festival Orchestra; she went on to perform with orchestras around the country. In 1963, she appeared in four performances with the New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein's direction.

Despite a busy performance schedule, Lhévinne continued to teach at Juilliard until she passed her 96th birthday. After her death in November, 1976, Juilliard president Peter Mennin called her "quite simply one of the greatest teachers of this century."

To learn more about Rosina Lhevinne, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for January 20, 1963, "83-Year-Old Rosina Lhevinne Performed with the New York Philharmonic"; Jewish women "On the Map" - The Julliard School.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 845-847; Robert K. Wallace, A Century of Music-Making: The Lives of Josef and Rosina Lhévinne (Bloomington, 1976); New York Times, November 8, 1936, January 8, 1939, January 15, 1939.

Department store pioneer Beatrice Auerbach receives Tobe Award

January 14, 1948

Beatrice Fox Auerbach, the longtime proprietor of the G. Fox & Company department store in Hartford, Connecticut, was born on July 17, 1887 [some sources say July 7, 1887]. Auerbach was raised in Hartford, where her father ran the department store originally founded by his father, Gerson Fox, and named for him. In 1911, Auerbach moved to Salt Lake City to help her new husband run his family's department store there. The couple returned to Connecticut six years later when the G. Fox & Company building burned. Beatrice Auerbach's husband became secretary and treasurer of the rebuilt store, which occupied a twelve-story Art Deco building that dominated Hartford's Main Street.

When her husband died in 1927, Auerbach stepped into his shoes. She proved so good at running the business that when her father died in 1938, she became president of G. Fox & Company. Over the next three decades, Auerbach built the business into the largest privately-held department store in the United States. Under Auerbach's leadership, the store was known for excellent service, but it was also remarkable for the benefits extended to employees. Auerbach was among the first employers to introduce paid vacations and sick leave, and also among the first to hire African-Americans in meaningful professional positions. Her contributions to the field of retail were recognized with a Tobe Award, an annual prize for outstanding achievement in that field, presented on January 14, 1948 at a New York City banquet.

Auerbach sold G. Fox & Company to the May Company, owner of Macy's, in 1965, though she remained involved in the day-to-day operations of the store. The sale allowed Auerbach to increase the charitable contributions for which she was already well-known in Connecticut. The Service Bureau for Women's Organizations that she had established in 1945 taught leadership skills to members of women's groups. She also collaborated with Connecticut College for Women for over twenty years (1938-1959) in a retailing program that allowed participants to try out theories in the G. Fox store. Among the other beneficiaries of Auerbach's philanthropy were Trinity College, Wesleyan University, the University of Connecticut, and several Hartford-area cultural organizations. Auerbach died on November 29, 1968. G. Fox & Company closed permanently in 1992. The building, still a Hartford landmark, was later converted for use as a community college and retail shops.

To learn more about Beatrice Auerbach, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Advertising and Consumer Culture in the United States.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 99-100; New York Times, January 15, 1948, October 28, 1965, December 24, 1965, December 1, 1968; Preservation Online, September 10, 2002.

Melissa Hayden premieres role of Titania in Balanchine ballet

January 17, 1962

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Melissa Hayden, born in Canada, became one of the biggest stars of the American ballet.

Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1956. This photo is in the public domain.

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1923, Melissa Hayden became one of the biggest stars of American ballet. Although she began her ballet training late, at age 15, she quickly became a world-class dancer, joining the well-known American Ballet Theatre in New York City in 1945.

Three years later, Hayden joined the newly formed New York City Ballet, under the direction of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kerstein. Except for a brief return to the American Ballet Theatre in 1954, she would stay with the New York City Ballet (NYCB) until 1973. Recognized for her unusual strength and energy, qualities she was able to combine with lyricism and grace, Hayden danced many important roles with the NYCB. Among her notable performances were those in Jerome Robbins's Age of Anxiety (1950) and In the Night (1970), and in Frederick Ashton's Illuminations (1950).

