Anne Lapidus Lerner Named Vice Chancellor of JTS

July 1, 1993

After earning bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Anne Lapidus Lerner joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in 1969, becoming the first American-born woman to hold a full-time position there. JTS trains rabbis and cantors for the Conservative movement and offers a range of masters and doctoral degree programs. On July 1, 1993, she became Vice Chancellor of the Seminary, the first woman to hold that post. As Vice Chancellor, Lerner was one of the highest-ranking women in all of American Jewish institutional life. In that role, she devoted her energy to adult education, working to bring Jewish education to the lay community.

Today, Lerner is an assistant professor in the Department of Jewish Literature at JTS, where she teaches courses in Hebrew and American Jewish poetry, modern Jewish literature, and the portrayal of women in Jewish literature. In addition, she is the director of the JTS Jewish Women's Studies Program, which she also founded, and Director of the Jewish Feminist Research Group. In 2001-02, she was a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School.

Lerner's books include Passing the Love of Women: A Study of Gide's "Saül" and Its Biblical Roots, which examines how the Biblical book of Samuel inspired a novel by French author André Gide; Who Has Not Made Me a Man: The Movement for Equal Rights for Women in American Judaism, which discusses the interaction between Judaism and the modern American feminist movement; and Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry. In addition, Lerner has published a range of articles, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Women's League Outlook, Hadassah, Judaism, Nashim, and Lilith.

Source: www.jtsa.edu/x1793.xml?ID_NUM=100334.

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"Life on the Fringes" explores Orthodox feminism

July 1, 2000

Haviva Ner-David's book, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination, was published on July 1, 2000. The book, which is part memoir and part halakhic commentary, tells the story of Ner-David's integration of feminism and Orthodox Judaism over a lifetime and argues for the ordination of women as Orthodox rabbis.

Haviva Ner-David was born and raised in a modern Orthodox family in the New York City suburbs, attending traditional day schools where girls and boys sat separately for daily prayer and boys were taught to recite the traditional blessing thanking God "for not having made me a woman." Though raised with a love of Jewish tradition, she also struggled to accept traditional teachings about women's limitations. Study at New York's Drisha Institute and a subsequent move to Jerusalem left Ner-David with a thorough education in Jewish law and the conviction that new roles and opportunities for women could be found within tradition. Her book explores both her personal journey and many of the specific halakhic issues that have been taken on by feminist Jews. Throughout the book, Ner-David also reflects on what she will teach her sons and daughters about Judaism, feminism, and the roles of men and women.

In Jerusalem, Ner-David found a teacher who was receptive to her desire for ordination. Like his student, Rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky believes there are precedents in Jewish history for Orthodox women rabbis. On the eve of Passover 2006, Ner-David was ordained as a rabbi in Jerusalem. Rabbi Strikovsky signed her ordination, but did not give Ner-David the title of Rabbi, noting that it is the role of the community to determine her official title. Two other Orthodox women, Mimi Feigelson and Eveline Goodman-Thau, claim to have been privately ordained, but their ordinations are not recognized by any Orthodox seminary, synagogue, or official body.

Learn more about Haviva Ner-David on Jewesses With Attitude.

Sources:New York Times, December 21, 2000; Haviva Ner-David, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination (Needham, MA, 2000); JWA Blog, jwablog.jwa.org/node/23; www.jpost.com/servlet/ Satellite?apage=1&cid=1145961278294&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.

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Martha Minow appointed Dean of Harvard Law School

July 1, 2009

The President and Fellows of Harvard University appointed Martha Minow, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard, Dean of the Law School on July 1, 2009. She succeeded Elena Kagan, who was confirmed as Solicitor General of the United States on March 19, 2009, thus becoming the second Jewish woman to hold this office.

Minow is a distinguished legal scholar with a range of research interests including equality and inequality, human rights and transitional societies, law and social change, and religion and pluralism.

Martha Minow studied history at the University of Michigan, received a Masters in Education from Harvard, and her law degree from Yale. She joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1981, and served as Acting Director of the Harvard University Program on Ethics and the Professions (now the Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics) from 1993-94 and again from 2000-01. She co-chaired the Law School's curriculum reform committee from 2003-06. In 2005, she was recognized with the School's Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence.

Minow's books include Making all the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law (1990), Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (1998), and Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good (2002). She has also published a number of articles, including "Should Religious Groups Ever Be Exempt From Civil Rights Laws?" (2007), "Tolerance in an Age of Terror" (2007), and "Living Up to Rules: Holding Soldiers Responsible for Abusive Conduct and the Dilemma of the Superior Orders Defense" (2007).

Minow is a member of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo and was a leader in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' "Imagine Coexistence" project. She also co-directed a multidisciplinary study of U.S. responses to recent immigrants, as well as a federally-sponsored center that supports access to the general curriculum for public school students with disabilities.

A founding board member of the Jewish Women's Archive, she chairs the board of the Charles H. Revson Foundation and has served on the boards of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Covenant Foundation, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center.

See also: This Week in History for March 19, 2009, "Elena Kagan confirmed by U.S. Senate as first woman Solicitor General of the United States"; "Mazel Tov, Martha Minow", Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: "Martha Minow named dean of Harvard Law School" Harvard University Gazette Online, June 11, 2009, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/06/martha-minow-named-dean-of-harvard-law-school/; www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=45.

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Adrienne Rich rejects National Medal for the Arts

July 3, 1997

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The impact of Adrienne Rich on poetry in America since the second half of the twentieth century has been enormous. Too richly talented to be ignored by the literary establishment, she has at the same time been too politically oriented to be comfortably digested.

Institution: Steven Barclay Agency

On July 3, 1997, poet Adrienne Rich informed Jane Alexander, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, that she would not accept the National Medal for the Arts. To accept the award, she felt, would be hypocritical in view of the country's widening socio-economic gap. In her typical hard-hitting style, Rich wrote that, "art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage." Both the national recognition and Rich's principled refusal were emblematic of the place this poet has come to occupy in American culture.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 16, 1929, Rich is one of American poetry's foremost feminist and liberal voices. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 and published her first book of poetry, A Change of World, the same year. Her next book of poetry, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems, appeared in 1955; both books were met with critical acclaim. Rich's next works, however, were met with as much consternation as praise. Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, published in 1963, was Rich's first explicitly feminist book, and as such it garnered criticism from those who thought it too militant and acclaim from those who admired its vision. The book, and later work collected in Diving into the Wreck (1973), reflected Rich's growing involvement in the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement as well as her commitment to outspoken feminism. Diving into the Wreck won the National Book Award; Rich refused to accept the award in her own name but accepted instead in the name of all women. She donated the prize money to charity.

Through the late 1970s and 1980s, Rich published several more volumes of poetry and prose that together addressed motherhood, lesbianism, politics, and feminism. Her first prose book was Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976). Later work included The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977; A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981; Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978; and Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1986.

Beginning in the 1980's, Rich's work increasingly included references to her Jewish heritage. Her powerful and influential essay "Split at the Root" (1986) explored her complex relationship to her own Jewish identity. What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1994) also included meditations on Jewishness and whiteness. Rich's later work has continued to be politically engaged, filled with both passion and compassion. To date, she has published a total of 22 books of poetry and four of prose. Her most recent published works are The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000–2004 and Poetry and Commitment: An Essay (2007).