Balanchine created many roles especially for Hayden. These included Miss Liberty Bell in Stars and Stripes (1958), and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which she premiered on January 17, 1962. A Midsummer Night's Dream was especially significant because it was the first full-length original ballet created in North America. When Hayden reprised the role of Titania in 1966, the New York Times reviewer called her "gracious and authoritative," and noted that "Miss Hayden dances like a prima ballerina should, with that distinctive musicality." These roles, along with those she danced in the company's regular repertoire, showcased Hayden's versatility as a dancer; some roles required technical precision, while others demonstrated Hayden's romanticism or delicacy.

After retiring from the NYCB in 1973, Hayden remained within the ballet world as a teacher and director. She was the artist-in-residence at Skidmore College for three years, then director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. She began her own ballet school in New York City in 1977 and then joined the faculty of the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) in 1983, re-staging 17 Balanchine ballets for NCSA student performances.

During her 23 years as an instructor at NCSA, Hayden also maintained her international outreach and influence, teaching groups ranging from the National Ballet of Turkey, to the Santiago Ballet, and Star Dancers in Tokyo. Hayden died on August 9, 2006.

To learn more about Melissa Hayden, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Dance Performance in the United States

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 604-606; Rasa Gustaitis, Melissa Hayden, Ballerina (New York, 1967); New York Times, January 14, 1962, April 11, 1966; www.ncarts.edu/pressreleases/Releases2006/Aug2006/melissahayden.htm.

Cynthia Ozick receives first Strauss Award

January 19, 1983

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The Shawl, published in 1989 and made into a play in 1996, is probably Cynthia Ozick's best known work. The story depicts the Holocaust in horrific detail, dealing directly with a variety of Jewish themes.

On January 19, 1983, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters announced that its first Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Awards would go to Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver. Carrying a stipend of $35,000 per year for five years, the awards were among the largest available to American writers.

Though Ozick's first published work was a novel, Trust, published in 1966, the Strauss award was primarily in recognition of her achievement in the art of the short story. At the time of the award, her story collections included The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971), Bloodshed and Three Novellas (1976), and Levitation: Five Fictions (1982). In 1984, the editors of the annual Best American Short Stories called her one of the three greatest living American short-story writers.

Ozick's best-known story is probably The Shawl, published in 1989 and made into a play in 1996. Like most of Ozick's work, The Shawl, which depicts the Holocaust in horrific detail, deals directly with Jewish themes. In other works, Ozick draws on Jewish texts and the Jewish-American experience to write about Holocaust denial, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish, and the tension between nature and civilization, among other themes.

Ozick has been repeatedly recognized as a master fiction writer. In addition to three O. Henry awards, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Ozick won the first Michael Rea Award for lifetime achievement in short fiction in 1986. Her work is frequently published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review. In addition, she has written numerous novels, including her latest, Heir to the Glimmering World, published in 2004. She is also known for trenchant essays of literary criticism. Her most recent collection of critical essays was The Din in the Head: Essays, published in 2006.

In 2008, Ozick was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award established by Bernard Malamud's family "to honor excellence in the art of the short story."

To learn more about Cynthia Ozick, visit Jewish Women: A Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Literature Scholars in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1019-1023; New York Times, January 19, 1983, February 10, 1983, May 19, 1988; www.reaaward.org/html/cynthia_ozick.html.

83-Year-Old Rosina Lhevinne Performed with the New York Philharmonic

January 20, 1963

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Rosina Lhevinne and her student Van Cliburn, ca. 1958; photographer unknown. Courtesy of The Julliard School.

Russian piano virtuoso Rosina Bessie Lhevinne’s (1880-1976) career traversed oceans and eras. Shortly after her birth in Kiev, Ukraine, anti-Semitic riots in the city caused the family to move to Moscow. Rosina began her musical education at home when she was six; by age nine, she was admitted to the prestigious Moscow Conservatory. Czar Alexander III had imposed a quota on Jewish students at the Conservatory, making young Rosina’s accomplishments extraordinary indeed. For her public debut at age 15, she played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 in E Minor, conducted by Vasily Safonov. She graduated in 1898 with a gold medal – the youngest woman in the school’s history to receive this highest of honors. Shortly thereafter, she married Josef Lhevinne, a fellow pianist.

While Rosina often performed with her husband, she was determined not to take the spotlight away from him as they played the orchestral halls of Moscow, Berlin, and Paris. The couple and their children moved repeatedly, following Josef’s career from prestigious academic post to prestigious academic post. Josef made his American debut in 1906 but subsequently returned to Europe. The family settled in a suburb of Berlin, where Rosina taught Josef’s students while he was on tour. With the outbreak of the First World War; the family was interned in Wannsee because of their Russian citizenship; the family immigrated to the United States. Both Rosina and Josef joined the faculty at Julliard.

Josef died suddenly on December 2, 1944, leaving Rosina uncertain of her future. Would she be able to maintain her academic post at Julliard if she no longer played with her husband? In fact, her reputation grew: as her students garnered ever more awards and accolades, their teacher’s name became famous. In 1956, at the age of 76, Rosina resumed her solo career. In a twist of poetry and history, she played with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 83, the same piece that she had played 61 years before as a gifted teenager in Moscow – “Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor.”

To learn more about Rosina Lhevinne, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for January 14, 1939, "NY Times hails Carnegie Hall performance by Rosina and Josef Lhévinne"; Jewish women "On the Map" - The Julliard School.

Creation of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods

January 21, 1913

On January 21, 1913, 156 women from 52 congregations around the country met in Cincinnati, Ohio, under the leadership of Carrie Obendorfer Simon, to create the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS).

While local women's groups had been formed in many individual synagogues in the 1890s, NFTS was the first national body to bring these groups together. Although convened within the framework of the national meeting of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, NFTS was initially envisioned as a federation of all synagogue sisterhoods. Within a decade, however, sisterhoods from Conservative and Orthodox synagogues formed their own national organizations, thus leaving NFTS as an arm of Reform Judaism.

Differentiating itself from the National Council of Jewish Women and other social service groups, NFTS focused from the beginning on women's contributions to their own synagogues. Early projects included sponsoring Chanuka and Purim parties for religious school children, beautifying synagogues for holidays, and supporting religious schools. NFTS also raised money for rabbinical school scholarships and played a leading role in creating the National Federation of Temple Youth.

From an early impressive membership of 9,000 in 49 local chapters, the organization today claims 75,000 members in 500 different affiliated groups around the world. In 1993, NFTS was renamed Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), reflecting a desire to be seen not only as an auxiliary group, but as an organization that puts its members and their interests at the center of Reform Judaism.

Sisterhood members were concerned from the beginning with the changing role of women in Reform Judaism. Leaders pushed for women to be able to sit on synagogue boards and, in the 1920s, instituted Sisterhood Sabbaths, during which, in many congregations, women both led services and delivered sermons. In 1963, NFTS called upon Reform Judaism to take up the question of women's ordination as rabbis (the first Reform woman rabbi was ordained in 1972). In recent decades, NFTS/ WRJ has been active in addressing such issues as civil rights, child labor legislation, capital punishment, and abortion rights. In December 2007, WRJ published The Torah: A Women's Commentary, edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea Weiss. This project, in process for many years, reflects an effort by WRJ to connect its members to the work that Jewish women have been doing to redefine the tradition and texts of Jewish life.

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

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 979-982, 1136-1139; Deborah Levine Lefton, "Women's Equality in the Synagogue: The National Federation of Temple Sisterhood's Search for Autonomy, 1913-1930" (Rabbinic Thesis, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion, 2001); www.womenofreformjudaism.org.

Creation of Women's League of the United Synagogue

January 21, 1918

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The "Yankee" Jewish women of the first half of the twentieth century created the infrastructure of American-Jewish women's organizational activities. The founding of synagogue sisterhoods began with the Reform National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods in 1913, followed by the Women's League for Conservative Judaism in 1918, and the two Orthodox sisterhoods, Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America (AMIT) in 1925 and Emunah in 1935. Pictured here is the Orthodox Congregation B'nai David Sisterhood of Detroit, Michigan, ca. 1950. Among those seated are Rebbetzin Yetta Sperka (top left), wife of the synagogue Rabbi Joshua Sperka; Mrs. Hyman Adler (top right), wife of the congregation's cantor; and Mrs. David J. Cohen (second row, center).