In addition to writing, Rich has taught at colleges and universities including Swarthmore College, Brandeis University, Bryn Mawr College, Cornell University, Stanford University, and Rutgers University. She has been active in the Boston Woman's Fund and New Jewish Agenda. Her work has been recognized by numerous organizations. Among other prizes, she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, a Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Learn more about Adrienne Rich in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources:Cheri Landell, Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change (Westport, 2004); Alice Templeton, The Dream and the Dialogue: Adrienne Rich's Feminist Poetics (Knoxville, 1994); Liz Yorke, Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body (London, 1997); Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1146-1148; www.nortonpoets.com/richa.htm; www.barclayagency.com/rich_a.html; www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rich/biblio.htm; Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1997; New York Times, July 11, 1997; JWA Blog, jwablog.jwa.org/node/124.

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Birth of advice-givers Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren

July 4, 1918

Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer and Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips were born seventeen minutes apart on July 4, 1918. The world has come to know them as the advice columnists Ann Landers and Abigail van Buren (Dear Abby). Raised in Sioux City, Iowa, the sisters were in their late thirties before first Esther, then Pauline, entered the advice business. Esther, known as Eppie Lederer, won a contest to replace the original author of the "Ask Ann Landers" column for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1955. By 1993, the Ann Landers column appeared in 1200 daily newspapers with 90 million readers, making her the world's most widely syndicated columnist. The column has also been translated into more than twenty languages.

When Lederer began writing the column, her sister contributed by reading some of the letters and suggesting answers. The Sun-Times, however, forbade the partnership, and Phillips (known as Popo) soon decided to write her own column. "Dear Abby" took off, and soon became the chief rival to "Ann Landers," leading to a brief feud between the sisters.

Both columns were characterized by a straightforward tone, practical advice, and a firm but modern moral sensibility. In a change from previous advice columns, both women used humor, including sarcasm and one-liners, in their responses. "Dear Abby," for instance, once published a letter from a reader inquiring whether a woman could get pregnant under water. Abby's response: "not without a man." With an open-mindedness grounded in practical morality, both columnists won loyal followings. A reviewer writing about a collection of "Dear Abby" columns characterized their author as "just the person you'd want to go to with a problem—the aunt with the wise mouth and the heart of gold." Psychology Today once credited Ann Landers with having a greater effect on the way people deal with their problems than any other living individual. Both women were politically liberal, and used their columns to condemn racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism and to advocate for women's rights.

Esther Lederer died on June 22, 2002. The "Ann Landers" column died with her, but has been replaced in many newspapers by "Annie's Mailbox," edited by Lederer's former staff. Pauline Phillips, ill with Alzheimer's, has retired from writing "Dear Abby." Apparently, advice-giving runs in the family. "Dear Abby" is now written by Phillips's daughter, Jeanne, while Lederer's daughter, Margo Howard, writes the advice column "Dear Prudence."

Learn more about Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 789-790, 1435-1436; Associated Press, June 22, 2002; New York Times, November 1, 1981, June 10, 1993; Jan Pottker and Bob Speziale, Dear Ann, Dear Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren (New York, 1987).

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Artist Frida Kahlo born

July 6, 1907

Frida Kahlo, well known for her striking self-portraits, her strong Mexican and feminist sensibilities, and her tumultuous passionate life, was born in Coyoacan, Mexico, on July 6, 1907. Her mother's family was of Spanish and Native Mexican descent, while her father was a German Jewish immigrant. Although she is best known for her representations of Mexican culture, her Jewish background also influenced her work.

Raised in the suburbs of Mexico City, Kahlo entered Mexico's National Preparatory School in 1922, hoping to become a doctor. Her courses in anatomy, biology, and zoology later helped her to add realistic elements to her portraits. A bus accident in 1925 left Kahlo severely injured, ending her medical studies and forcing her to stay in bed for three months. It was during this period that Kahlo began to paint, using a ceiling-mounted mirror that allowed her to be her own model. Physical pain and frequent illness would plague her for the rest of her life, and her many self-portraits are full of images of suffering.

Though she never received any formal training in art, Kahlo continued to paint. After she married muralist Diego Rivera in 1929 (the pair were divorced in 1939 and remarried in 1940), she frequently watched him paint; some of his techniques and images can be seen in Kahlo's works. In contrast to his giant murals, however, Kahlo produced almost exclusively small works, mainly portraits and still lifes. Many of these works reflect Kahlo's interest in Mexican culture and in leftist politics. Several self-portraits depict the artist in traditional indigenous dress, and many show the influence of pre-Columbian art. In addition, she painted portraits of Marx and Stalin, and had a brief affair with Leon Trotsky, for whom she painted a full-length self-portrait. Though painters Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, and surrealist poet André Breton, were among her admirers, Kahlo's work was overshadowed in the U.S. by her husband's fame.

Kahlo's tumultuous life was cut short when she died of a pulmonary embolism on July 13, 1954. However, her fame has grown enormously in the half-century since her death, and Kahlo is now regarded as one of the most important artists of 20th-century Mexico. Her paintings have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and at the Tate Modern Museum in London. A major traveling exhibition showcased her work alongside that of Georgia O'Keefe. A 2003 Jewish Museum exhibit in New York focused on Kahlo's relationship to her Jewish roots as it was portrayed in her 1936 painting, "My Grandparents, My Parents, and I." In 2000, a 1929 self-portrait sold for more than $5 million at auction.

In recent years, Kahlo has become something of an iconic cult figure. Fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier created a collection inspired by Kahlo, and her 1933 self-portrait was featured on a 2001 U.S. postage stamp. In 2002, the film Frida, based on her biography, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Sources: www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2002-10-21-frida-timeline_x.htm;www.jwmag.org/site/c.fhLOK0PGLsF/b.2440629/k.6F74/Frida_Kahlos_Jewish_Roots.htm; www.thejewishmuseum.org/kahlo; Phyllis Tuchman, "Frida Kahlo," Smithsonian, November 2002; Malka Drucker, Frida Kahlo (Albuquerque, 1995); Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (New York, 1982); Raquel Tibol, Frida Kahlo: An Open Life (Albuquerque, 1993).

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Colonial Jewish mother instructs her son to eat "bread and butter"

July 9, 1733

The 35 surviving letters written, between 1733 and 1748, by Abigail Levy Franks to her son Naphtali in London offer rare access to the lives and concerns of colonial American Jews. On July 9, 1733, she offered Naphtali close instructions on his religious conduct, admonishing him to "be more Circumspect in the Observance of some things, Especialy y[ou]r morning Dev[otio]ns." She also warns him against eating anything but bread and butter at the London home of her brother, Asher, "nor noe where Else where there is the Least doubt of things not done after our Strict Judiacall [Jewish/kosher] method."

Napthali moved to London from New York at age 16 in order to seek out better business (and presumably marriage) prospects than those available in the new world. His mother's letters from New York highlight how personal and kinship connections helped to maintain a network of Jewish merchant families around the Atlantic world. Moreover, the letters yield valuable insights on New York politics and society, illustrate the ways in which Jews were able to enter into colonial American society, and reflect the strains and challenges of maintaining a distinctive Jewish identity in that setting.

Abigail's letters attest to the challenges of finding acceptance while maintaining distinctiveness. As indicated in the July 9th and other letters, she wondered about the rationale for some Jewish practices ("wathever my thoughts may be Concerning Some Fables"), but she remained committed to their observance ("this and Some other foundementalls I Look Open the Observence Conscientioussly, and therefore with my blessing I Strictly injoin it to your care."). Her letters demonstrate the extent of her family's integration into non-Jewish New York society and culture, but also reveal the painful costs of acceptance. Abigail's most emotional letter (June 7, 1743) conveys the depth of her anguish upon learning that her daughter, Phila, had secretly wed Oliver Delancey, who came from a prosperous non-Jewish family. There is no indication that Abigail ever saw Phila again.