Institution: Ahava Rivka Sperka

Five years to the day after the creation of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, Conservative synagogue sisterhoods joined together on January 21, 1918, to form the Women's League of the United Synagogue. The founding president of the League was Mathilde Roth Schechter, wife of Solomon Schechter, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Mathilde Schechter, born in Silesia and educated in Breslau and London, had married Solomon Schechter in 1887 and came to the U.S. in 1902, when Solomon was appointed president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The Women's League was just one in a line of significant projects for Mathilde Schechter. Before establishing the League, she had helped to establish a Jewish vocational school for girls on the Lower East Side of New York, and had helped to publish a hymn book called Kol Rina — Hebrew Hymnal for School and Home.

The Women's League's mission was to promote traditional Judaism in homes, synagogues, and communities. In line with that goal, one early project was the establishment of a kosher boarding house for Jewish students in New York City. Other projects included publications providing guidance on domestic religious ritual as well as traditional recipes and music. In addition, the League became involved with social action from an early date, taking an especially active role in the Jewish Braille Institute.

The League, now called the Women's League for Conservative Judaism, has grown from an original 100 women in 26 sisterhoods to 600 affiliated groups across North America. As it has since the beginning, the League continues to be involved in public policy issues, including women's health, literacy, and foreign policy. Since 1972, the League has also helped to support sisterhoods in Masorti (Israeli Conservative) congregations.

Visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia to learn more about the WLCJ and Mathilde Schechter.

See also: Conservative Judaism in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1201-1203, 1493-1497; Women's League for Conservative Judaism, www.wlcj.org.

Golda Meir speech raises $50 million for Haganah

January 21, 1948

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Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969.

Photo via Library of Congress.

In January 1948, Israel's declaration of independence was imminent, and war with Arab states seemed inevitable. Golda Meir (at that time Golda Meyerson), acting head of the Jewish Agency, was sent to the U.S. to try to raise $25 million to equip the Jewish armed forces. In a speech that she remembered as "unscheduled, unrehearsed ... and unannounced" at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in Chicago on January 21, Meir spoke so compellingly that she raised twice the requested amount.

Born in Ukraine, Meir was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she trained as a teacher. During a year in Denver, where she lived with an older sister, she discovered Zionism, which became her life's passion. She moved to Palestine in 1921, and soon became her kibbutz's representative to the Histadrut, the general federation of labor. By 1934, she was on the Histadrut's executive committee, and two years later was named head of its political department. During World War II, she moved up the ranks of the Jewish Agency, and became its acting head after the male leadership was arrested by the British authorities. Thus, by 1948, her proven abilities, added to her perfect English, made her the obvious choice to raise money for Israel among American Jews.

In June 1948, Meir became the new state of Israel's ambassador to the U.S.S.R; in 1949 she was elected to the Israeli parliament and then appointed minister of labor. After seven years in that post, she served as Israel's Foreign Minister for a decade. It was in that post that she changed her name from Meyerson to Meir, to better represent her Hebrew-speaking nation. In 1969, she was elected Prime Minister of Israel.

To learn more about Golda Meir, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Golda Meir in the Virtual Archive; This Week in History for October 15, 2003, "Tovah Feldshuh stars in Golda's Balcony."

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 903-909; New York Times, April 23, 1978.

Annie Leibovitz's first "Rolling Stone" cover features John Lennon

January 21, 1971

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Annie Leibovitz is one of the most famous and renowned photographers alive today.

Photo by Marc Silber of www.silberstudios.com.

Annie Leibovitz was only 21 years old when her photograph of John Lennon appeared on the January 21, 1971, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Born in Westport, CT, the young photographer enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967. Spending time on an Israeli kibbutz while in college, she took photographs of Israel that garnered her a job at Rolling Stone even before her graduation from the Institute. In 1973, Leibovitz was named the magazine's chief photographer.

During more than ten years on the staff of Rolling Stone, Leibovitz photographed dozens of musical celebrities and produced many additional cover images. Among her many photographs were six months of images from a Rolling Stones' tour, and a photo of Bette Midler in a bed of roses. Leibovitz's portraits were distinguished by her attention to the whole person of each of her subjects. Rather than taking simple head shots, Leibovitz often photographed her subjects full-length, and almost always posed them surrounded by objects from their lives. Perhaps her most famous image is of a nude Lennon embracing a fully clothed Yoko Ono, taken just hours before Lennon was shot dead outside his Manhattan apartment building.