Abigail's despair over her daughter's wedding indicates the value she placed on Jewishness. The attachment to Judaism of her husband, Jacob Franks, may be inferred from his leading role in New York's Shearith Israel congregation. Yet, ultimately, their story points to the tenuousness of Jewish identity for acculturated colonial Jewish families. Historians are fond of pointing out that none of Abigail Franks' grandchildren remained Jewish. None of her children who remained in America married Jews. And although her sons who moved to England, Napthali and Moses, both married Jewish women, their children married non-Jews.

Learn more about Abigail Levy Franks in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia

Sources: Leo Hershkowitz and Isidore S. Meyer, eds., Letters of the Franks Family, 1733-1748, (Waltham, MA, 1968); Edith B. Gelles, ed., The Letters of Abigaill Levy Franks, 1733-1748 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). The June 7, 1743 letter from Abigail to Naphtali can be seen at www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-haven.html.

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Jennie Tourel sings on Mt. Scopus

July 9, 1967

On July 9, 1967, mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel joined Leonard Bernstein for a concert on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus to celebrate the end of the Six-Day War. It was a moment that brought together several of the themes of her life: music, dedication to Israel, and work with prominent composers and conductors. Born in Vitebsk, Belorussia (now Belarus) in 1900, she trained as a singer in Paris, where she debuted at the Opéra Comique in 1933. She won acclaim for her performance of the title role in Bizet's Carmen. For nearly a decade, she was the star of the Opéra Comique, singing the roles of Charlotte in Massenet's Werther and the title role in Thomas's Mignon.

Fleeing Paris just a week before the Nazi invasion, Tourel made her way to New York via Portugal, Cuba, and Canada. Though at first she had trouble finding work, she eventually impressed a musical agent who arranged an audition with the conductor Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini, in turn, hired her to sing with the New York Philharmonic, and she soon appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra as well. Later, Leonard Bernstein wrote the Jeremiah Symphony especially for her voice, and Tourel performed it all over the world.

In her late forties, Tourel became well-known as a song recitalist. Though she had received critical and popular acclaim for her work in opera, her performances of French, German, and Russian songs, including Ravel's Shéhérazade, Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, and works by Schubert and Schumann, gained her an even wider circle of fans. At an age when many singers retire, Tourel continued to give acclaimed performances to eager audiences. She continued to perform until past the age of seventy.

In addition to performing all over the world, Tourel taught at New York's Juilliard School, and annually at the Samuel Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In 1949, she became one of the first internationally-known artists to visit the infant Jewish state. Following that first visit, she remained involved in the musical life of Israel, with frequent visits and master classes. Tourel died on November 23, 1973. Leonard Bernstein paid her tribute in a eulogy at her funeral, saying, "when Jennie opened her mouth, God spoke."

Learn more about Jennie Tourel in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1408-1409; New York Times, November 25, 1973, December 9, 1973, September 22, 1974.

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Hortense Calisher debuts in the "New Yorker"

July 10, 1948

The July 10, 1948, edition of the New Yorker magazine included as its fiction selection Hortense Calisher's short story "The Middle Drawer." It was Calisher's first published work. The daughter of a Southern Jewish perfume-maker and a German immigrant, Calisher was born on December 20, 1911, in New York City, and educated at Barnard College where she studied English and philosophy.

After working briefly for the New York Department of Public Welfare, Calisher married, moved to the suburbs, and occupied herself mainly with raising two sons. She later said that she had composed "The Middle Drawer" while walking her son to school. Like much of her later work, this O. Henry Award-winning story drew upon themes of Calisher's own life. Most of Calisher's fiction features Jewish characters, but their ethnic identity is usually part of the background rather than a dramatic element.

Calisher published her first book of short stories, In the Absence of Angels, in 1951, and her first novel, False Entry, in 1961. She wrote about her own family in three memoirs. Calisher's final work, Tattoo for a Slave (2004), traces the history of her father's family from before the Civil War to her own lifetime. She was a Guggenheim fellow twice and a National Book Award finalist three times. Though popular fame eluded her, she has been lauded as a "writer's writer" with a wide imaginative and formal range, and has been both praised and criticized for her intricate plot and rich character development.

Past president of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and of PEN, Calisher died January 13, 2009.

Learn more about Hortense Calisher in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 201-202;

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Liz Lerman dance celebrates Statue of Liberty centennial

July 11, 1986

As part of the celebrations of the centennial of the Statue of Liberty, Liz Lerman's Still Crossing was performed in Manhattan on July 11, 1986. The performance, part of a series of dance performances in a show called "Liberty Dances," brought together dancers from both of Lerman's companies: Dancers of the Third Age, a company of elderly dancers, and the younger Dance Exchange. The professional dancers were joined by members of the 92nd Street Y and a YWCA in Brooklyn in a piece that the New York Times reviewer described as simple but moving, with "dignity and eloquence."

Choreographer Liz Lerman was educated at the University of Maryland and at George Washington University, where she earned an M.A. in dance. She established the Dance Exchange in Washington, DC, in 1976, as a school that included classes for senior adults and "special populations." After three years, she also launched a touring Dance Exchange company; the school was later closed so that Lerman and the company could focus on creating new works.

From the beginning, Lerman's work has been deeply involved in issues of community building and community-based art. Like Dancers of the Third Age, many of her projects have incorporated performers outside of the mainstream dance world. In addition, she has created site-specific projects, including dances celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Portsmouth, NH, naval shipyard. Similarly, many of her dances take on themes of political or social importance. A 1987 program called "Atomic Priests and Other Dances" included a dance based on an official Department of Energy Report about how people 10,000 years from now might deal with nuclear waste. She has also produced what she calls a docudance entitled "Nine Short Dances About the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters." A reviewer has called Lerman "one of the most articulate and compassionate of social commentators in the arts today."

Lerman's work has been widely recognized for excellence. Lincoln Center, the American Dance Festival, BalletMet, and the Kennedy Center have all commissioned works. In 1988, Lerman was named Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine. She has also received an American Choreographer Award, an American Jewish Congress "Golda" Award, and, in 2002, a MacArthur Fellowship.

Today, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange operates out of Takoma Park, MD, and performs all over the United States and the world. Dancers of the Third Age, which also performs widely, operates as an adjunct company to the Dance Exchange. Current projects include "Prayer as a Radical Act/Radical Action as Prayer," which will be a dance/theatre piece that draws from ancient and contemporary prayer practices to explore unity and division, and "Ferocious Beauty: Genome," which will be a multi-media work exploring the impact of genetic research on our lives.

Sources: New York Times, July 13, 1986, October 23, 1987; www.danceexchange.org.

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Radical activist Clara Lemlich Shavelson dies

July 12, 1982

Born in 1886, Clara Lemlich Shavelson was already a confirmed radical when she arrived in New York City in 1905. Raised in a religious household in Ukraine, she had defied her parents to learn Russian, traded folk songs for volumes of Tolstoy, and borrowed revolutionary tracts from a sympathetic neighbor. In New York, she found work in a Lower East Side garment shop, and soon began organizing the workers. She quickly became an influential member of the new International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), where she protested the virtually all-male leadership's habit of ignoring female union members.

In 1909, Lemlich burst onto a larger political stage when her speech in New York's Cooper Union Hall galvanized young, predominantly Jewish, working girls and set off what became known as the Uprising of the 20,000 (See This Week in History for November 22, 1909). Though the strike was only partially successful, the speech marked the beginning of Lemlich Shavelson's long career in political activism. Her next project was women's suffrage; she helped to found the Wage Earners League for Women's Suffrage, a group distinguished by its working-class membership at a time when most suffrage organizations were composed of more moderate middle-class members. (See This Week in History for April 22, 1912).