In 1983, Leibovitz left Rolling Stone for Vanity Fair, which offered a wider scope for her art. In her new post, she photographed the Dalai Lama, Vaclav Havel, and Donald Trump, among other religious, political, and business leaders. It was also in 1983 that Leibovitz published her first book, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs. While working at Vanity Fair, Leibovitz began working in advertising—designing campaigns for the World Cup (1986) and American Express (1987). This work brought her awards from the American Society of Magazine Photographers, Advertising Age magazine, and the International Center of Photography.

In 1991, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, mounted a retrospective of Leibovitz's work. She was only the second living photographer to be featured there. The works in the exhibit were later published as Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, 1970-1990. Later in the decade, Leibovitz spent two years photographing athletes around the world for Olympic Portraits (1996), published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games. More recently, Leibovitz has turned her camera from celebrities to more typical women. Women, created with Susan Sontag and published in 1999, combines Sontag's essays with pictures of American women from many walks of life. Along with portraits of political, business, arts, and civic leaders, the book features over 200 photographs of teachers, coal miners, soldiers, farmers, sex workers, beauty pageant contestants, and other "ordinary" women. In 2006, she published A Photographer's Life: 1990–2005, which features her professional work integrated with many searing images from her personal life with Susan Sontag and the rest of her family.

To learn more about Annie Leibovitz, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for October 2, 1949; Photographers in the United States; Jewesses with Attitude, "Don’t call her Anna-Lou, or a lesbian"; Jewish Women on the Map - Lensic Performing Arts Center.

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 817-818.

Author Judy Blume received lifetime achievement award

January 22, 1996

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Judy Blume's ability to write from the perspective of her youthful readers has guaranteed her status as one of American children's most popular authors, while simultaneously making her the target of—and a defender against—censorship.

Photographer: Sigrid Estrada; Institution: Judy Blume

When the top awards in children's publishing were announced on January 22, 1996, the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults went to Judy Blume in recognition of lifetime achievement in the field. Blume is the author of Blubber, Then Again Maybe I Won't, and Superfudge. While recognizing Blume's full body of work, the award made special mention of Forever, perhaps Blume's most controversial work.

Born in 1938 and raised in New Jersey, Blume published her first book in 1969. The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, a picture book, was soon followed by the books for adolescents that have made Blume famous. In such classics as Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), Deenie (1973), Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself (1977), and Just as Long as We're Together (1987), Blume addresses issues such as divorce, friendship, death and loss, and teenage sexual development.

Because of the frank way in which Blume deals with sexuality, her books have often been banned from school and public libraries. In 2004, the American Library Association called her the "second-most censored author of the past 15 years." Forever (1975), which Blume says she wrote when her daughter asked for "a story about two nice kids who have sex without either of them having to die," has been a particular target of censors. The book, which features the teenage protagonists' trip to Planned Parenthood, came in eighth on the ALA's list of most-banned books of the 1990s. Four other Blume titles also made the top 100.

Despite challenges from would-be book banners, Blume has enjoyed tremendous success as an author. Together, her books have sold 75 million copies worldwide. In addition to her 20 books for children and young adults, Blume is the author of three novels for adults, of which the most recent is Summer Sisters (1998). She is also the founder of The Kids Fund, which encourages parent-child communication through books.

To learn more about Judy Blume, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Children's Literature in the United States; Judith: Part of the Hanukkah Story and Highlighted Judiths.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 160-161; www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/margaretaedwards/maeprevious/1996awardwinner.htm; New York Times, January 23, 1996.

Pioneers convene in St. Louis, forming early Jewish women's literary society

January 25, 1879

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An ardent Zionist and advocate for an expanded role for women in the synagogue and religious community, Rosa Sonneschein founded and edited The American Jewess, which, though short-lived, gave her a forum for those views.

Institution: The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH, www.americanjewisharchives.org and the State Historical Society, MO.

The Pioneers, a St. Louis literary club for Jewish women, met for the first time on January 25, 1879. Founded by Rosa Sonneschein, who was married to the local Reform rabbi, the club was modeled after similar Christian women's clubs and was devoted to general literary subjects rather than specifically Jewish literature.

Sonneschein, who in 1895 would found The American Jewess, the first English periodical for Jewish women, had been an active participant in German cultural life in St. Louis. She hoped the Pioneers would expand the intellectual horizons of the city’s Jewish women. In its early years, the Pioneers, which claimed to be the nation's first literary society for Jewish women, devoted themselves chiefly to "entertainments," which included some general discussions of literature and the issues of the day.

The Pioneers society was an early example of a Jewish women’s group that existed for a purpose outside of charity or mutual aid. By the 1890s, Jewish women across the United States were taking the potential for their collective efforts more seriously. Evidence for this can be seen in the creation of the National Council of Jewish Women (1893) and the publication of Sonneschein's The American Jewess (1895). In this atmosphere, the Pioneers directed themselves toward more serious and systematic study. In 1895, for example, they devoted themselves to a rigorous course on the vicissitudes of Jewish 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 April 1, 1895, "The American Jewess begins publication"; Jewish women "On the Map" - Birthplace of Rosa Sonneschein; "The American Jewess" on Twitter and The Women's Pages Then and Now on Jewesses with Attitude.

Source:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1289-1291; www.hti.umich.edu/a/amjewess/about.html; The American Jewess, August 1895: www.hti.umich.edu/ cgi/t/text/ pageviewer-idx? c=amjewess;cc=amjewess; q1=pioneers; op2=and; op3=and; rgn=pages; idno=TAJ1895.0001.005; didno=TAJ1895.0001.005; view=image; seq=00000030.

Publication of Bel Kaufman's "Up the Down Staircase"

January 27, 1965

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Born with the given name of "Belle," Bel Kaufman became the first woman to publish in Esquire magazine with a byline by changing the spelling of her name on the assumption that the editors would think she was a man. The strategy worked, and she has gone by the name Bel ever since.

Institution: Private collection

When Bel Kaufman published Up the Down Staircase on January 27, 1965, she was already a published writer, whose short stories had appeared in magazines like Esquire and The Saturday Review. Because Esquire in the early 1940s had refused to publish fiction by women, Belle Kaufman had submitted her work under the androgynous first name "Bel," and has published under that name ever since.

Born in Germany and raised in Russia, Kaufman came to the U.S. at age 12. She is the granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, and her mother Lyalya Kaufman was a regular columnist for the Yiddish Forverts. Bel graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College at age 22. After earning a master's degree at Columbia, Kaufman taught in the New York City public schools for three decades. Her experiences there were the inspiration for Up the Down Staircase.

The novel uses a series of memos, directives, student comments, teachers' notes, and various materials drawn from school wastepaper baskets to detail a new idealistic teacher's encounters with the administrative bureaucracy of an inner-city school. The book spent 64 weeks on the best-seller list. It has been translated into 16 languages, and has sold 6.5 million copies. Time magazine has called it "easily the most popular novel about U.S. public schools in history." The book was made into a 1967 film starring Sandy Dennis and into a stage play a decade later.

To learn more about Bel Kaufman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Bel Kaufman in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 727-730; www.hunter.cuny.edu/ advancement/ publicrelations/ news/ 2001/ 182ndcommencemt/ 182ndcommencemt.html; New York Times, December 16, 1964, pg. 40; www.jewish-theater.com/ visitor/ article_display.aspx?articleID=731.

Sara Hurwitz adopts the title of Rabbah

January 27, 2010

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Photo courtesy of The Forward.

After a year of working in what was essentially a rabbinic position at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York. Sara Hurwitz was given the title of “rabbah,” (sometimes spelled “rabba”) the feminine form of rabbi.

In early 2009, she completed the same coursework and exams required of male rabbinic candidates. The idea of ordaining a woman rabbi is highly controversial in Orthodox communities, so the title “maharat” was created on her behalf. It was derived from the acronym for “manhiga,” “hilchatit,” “ruchanit” and “toranit,” loosely translating to mean a leader in religious law and spiritual matters. The term, however, did not catch on.