Although Lemlich Shavelson's radicalism eventually cost her the paid organizing position with the suffrage league, she remained an outspoken activist, leading the kosher meat boycotts of 1917 and the New York City rent strikes of 1919. After her 1913 marriage and a move to Brooklyn, some of Shavelson's colleagues in the trade union movement felt that she had sold out to middle-class ideals by raising children in the suburbs. However, Shavelson redirected her energies without moderating her radicalism, joining the Communist Party in 1926, and founding the United Council of Working-Class Housewives and then, in 1929, the United Council of Working-Class Women (UCWW). The UCWW argued that consumption was integrally tied to production and that housewives, as consumers, could be an integral part of the class struggle. The Council led meat, milk, and bread boycotts (see This Week in History for May 27, 1935), marched on Washington, and staged rent strikes and sit-ins, winning periodic victories that addressed some of the most pernicious threats to the economic survival of many families during the depression. In addition, Shavelson's insistence on the importance of women's labor in the home laid the groundwork for the later feminist movement's emphasis on gender politics and personal power relations within the family.

After the Second World War, Shavelson became a peace activist, working as an organizer for the American League Against War and Fascism, which opposed nuclear weapons. She also worked for a time in a garment shop, and renewed her activism in the ILGWU, from which she finally retired in 1954. Although she is still hailed as a founder of that union, she was never granted a union pension. At age 81, Shavelson moved into the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles, where she spent her time convincing the administrators to honor grape and lettuce boycotts, and organizing a union among the orderlies. She was impatient with those who came to record her historic contributions, telling one researcher: "Why are you here interviewing me about what I did? If you want to do something, do something." Shavelson died on July 12, 1982.

Learn more about Clara Lemlich Shavelson in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for November 22, 1909; April 22, 1912; and May 27, 1935.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1238-1241; Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995).

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"When Harry Met Sally" hits theaters

July 12, 1989

The movie When Harry Met Sally, which follows characters Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) and Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) through several decades of searching for love as they debate whether a man and a woman can be friends, debuted on July 12, 1989. Nora Ephron's screenplay was later nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. The most famous line in the film comes at the end of a scene in a deli, where Sally fakes an orgasm to prove to Harry that it can be faked. When she is finished, another customer delivers the line, "I'll have what she's having." A blockbuster success, When Harry Met Sally was just one of Ephron's many achievements in an industry dominated by powerful men. In addition to writing, Ephron has found success as a film director with several hit romantic comedies to her credit.

Born in 1941 to screenwriting parents Henry and Phoebe Ephron, Nora Ephron was surrounded by films and writers from a young age. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1962, Ephron became a journalist, working first as a reporter for the New York Post. She then became a columnist, contributing editor, and eventually senior editor at Esquire magazine, where she worked until 1978. In addition, she was a contributing editor at New York magazine in 1973 and 1974. Collections of her columns, known for their wit and their attention to both feminist concerns and pop culture, were published as Wallflower at the Orgy (1970) and Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (1975).

In 1983, Ephron published the bestselling novel Heartburn, which was later made into a movie of the same name. In the same year, Ephron's first screenplay, written with Alice Arlen for Silkwood, was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1989, the same year that When Harry Met Sally was released, Ephron and Arlen produced the screenplay for Cookie. Later screenplays include My Blue Heaven (1990), This Is My Life (with sister Delia Ephron, 1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Mixed Nuts (with Delia Ephron, 1994), You've Got Mail (with Delia Ephron, 1998) and Hanging Up (with Delia Ephron, 2000).

Ephron made her directorial debut in 1992, on This Is My Life. She later directed Sleepless in Seattle, Mixed Nuts, and Michael (1996). Ephron's latest movie, Bewitched, which she directed and for which she co-wrote the screenplay, was released in 2005. In 2006, she published the bestselling I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.

Learn more about Nora Ephron in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 378-379; New York Times, July 9, 1989, December 13, 1998; www.imdb.com/name/nm0001188/.

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Tillie Lewis opens cannery for American-grown Italian tomatoes

July 13, 1935

Tillie Lewis, born Myrtle Ehrlich, in Brooklyn, NY, on July 13, 1901, left high school after one year to work in a wholesale grocery. Noticing the high demand for imported cans of Italian tomatoes, she formed the idea of growing the same variety domestically. Discouraged by agriculture specialists at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, who told her it could not be done, Lewis moved on to other things, studying business and working briefly on Wall Street.

However, Lewis returned to her tomato-growing idea in 1934, when the federal government raised the tariff on imported tomato products by 50%. Already on her way to Italy for a vacation, Lewis met an Italian exporter, Florindo del Gaizo, worried about losing his American customers. Lewis convinced him that Italian tomatoes could be grown in California, and they combined parts of their first names to create Flotill Products Inc. On July 13, 1935, her 34th birthday, Lewis opened the first Flotill cannery in Stockton, California. Two years later, when del Gaizo died, Lewis bought out his share of the business. Operating the first cannery owned by a woman, by 1940, she had made San Joaquin County the top tomato-producing county in the United States.

In addition to tomatoes, Lewis's Flotill Products, Inc., canned other fruits and vegetables, baby food, and frozen juices; during the Second World War, the company also became the largest producer of C-rations for the U.S. Army. By 1951, Flotill Products, later known as Tillie Lewis Foods, Inc., was earning $30 million per year, making it one of the five largest canning companies in the country. In the same year, Lewis was named "businesswoman of the year" by the Associated Press. In 1952, the company introduced a line of diet foods using low-calorie sweeteners and known as Tasti-Diet. Tillie Lewis Foods was eventually bought by the Ogden Corporation, which made Lewis one of its directors. Lewis died in 1977, but the Italian pomodora tomatoes she introduced to the U.S. are still a staple of American agriculture.

Sources:Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1951, September 11, 1952, May 7, 1961, May 3, 1977; New York Times, May 2, 1977.

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Birth of Broadway lyricist Dorothy Fields

July 15, 1904

Dorothy Fields, who wrote lyrics to over 400 songs over half a century, was born on July 15, 1904. Raised in New Jersey, Fields was the daughter of Lew Fields, half of the well-known Weber and Fields vaudeville team. Though Lew Fields discouraged his daughter from pursuing a theater career, Dorothy Fields eventually became one of Broadway and Hollywood's most successful lyricists.

Fields got her start writing songs for revues at New York City's Cotton Club. Collaborating with Jimmy McHugh, she wrote the lyrics for "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "I'm in the Mood for Love," and "Don't Blame Me," all in 1928. Shortly thereafter, she was asked to write lyrics for a song Jerome Kern was adding to the score of the film Roberta. The song, which became "Lovely to Look At," was the beginning of a long collaboration between Fields and Kern. In 1936, they won an Academy Award for the song "The Way You Look Tonight," from the film Swing Time.

Fields also collaborated with such well-known composers as Irving Berlin and Cy Coleman, and with her brother, Herbert Fields. In all, Fields wrote lyrics for 19 Broadway musicals and 25 films. Among the musicals for which Fields wrote songs are Annie Get Your Gun, Sweet Charity, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Up in Central Park, and Seesaw. In 1971, Fields was the only woman in the first group of people named to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She died of a heart attack on March 28, 1974. In a field in which the names of Jewish men from George and Ira Gershwin to Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim are ubiquitous, Fields made her mark with some of the American musical theater's most memorable songs.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 433-435; New York Times, March 29, 1974.