According to Avi Weiss, Rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, “maharat” was unclear, and in some cases it was used disrespectfully. It was also problematic because outside of the Hebrew Institute, no one knew what it meant. Hurwitz explains, “It became difficult to function as a rabbi and do rabbinic duties. When I walked into a funeral home, it was easier to say ‘rabbi’ than explain what a maharat is and go through the whole discussion.”

Participants at a Summer 2009 Kolech Religious Women’s Forum Conference in Jerusalem agreed that “rabbah,” a feminized version of “rabbi,” was the best term to describe Orthodox clergywomen. A statement issued by Weiss’ office announced that Sara Hurwitz’s title would be changed from maharat to rabbah: “This will make it clear to everyone that Sara Hurwitz is a full member of our rabbinic staff, a rabbi with the additional quality of a distinct woman’s voice.”

See also: "Mazel Tov Sara Hurwitz!", "Maharat to Rabbah", "Top 10 Moments for Jewish Women in 2010" and Celebrating the First Lights of Women Rabbis" on Jewesses with Attitude; Sara Hurwitz in Cool Jewish Women.

Sources: “Todah ‘Rabba?’” The Jewish Week; “Orthodox Woman Clergy Member To Get ‘Rabbah’ Title” from JTA, The Forward.

Challenger space shuttle explodes with astronaut Judith Resnik on board

January 28, 1986

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The first Jew and second woman to travel to space, Judith Resnik lost her life in the tragic explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, in which six other astronauts were killed.

Institution: NASA

The Challenger space shuttle exploded on January 28, 1986, just seconds after taking off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Among the seven crewmembers killed was Judith Resnik, the first American Jewish astronaut in space. Resnik joined the space program in 1978 after graduating from Carnegie-Mellon with a B.S. in electrical engineering and the University of Maryland with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Prior to the 1986 Challenger tragedy, Resnik served as the mission specialist on Discovery's maiden voyage in 1984, logging 144 hours 57 minutes in space. Resnik was the second American woman in space (after Sally Ride) and the fourth worldwide.

Before joining the space program, Resnik worked in the radar division of RCA, as a biomedical engineer in neurophysics at the National Institute of Health, and finally for the Xerox corporation. She was accepted into the NASA program, along with five other women, in 1978. Raised in Akron, Ohio, Resnik was a classical pianist and a gourmet cook, and also enjoyed running and bicycling. She was active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the IEEE Committee on Professional Opportunities for Women, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of University Women.

To learn more about Judith Resnik, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia.

See also: Judith: Part of the Hanukkah Story; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Firestone High School; Judith Resnik in Cool Jewish Women.

Source:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1142-1143; Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/biography/ Resnik.html.

Suffragist and anti-slavery activist Ernestine Rose addresses annual Thomas Paine dinner

January 29, 1848

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Ernestine Rose was a pro-suffrage, anti-slavery orator in the United States whose activism was recognized by contemporaries as a key contribution to the suffrage movement.

This photo is in the public domain.

For more than 20 years, Ernestine Rose, born in Poland in 1810, worked as a leading pro-suffrage, anti-slavery orator in the United States. Rose came to the U.S. at age 26 to help found a community of free-thinkers, drawing upon the ideas of Robert Owen which emphasized individual liberty and economic cooperation. Having left Poland to escape an arranged marriage, Rose had encountered and adopted Owenite free-thought ideas in England, where she also met and married her husband. Once in the U.S., the Roses elected not to join a separatist Owenite colony, but instead became active in free-thought, abolitionist, and women's rights circles in New York City. Ernestine quickly devoted herself to the legislative effort to grant married women in New York State legal control over their own property.

By the 1840s, Rose was a regular speaker at the annual Thomas Paine dinner in New York, held to celebrate the birthday of the Revolutionary-era pamphleteer and freethinker on January 29. In an 1848 speech at that event, Rose combined anti-slavery and women's rights imagery with free-thought ideas. Borrowing language from abolitionist and women's rights activist Sarah Grimké, Rose told her audience that "superstition keeps women ignorant, dependent, and enslaved beings. Knowledge will make them free. The churches have been built upon their necks; and it is only by throwing them off, that they will be able to stand up in the full majesty of their being."

This mixture of causes was a hallmark of Rose's oratory, and her popularity on the stages of various movements helped to advance them all. But Rose's work was not limited to giving speeches. In the 1840s, she worked with Susan B. Anthony to pass a New York state law that would protect married women's property rights. In 1869, she joined Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to found the National Woman's Suffrage Association. Anthony called her the "most eloquent ... speaker on our platform," and "that noble worker for the cause of women's rights." Though American women would not obtain the right to vote until more than a quarter-century after Rose's death in 1892, her activism was recognized by contemporaries as a key contribution to the suffrage movement.

To learn more about Ernestine Rose, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for October 19, 1854 "Ernestine Rose presides over national women's rights convention"; Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs; Timeline: 1654 to 2004 Marking Jewish women's experience in North America; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Ernestine Rose's first US home

Sources:Carol Kolmerten, The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose, (Syracuse, 1999); The Ernestine Rose Society, www.brandeis.edu/ centers/wsrc/ Ernestine_Rose_Website/ ERhomepage.html; Ernestine Rose (author), Paula Doress-Worters (editor), Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2007).

Muriel Rukeyser publishes second book of poems

January 31, 1938

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When Muriel Rukeyser published U.S. 1, her second book of poems, on January 31, 1938, she was hailed as "a dramatic lyric poet" whose "images of motion, of the driven mind and body are distinctly exciting and right." Although her first book, Theory of Flight, had won the Yale Younger Poets award in 1935, critics credited U.S. 1 with dispensing with the "piling up of obscure detail" which had marked her first book. Rukeyser went on to publish 17 additional books of poems over four decades, culminating in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser in 1979. She also wrote several children's books and published translations of works by Gunnar Ekelof and Bertolt Brecht.

In both her poetry and her life, Rukeyser was deeply engaged in the cause of social justice, a path that led to multiple conflicts with authorities. Born on December 15, 1913 in New York City, Rukeyser's middle-class upbringing and college education were interrupted by her father's bankruptcy in the Great Depression. Her first foray into the political realm came in 1933, when she traveled to Scottsboro, Alabama, with college friends to report on the trial of nine young black men accused of raping two white girls. In Alabama, Rukeyser was arrested for communicating with black reporters and carrying literature of the National Students League. She later wrote about the experience in her poem "The Trial." In 1936, she traveled to Spain to report on protests against the Olympics being held in Hitler's Germany; upon her return to the U.S., she became active in supporting the Loyalists in the Spanish civil war. Decades later, she was arrested for protesting the Vietnam War. All of these incidents, and other themes of social protest, found their way into her writing.

Although Rukeyser never publicly identified as a lesbian, her poetry referred to love between women and railed against homophobia. Her oft-quoted words of tribute to artist Käthe Kollwitz point stunningly to the suppression of women's voices and the potential power of their liberation: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open." Rukeyser's reflections on Jewish identity likewise suggested the pain inherent—for a Jew—in either suppressing or embracing one's essential identity. This excerpt from "To Be a Jew in the 20th Century," from "Letter to the Front," (1944) presents the challenge:

To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:

Although Rukeyser's work always had its critics, she was recognized for her talent during her lifetime. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Copernicus Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award, and was elected president of PEN. The New York Times called her collected poems "richly rewarding." Rukeyser died on February 12, 1980.

Learn more about Muriel Rukeyser in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for May 8, 1942 "Poet Muriel Rukeyser receives $1000 literary award," and December 15, 1913 "Birth of poet Muriel Rukeyser"; "Muriel Rukeyser: Daring to Live for the Impossible" and "Breath in experience, breathe out poetry," Jewesses with Attitude; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Muriel Rukeyser's Poem "Rune" and Muriel Rukeyser plaque outside the New York Public Library; Poetry in the United States; Muriel Rukeyser in the Virtual Archive.

Sources:New York Times, 31 January 1938, 27 March 1938, 13 February 1980; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1191-1193; www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/tobeajew.htm; www.glbtq.com/literature/rukeyser_m.html.