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Rose Schneiderman named officer of NY State Labor Party

July 16, 1936

At a meeting in the Hotel New Yorker on July 16, 1936, Rose Schneiderman was elected vice chairman of the New York State Labor Party. The newly formed party declared its support for President Franklin Roosevelt and New York Governor Herbert Lehman, but called on all working people to desert the two established parties and join in a new coalition. The party's platform, developed during the same meeting, supported New Deal legislation and called for the extension of Social Security, further economic reform, and unemployment relief. The platform also defined the party's purpose as "to mobilize the political power of labor and the progressive forces of the people everywhere, in the cities and on the farms, against reaction and for freedom, against economic oppression and for recovery and democracy."

When she was elected to the vice chairmanship of the New York State Labor Party, Schneiderman was already president of the National Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) and an established figure in labor activism. Born in Poland in 1882, Schneiderman left school at thirteen to help support her siblings and widowed mother by taking a job as a salesclerk at a New York City department store. After three years, she found a higher-paying job as a cap maker, and immediately became involved in union politics. In 1903, she organized the workers in her shop, and the following year, she became involved with the New York WTUL. The WTUL was a mostly middle-class organization that hoped to gain credibility with workers by bringing women like Schneiderman on board. For the next two decades, Schneiderman worked alternately for the WTUL and the working-class International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), gaining a national reputation as "the Red Rose of Anarchy," and becoming a central figure in both labor and feminist politics.

It was through the WTUL that Schneiderman became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, and when Franklin Roosevelt became President in 1933, he named Schneiderman as the only woman on the National Labor Advisory Board. In that role, Schneiderman had a profound influence on New Deal legislation, writing the labor codes for every industry that had a predominantly female work force. She also helped to shape Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act. In 1937, though she had publicly called for laborers to leave the Democratic Party for the new Labor Party, she was named secretary of labor for New York State under the Democratic governor. In that post, she supported unionization efforts and equal pay campaigns. Later, she was active in efforts to rescue and resettle European Jews.

Schneiderman retired from public life in 1949. In her later years, she wrote her memoirs and spoke occasionally on the radio and to union groups. She died on August 11, 1972. At the time of her death, large numbers of American women were beginning to take up the fight for equal pay in the workplace and recognition of women's labor in the home, causes in which Schneiderman was a pioneer. While there is still no independent Labor Party in U.S. politics, the workers' protections that Schneiderman helped create are now an integral part of U.S. law.

See also: This Week in History for March 25, 1911 and April 22, 1912.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1209-1212; Gary Endelman, Solidarity Forever: Rose Schneiderman and the Women's Trade Union League (New York, 1982). Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995); Rose Schneiderman, All for One (New York, 1967); New York Times, July 17, 1936.

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Pioneering women's history summer institute

July 18, 1979

In the summer of 1979, a fifteen-day conference (July 13-29), co-sponsored by Sarah Lawrence, the Women's Action Alliance and the Smithsonian Institution, was held at Sarah Lawrence College. Intended for female leaders, it was attended by a diverse range of participants representing 43 different women's organizations.

The institute was organized by Sarah Lawrence professor Gerda Lerner. One of the pioneers of women's history, Lerner hoped to introduce a diverse group of varied backgrounds to the possibilities of women's history. Lerner described the fifteen-day course as equivalent to a semester-long seminar. In addition to ongoing afternoon workshops and evening cultural events, each morning's program featured one lecture by the seminar instructors. Joining Lerner as the principle instructors were Alice Kessler-Harris and Amy Swerdlow, both pioneering feminists and women's historians. Their daily lectures included the following topics: "Women's Work in the Home & in the Workplace," "ERA, 1920's Style" (Kessler-Harris); "Black Women in White America," "Control of Women's Sexuality and the Threat of Women's Deviance," "Women as Community Builders," (Lerner); and "Women in Reform Movements," and "How Women's Suffrage was Won" (Swerdlow).

Asked to create one large group project, seminar members adopted the goal, suggested by one of the participants, of "making the celebration of Women's History Week a national event." Institute alumni returned to their homes across the country and began to press for publicly sponsored women's history programs at both the local and national level. Securing a joint resolution of Congress and the approval of President Jimmy Carter, the first national Women's History Week was proclaimed in 1980. Women's History Week brought forth such a wealth of programs in so many schools, universities, and communities, that the observance was expanded into Women's History Month in 1987. Beyond Women's History Week, the Institute also led indirectly to the introduction of an abundance of historical programming at the local and national level, including the creation of the National Women's History Project.

A 25th reunion of the Women's History Institute (September 10, 2004) celebrated its role in "launching a national movement to recognize, honor, and celebrate women's historic achievements."

Sources: Gerda Lerner communication to the Jewish Women's Archive for use in on-line exhibit, "Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution," jwa.org/feminism/id=JWA048; "Summer Institute in Women's History, July 13-29, 1979," schedule, Sarah Lawrence College Archives; National Women's History Project website: www.nwhp.org.

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Emma Goldman's "What I Believe"

July 19, 1908

"It is too bad that we no longer live in the times when witches were burned at the stake or tortured to drive the evil spirit out of them. For, indeed, Emma Goldman is a witch! True, she does not eat little children, but she does many worse things. She manufactures bombs and gambles in crowned heads. B-r-r-r!" Thus ran the first paragraph of Emma Goldman's personal manifesto, "What I Believe," published by the New York World on July 19, 1908. Written in response to "widespread public misconceptions about anarchism," the article systematically combated slanders against Goldman and outlined her anarchist approach to issues of property, government, militarism, free speech, the church, marriage and love, and violence.

Born on June 27, 1869, in Lithuania, Goldman experienced the czar's Anti-Semitic policies and economic instability, which forced her family to move from Lithuania to Prussia and then to Russia in search of economic stability. These displacements and her distaste for the role of women in traditional Jewish families led Goldman to immigrate to America when she was sixteen. While working as a garment worker she became involved in the labor movement. Most tellingly, the trial, conviction, and execution, on specious evidence, of a group of anarchists for an 1886 bombing in Haymarket Square in Chicago inspired her to become an anarchist activist.

In "What I Believe," Goldman sought to explain and defend her struggle for "freedom in the large sense of the word" through anarchism. The struggle for universal freedom served as the basis for her radical critique of property and capitalism: "It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities...who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves." Since in her opinion government did nothing to further individual liberty or social harmony, Goldman saw it as nothing more than a protector of property and monopoly, and thus as an obstacle to freedom.

Goldman's article also spoke out against the growing tendency of militarism that she viewed as "the most merciless, heartless and brutal [spirit] in existence." She stood particularly opposed to militarism because she believed that the military must necessarily be antidemocratic and antithetical to freedom. In Goldman's view, anarchism advocated for peace by offering a call for universal human brotherhood and solidarity rather than dividing people into economic and political rivals requiring military protection.

Just as she saw the government as an invasive institution based on economic inequality, Goldman saw the institution of marriage in the same way. Making sure to differentiate between marriage and love, Goldman felt that marriage prevented a woman's freedom. She wrote, "marriage, or the training thereto, prepares the woman for the life of a parasite, a dependent, helpless servant, while it furnishes the man the right of a chattel mortgage over a human life."

Goldman's radical views on marriage, as well as on religion, which she called "a nightmare that oppresses the human soul and holds the mind in bondage," and on other topics, brought her renewed criticism. In February, a few months before Goldman's manifesto, a Washington Post editorial had called her "a menace" with "enormous powers of hate...set against law and order and government." Already under constant police harassment for their views, Goldman and her anarchist allies suffered further interference with their public lectures in the following months. At a New York City rally for the unemployed in September, 1908, for example, Goldman's comrade Alexander Berkman was arrested; Goldman herself fled the hall just ahead of the police.

Ultimately, Goldman's vocal endorsement of anarchism and opposition to World War I would lead to her arrest, denaturalization, and deportation under the 1918 Alien Act, which authorized the expulsion of any alien found to be an anarchist. Sent to Russia in 1919, Goldman soon became disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime. Throughout the rest of an itinerant life, Goldman continued to advocate through speech and writing for the possibility of a more just world. She died in Canada on May 14, 1940, and was buried in Chicago.

Sources: Alix Kates Shulman, ed., Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader (New York, 1983); Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 526-530; dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/whatibelieve.html; jwa.org/exhibits/wov/goldman/; sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/; New York Times, September 8, 1908; Washington Post, February 29, 1908.

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JWI conference on Jewish domestic violence

July 20, 2003

Jewish Women International's (JWI) first-ever international conference on domestic violence in the Jewish community began in Baltimore on July 20, 2003. Among its approximately 450 attendees, the three-day conference included Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis; social workers, artists, activists, and abuse survivors. "Every point of view—orthodox and secular, lay and professional, survivor and service provider, medical and spiritual, gay and straight—was shared and respected among this incredibly diverse group," commented JWI Executive Director Loribeth Weinstein. Nearly one hundred speakers addressed the conference in 44 workshops, on topics from finding funding for programming to a rabbi's role in combating domestic violence.

The conference's principle goal was a "Call to Action," aimed at galvanizing the movement against domestic violence through a statement of principles and a call for personal commitments to fight violence in individual communities. In addition, JWI announced "the launching of initiatives to help young women spot the danger signs of brewing domestic abuse, and to help rabbis better respond to the problem." According to Orthodox Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, the conference marked a major change in the way the Jewish community dealt with domestic abuse: "Until 10 years ago domestic abuse was nowhere on the Jewish agenda. We acted as if it didn't exist, yet it was prevalent. This conference is a recognition of our past ignorance and indifference." Organizers hoped that attendees would take the strategies and insights learned in Baltimore back to their home communities, where they could continue to educate still more professionals and lay people to confront family violence.

Baltimore has been an important location in the growth of a Jewish effort to combat domestic abuse. Rebbetzin Hanna Weinberg has been called the "Harriet Tubman" of the Jewish domestic violence movement. Starting with a battered women's telephone hotline out of her home thirty years ago, she has been instrumental in organizing support services ranging from shelters to kosher food to financial, legal, and career advice in Jewish communities around the country. CHANA (Counseling Helpline and Aid Network for Abused Women), a project of The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, has also provided an inspirational model of how a Jewish community can address the problem of domestic abuse.

The Baltimore conference, titled "Pursuing Truth, Justice and Righteousness: A Call to Action," marked ten years of JWI's work on the issue of domestic violence. In the decade before the conference, JWI, previously known as B'nai B'rith Women (see This Week in History for September 17, 1984), had published guides to domestic violence intervention for rabbis and for volunteer and professional Jewish communal workers; the organization had also sponsored programs in Israel and Russia, and had received a federal grant to increase awareness in the American Jewish community. Since the 2003 conference, JWI has completed a needs assessment study of domestic violence in the U.S. Jewish community, and has produced a curriculum entitled "When Push Comes To Shove ... It's No Longer Love," targeted to teenagers. JWI is also active in a variety of national and international initiatives to break the silence around domestic violence and increase professional and political attention to this issue.

Sources: The Jewish Press (Omaha, NE), Sep 26, 2003; The Jerusalem Post, Aug 25, 2003; Baltimore Jewish Times, July 11, 2003, July 25, 2003; www.jwi.org; Jewish Women's Archive, Women Who Dared exhibit on Rebbetzin Hanna Weinberg: jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/bio.jsp?personID=phweinberg; Jewish Women's Archive, Weaving Women's Words: Baltimore Stories exhibit on Hanna Weinberg: jwa.org/exhibits/baltimore/weinberg.html.

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Birth of Theda Bara, the original "vamp"

July 22, 1890

Born Theodosia Goodman on July 22, 1890, Theda Bara had a brief but notable career as the star of dozens of silent films. Raised in Cincinnati, Bara moved to New York City at age eighteen to pursue acting. Only marginally successful on the stage, she became an overnight sensation when director Frank Powell cast her as the star of A Fool There Was in 1915. In the film, which was based on a stage melodrama that was in turn based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, Bara played a temptress who squeezed money, dignity, and finally life out of men. As the sensuous, cruel seductress, Bara created the original "vamp."

Over the next five years, Bara starred in forty films, almost always as a "vamp," an exotic woman luring men to ruin. Her films were considered scandalous, and at least one critic advocated censoring them. However, Bara was wildly popular with the public, who flocked to her films. She was said to have received over a thousand marriage proposals from adoring fans. Others named children after her. One critic called her "a clever actress with...a marvelously mobile and expressive face."

Despite Bara's popularity, the Fox studio refused to renew her contract after 1919. The film industry had moved on to a cleaner image of sexuality. Seductresses would abound in later Hollywood films, but without the aura of mystery and menace that had defined Bara's roles. After 1920, Bara starred in only two more films, in 1925 and 1926. She died on April 7, 1955. Today, the only surviving Bara film is A Fool There Was, her first success.

Learn more about Theda Bara in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and at Jewesses With Attitude.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 118-120; New York Times, January 24, 1916.

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Hadassah honors Orthodox feminist Blu Greenberg

July 25, 2006

Blu Greenberg, best known for her work on behalf of feminism within Orthodox Judaism, was honored with Hadassah's highest honor, the Henrietta Szold award for outstanding leadership in the Jewish community, on July 25, 2006. Greenberg, who shared the award jointly with her husband, Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, thus joined a list of prominent world leaders—from Elie Wiesel to Yitzchak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Golda Meir—to be so honored.

Although Greenberg has lectured and written on a variety of contemporary issues, her leadership has centered on her analysis of the role of women within Orthodoxy and the intersections and possible reconciliations of feminism and traditional Judaism. Born in 1936 and raised in New York City, Greenberg herself received a strong Jewish and secular education. Greenberg first confronted the differing expectations for men and women when, having gone to Israel during her junior year of college, she wished to extend her stay in order to study with renowned scholar Nechama Liebowitz. Discouraged on the grounds that it was not what a "nice Orthodox Jewish girl would do," she felt that encouragement to stay would have been forthcoming had she been male. Greenberg came home, and went on to earn graduate degrees in clinical psychology and Jewish history.

Her entry into public life came when, in 1973, Greenberg—then an instructor in history at Mount St. Vincent College—was asked to give the opening address at the First National Jewish Women's Conference. She has identified that opportunity as the turning point at which she began to realize that strong commitments to both feminism and traditional religion could co-exist and even enrich each other. Her 1981 book, On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition, set the agenda for pursuing transformation in the public roles of Jewish women through halakhic (Jewish legal) means. In 1997, Greenberg founded the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), now an international alliance that sponsors conferences, works on behalf of agunot (women unable to obtain a religious divorce), publishes a journal, maintains a speakers' bureau, and pushes for an expanding role for observant women within public Jewish religious life.

Greenberg has also been chair of the National Jewish Book Council, the National Jewish Family Center, and the N.Y. Federation's Task Force on Jewish Women. In 2000, she founded One Voice: Jewish Women for Israel. She has also been active in Jewish-Palestinian dialogue. In addition to numerous articles in a variety of publications, her other books include How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household (1983); Black Bread: Poems, After the Holocaust (1994); and, with Reverend Linda Tarry, the children's book King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (1997).

Learn more about Blu Greenberg in Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, and Collecting My Life and Work, from Re://Collections, Vol. VII, Issue: 2, Fall 2005.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p.552; www.jofa.org; www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1639; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA031.

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Selma Jeanne Cohen's "Encyclopedia of Dance"

July 26, 1998

"The fact of its existence is the most important thing about it," the New York Times reviewer wrote of The International Encyclopedia of Dance in a review published on July 26, 1998. He commended editor Selma Jeanne Cohen for having "held on to her project with remarkable tenacity" for the 24 years since its inception. Unfortunately, the reviewer had few other positive things to say about the Encyclopedia, faulting it for a "failure of editorial focus," and "multicultural and multinational inclusivity at the expense of common sense" that "undermines the Encyclopedia's credibility." Despite a long catalogue of criticisms, the reviewer conceded that the Encyclopedia was a large (literally, at six volumes and almost 4,000 pages) accomplishment, that would "serve as a basis for all future endeavors." And he paid tribute to Cohen, for whom, he wrote, "people in the dance world have been rooting … for almost 25 years," noting that the Encyclopedia's existence was "because of her."

During those 25 years, Selma Jeanne Cohen had worked to make dance scholarship a respected academic discipline. Born in 1920 and raised in Chicago, Cohen was educated at the University of Chicago and began her academic career as an English professor at UCLA. In 1953, she moved to New York, where she taught dance history at Hunter College and the High School of the Performing Arts. Among her students were many future dance company directors such as Arthur Mitchell, Bruce Marks, and Eliot Feld. She wrote a number of scholarly articles about dance, and struggled to make dance more present in different fields of scholarly research. From 1955 to 1958, she worked as an assistant to the dance critic for the New York Times, becoming one of the paper's first female art critics. In 1959 she founded the quarterly journal, Dance Perspectives.

In 1962 she began to teach dance history at the American Dance Festival, which led to the creation of a program to train professional dance critics. She also wrote several books of dance scholarship, including The Modern Dance: Seven Statements of Belief (1966), Doris Humprey: An Artist First (1972), Dance as a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present (1974), and Next Week Swan Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances (1982). Cohen was also a founder of the Society of Dance History Scholars. In 1981 she was the recipient of the first Dance Magazine Award to a dance historian. Cohen died in December, 2005. She is remembered as the founder of dance history, and—despite the Encyclopedia's initial poor reviews—as editor of the definitive reference work on dance.

Learn more about Selma Jeanne Cohen in We Remember and in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 252-254; New York Times, July 26, 1998.

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Henrietta Szold helps to create American Jewish culture

July 28, 1893

On July 28, 1893, the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent announced that Henrietta Szold would be moving to Philadelphia from her home in Baltimore to serve as the secretary and first paid employee of the Jewish Publication Society (JPS). Szold had been elected as the only female member of the JPS publication committee when the organization was founded in 1888 in order to provide a steady series of substantive works of Jewish culture to an American audience. Despite the initial apathy and opposition that the JPS encountered, Szold committed herself to the society, at one point "personally addressing eleven hundred circulars and membership blanks" although in the end they only yielded 75 responses. She had already served the organization as an author, translator, and editor, but now she would be a paid employee.

While Henrietta Szold's most significant impact on Jewish life would come after she founded Hadassah, the Zionist women's organization, in 1912, her work at JPS constituted a major contribution to the creation of an American Jewish culture. The Jewish Exponent article about her move to JPS suggests that, even before the formal commencement of this work, Szold was recognized as a woman who had and would continue to play an important role in the American Jewish community. Szold had already established herself as an educator and, through newspaper columns, as an astute observer of Jewish life. According to the Exponent article, "no one better equipped could be found than Miss Szold."

Upon being offered the job of secretary in 1893, Szold withdrew from her positions in Baltimore, including her role as superintendent of the Russian night-school of the Hebrew Literary Society. As the school's founder, superintendent, fundraiser and one of its teachers, she had, according to the article, surrounded herself with teachers "whom she has made thoroughly conversant with her masterful manner of teaching English to Russo-Jewish immigrants, and in the sympathetic manner of engaging their undivided attention so as to develop in them an appreciation of American ideals."

Szold's work for JPS was monumental. Although she worked under the title and salary of secretary, she served as translator, indexer, fact checker, proofreader, statistician, administrator, and editor, overseeing the publication of 87 books during her tenure. Szold's clear mind, exhaustive dedication, and meticulous attention to detail enabled the Society to offer a remarkable literary and scholarly array. Many of the translations and original works published by JPS during this time still inform contemporary American Jewish culture and scholarship. A new Bible translation and the series of American Jewish Year Books that commenced publication in 1900 began to define the contours of a distinctive American Jewish intellectual world. After twenty-two years, Szold withdrew from JPS work in 1916 when a group of Zionists offered to provide her with an annuity in order to support her growing work for Hadassah.

See also: This Week in History for December 21, 1935; February 13, 1945; and February 24, 1912.

Learn more about Henrietta Szold in the encyclopedia. Also find her in the History Makers exhibit.

Sources: Jewish Exponent, July 28, 1893; JWA Henrietta Szold exhibit, jwa.org/exhibits/wov/szold/; Jonathan D. Sarna, JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988 (Philadelphia, 1989).

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Broadcast of Deborah Kaufman's "Blacks and Jews"

July 29, 1997

The documentary film Blacks and Jews, written and directed by Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow, was aired on PBS on July 29, 1997. The film, which was co-produced by Kaufman, Snitow, and Bari Scott, examines three headline-making conflicts between the two groups, from the perspectives of activists on both sides. The 90-minute film begins with the Crown Heights riots of 1991. It then moves to Chicago to discuss the 1960s phenomenon of "blockbusting," in which real estate agents bought homes in Jewish neighborhoods at bargain prices and then resold them to African-Americans for large profits. Finally, the film examines a 1994 incident in which Black and Latino students at Castlemont High School in Oakland, CA, were asked to leave a movie theatre after they laughed during a screening of Schindler's List.

Intended to get behind the headlines and to spark dialogue, Blacks and Jews examines these conflicts through interviews with the participants, news footage, and comments from activists like scholar Cornel West, writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Tikkun magazine editor Michael Lerner, and historian Clayborne Carson. In addition to intergroup conflict, the film explores conflicts within each of these communities. The filmmakers have said they hope that Blacks and Jews will "provoke debate and discussion about intergroup relations in the United States" and that "the film lets us laugh about ourselves and lets us approach one another without fear."

Blacks and Jews was the first of three films that Kaufman, who holds a law degree from the University of California Hastings School of Law, has directed and produced with Snitow. Their non-profit production company, based in Berkeley, CA, was founded in 1993 "to produce film, video and educational media for the general public on social issues from race relations to globalization." In addition to Blacks and Jews, Snitow-Kaufman Productions has released Secrets of Silicon Valley (2001), which explores the darker side of the Internet revolution, and Thirst (2004), which explores the role of water rights in globalization and community resistance to globalization.

Sources:New York Times, July 29, 1997; www.snitow-kaufman.org/; newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0014; www.newsreel.org/guides/blacksan.htm.

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Birth of publisher Blanche Wolf Knopf

July 30, 1894

Although her name and work have been overshadowed by those of her husband, Blanche Wolf Knopf carved out her own place in the publishing industry as vice-president and president of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Born on July 30, 1894 (some sources say 1893), Blanche Knopf was raised in New York, where she met Alfred Knopf in 1911. They were married in 1916, the year after Alfred Knopf launched his eponymous publishing firm. Blanche Knopf was involved in the firm from the start, and in 1921, she became a director and vice-president.

In addition to running the office, Blanche Knopf's duties included frequent travel to meet with and recruit new authors for the press. By all accounts, she excelled in establishing relationships with writers on three continents. Under her leadership, Knopf published translations of French writers Albert Camus, André Gide, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre; South American writers Jorge Amado, Gilberto Freyre, and Eduardo Mallea; and the first American edition of Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism. Knopf published American classics, but under Blanche Knopf's urging the firm also published such new American writers as H.L. Mencken, Willa Cather, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. For her work in support of French literature in America, she was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French government in 1949 and made an officer in 1960. Similarly, she was honored by the Brazilian government in 1950 with the Order of the Southern Cross.

In 1957, Alfred Knopf became chairman of the board, and Blanche Knopf took over as president. However, in 1960, the firm was sold to Random House, which maintains the Knopf imprint as an independent entity. Blanche Knopf remained involved at the helm of the Knopf imprint until her death in 1966. Her New York Times obituary said that her "alertness and perspicacity in recruiting writers ... and her driving energy as an executive contributed immensely to the success of the house of Knopf." In a field dominated entirely by men, in which she was virtually the only woman in her time to take a leading role, Blanche Knopf had a lasting impact on Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., on the world of publishing, and on American letters.

To learn more about Blanche Wolf Knopf, visit our encyclopedia.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 743-745; New York Times, June 5, 1966; www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/books/holdings/knopf/.

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Miriam Miller joins the WAVES

July 30, 1942

On July 30, 1942, the U.S. government established the Navy WAVES, or Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service, program. Though Navy women would not be allowed to serve outside the continental U.S., or even to go to sea, the military hoped that the recruitment of 10,000 women, who would work in onshore bases, would free sufficient numbers of men to fight overseas. Although women had served as nurses in the navy as early as the Spanish-American War, and officially in the Navy Nurse Corps since 1908, the WAVES program was by far the largest-scale effort to recruit women to active duty in the Navy. In the WAVES program, thousands of women performed nearly every possible job at over 500 naval stations through the Second World War. As military leaders had hoped, they enabled male officers and enlisted men to staff the ships that were responsible for the Allied victory in the Pacific theatre.

Among the earliest group of women to enlist in the WAVES was Miriam Miller. Although her parents felt that military nursing "wasn't the life for a nice Jewish girl," Miller enlisted soon after her graduation from the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital School of Nursing, in Pennsylvania. She was assigned first to the Great Lakes Naval Station and then to the San Diego Naval Hospital. Later, when the Navy relaxed its prohibition on women serving outside the continental U.S., she went to Guam, where she cared for soldiers injured in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Active in veterans' affairs after the war, Miller was elected President of the Jewish War Veterans National Ladies Auxiliary in 1961.

Sources:jwa.org/discover/inthepast/infocus/military/navy/;jwa.org/discover/inthepast/infocus/military/navy/miller.html; jwa.org/discover/inthepast/infocus/military/navy/waves.html;National Museum of American Jewish Military History, www.nmajmh.org.

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Bobbie Rosenfeld goes for the gold

July 31, 1928

Even before she won gold and silver medals in the 1928 Olympics, Bobbie Rosenfeld was well known as a star of Canadian track and field. Born Fanny Rosenfeld in Dnepropetrovsk, Russia in 1904, she moved to Canada as an infant; she was later nicknamed "Bobbie" because of her bobbed hair. Growing up in Barrie, Ontario, and then in Toronto, Rosenfeld was an enthusiastic athlete from a young age, playing basketball, softball, hockey and tennis, as well as running. Despite widespread belief that strenuous exercise was damaging to women's bodies, Rosenfeld's family supported her athletic pursuits.

In 1923, Rosenfeld burst onto the national scene when she entered the 100-yard dash at a picnic on a dare from a softball teammate. At the time, Rosenfeld was working in a Toronto chocolate factory. Rosenfeld not only won the race but also beat the Canadian national champion, Rosa Grosse. Two years later, Rosenfeld and Grosse would share the world record for the 100-yard dash, at eleven seconds. Later in 1923, she entered her first major race at the Canadian National Exhibition. In the 100-yard dash, she again beat Grosse and also beat American and world-record holder Helen Filkey. The same evening, after the race, Rosenfeld joined her softball team and helped lead them to the city championship.

Over the next decade, Rosenfeld came to symbolize Canadian women's sport. She went from success to success, leading ice hockey, basketball, and softball teams to championships and winning the Toronto Ladies Grass Courts tennis tournament in 1924. She claimed victory in so many sports that one author later wrote that "the most efficient way to summarize Bobbie Rosenfeld's career ... is to say that she was not good at swimming." A consummate athlete, she was also applauded for her sportsmanship. Both these qualities would soon be evident on the world stage.

In 1928, Rosenfeld was chosen as one of the "matchless six" on the Canadian women's Olympic track and field team. The Olympics of 1928 were the first in which women were allowed to compete in track and field, although only on a trial basis. On July 31, 1928, Rosenfeld won the silver medal in the 100-meter race, though many spectators thought she had actually finished first. A few days later, Rosenfeld competed in the 800-meters, a race in which she had been entered only to encourage teammate Jean Thompson, and for which she had not trained. Coming from the rear, Rosenfeld ran alongside Thompson through most of the race, allowing her teammate to finish fourth while she placed fifth; this was considered a great act of compassion and sportsmanship, as Rosenfeld could easily have pulled ahead and earned a medal in the race. Finally, on the last day of track and field events, Rosenfeld got her gold medal when she led her team to victory in the 400-meter relay. On the team's return to Toronto, 200,000 people lined the streets to cheer a celebratory parade.

Rosenfeld had helped to show that women's competition could be a worthy part of the Olympics; after the Games closed, the delegates of the International Amateur Athletic Federation voted 16-6 to continue women's track and field events at future Olympics. The Canadian delegate voted against women's participation. Back at home, though Rosenfeld had received a hero's welcome, she went back to work at the chocolate factory to pay her bills. In 1928, no endorsement contracts or professional sports opportunities were available to women. Rosenfeld continued to play sports, even starring on championship ice hockey and softball teams, but recurrent attacks of severe arthritis ended her athletic career in 1933. She moved to coaching track and softball, and then, in 1937, to writing about sports. For nearly twenty years, she wrote the "Sports Reel" column for the Toronto Globe and Mail. She retired from the Globe and Mail in 1966 and died on November 14, 1969.

Rosenfeld's legacy is one of breaking down barriers. First as an athlete, and then as the only woman on the sports staff of the Globe and Mail, she carved new paths for women in sports, making it clear to skeptics that, as she put it in a column, "girls are in sports for good." These contributions were recognized both during Rosenfeld's lifetime and after her death. In 1950, a press poll of sportswriters named her Canada's Female Athlete of the Half Century; in 1955, she was among the earliest inductees to Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. Her portrait recently appeared on a Canadian postage stamp, and every year the Bobbie Rosenfeld trophy is awarded to Canada's Female Athlete of the Year.

To learn more about Bobbie Rosenfeld, visit the encyclopedia. Also visit her page in the History Makers exhibit.

Sources:JWA Bobbie Rosenfeld exhibit, jwa.org/exhibits/wov/rosenfeld/; New York Times, August 1, 1928; www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/women/002026-236-e.html; www.cshof.ca/accessible/hm_profile.php?i=474.

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