Gertrude Stein publishes Alice B. Toklas "Autobiography"

June 1, 1933

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American-born writer Gertrude Stein is pictured here (R) at the Paris residence she lived in for 33 years, and which became a salon for the artists and writers of the era, in Man Ray's 1923 work Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in the Atelier at 27 Rue de Fleurus.

Institution: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

American modernist writer Gertrude Stein published a memoir, ironically titled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, on June 1, 1933. The autobiography made Stein an instant celebrity. Born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Stein was raised mainly in Baltimore, MD, and Oakland, CA. In 1893, Stein enrolled at the Harvard Annex, the University's women's college; while at Harvard, Stein studied with William James, participating in experiments in automatic writing that may have influenced her later work.

After withdrawing from Johns Hopkins Medical School, Stein followed her brother, Leo, to London in 1902, and then to Paris the following year. She was to live in France for the rest of her life. In Paris, Stein hosted a flourishing salon, where she socialized with writers and artists including Thornton Wilder, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. It was also in Paris that Stein met Alice B. Toklas, who became her lifelong companion.

During her Paris years, Stein experimented with language and writing, publishing a variety of avant-garde works in small magazines. She also published Three Lives, a collection of stories, and The Making of Americans, a novel, both loosely based on her own life. But it was Stein's Toklas memoir that made her a celebrity. Although the highest praise a New York Times commenter could find for it was that it was "less strangely titled and less strangely written then many of her other works," another called it a "record of a rich, vivid and various experience." The book offered both wit and self-importance. Writing in the voice of Toklas, for example, Stein claimed "that only three times in my life have I met a genius ... the three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead." Following publication of the Autobiography, Stein made a triumphant lecture tour in the U.S. and found herself greatly in demand for lectures and interviews. However, she worried that in winning popular acclaim she had betrayed her commitment to experimental prose.

Stein and Toklas, who was also Jewish, stayed in France during the Second World War, living in the South and probably protected by French friends with ties to the Vichy government. Stein died of stomach cancer in 1946, and is buried in Paris.

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

See also: Etta Cone; Gertrude Stein in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1314-1318; New York Times, August 31, 1933, September 3, 1933.

Estelle Joan Sommers takes over Capezio

June 1, 1964

Estelle Sommers got her start in the dance world when she transformed her first husband's Cincinnati piece-goods retail store into a dancewear specialty shop. She made headlines, however, when she took over her second husband's New York specialty shoe store several years later, on June 1, 1964. Passionate about dance since taking ballet and tap lessons in childhood, Sommers remained committed to the dance world both professionally and personally until her death on March 21, 1994.

After a divorce and a move from Cincinnati to New York, Sommers married "Mr. Capezio," Ben Sommers, and her career was thereafter linked to his. She took over his 61st street Capezio shop, revitalizing it and adding clothing from other manufacturers selected to coordinate with Capezio pieces. The New York Times, which covered the change, noted that the "restless housewife" was generating "fashion excitement" inside the store. As owner-manager of Capezio Fashion Shop, designer-owner of Estar, Ltd., and as vice president and head administrator for six Capezio Dance-Theatre Shops nationwide, she achieved success in various branches of retail dancewear. Along the way, she introduced Antron-Lycra/Spandex, then a new fabric, into Capezio's dancewear, revolutionizing the industry.

Due to the nature of her business, Sommers could not support or publicly promote any one dance company over others, but she was deeply involved in general dance causes. She served on the boards of the Joffrey School of Ballet, the International Dance Alliance, the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries, and the Center for Dance Medicine. She was also committed to projects in Israel, serving on the boards of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Israeli Dance Institute. Her greatest impact may have been made as the U.S. Chairwoman of the International Committee for the Dance Library of Israel. In this position, which she held from 1979 until 1994, Sommers helped to establish the Tel Aviv library as the second most important dance collection worldwide.

To learn more about Estelle Joan Sommers, 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. 1288-1289; New York Times, June 23, 1964, March 23, 1994.

Publication of "Jewish and Female"

June 1, 1984

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Founder and editor of Lilith, the "independent Jewish women's magazine," Susan Weidman Schneider is devoted to the many causes of concern to Jewish women and to highlighting the unique challenges and possibilities facing those who make a commitment to both Judaism and feminism.

Institution: Lilith

Susan Weidman Schneider's Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today was published on June 1, 1984. The book, whose original working title was The Ways We Are, attempted to codify two decades of Jewish feminist thinking and work by tracing the major changes in Jewish women's lives and placing them within the context of the traditions against which these changes were taking place. The book was comprehensive, including chapters on Jewish law, marriage, women's bodies, holidays, work, and philanthropy, among other topics. In the tradition of feminist scholarship, it incorporated women's voices throughout the text. It included, as well, a 90-page "networking directory" of Jewish women's organizations.

Weidman Schneider was well positioned to write Jewish and Female; since 1976, she has been the executive editor of Lilith: The Independent Jewish Women's Magazine. The magazine is named after the woman who, according to rabbinic legend, was first created with Adam, but was then banished from Eden when she insisted on equality. Founded "to foster discussion of Jewish women's issues and put them on the agenda of the Jewish community," Lilith has now chronicled over three decades of Jewish feminism. Focused more on religious and social issues than economics and politics, the magazine has reported on topics ranging from new Jewish rituals to the position of women in Israeli life, from women's health to women's rabbinic ordination. Lilith also regularly publishes fiction and poetry.

As editor of Lilith, Weidman Schneider has taken a prominent place in organized Jewish life. The magazine is proudly activist; its editor takes that activism on the road through her frequent lectures and public presentations. She has, for instance, regularly been invited to address the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. In addition, Weidman Schneider has addressed issues of concern to women in two more recent books. In 1990, she published Intermarriage: The Challenge of Living with Differences between Christians and Jews. The following year, she co-authored (with Arthur B.C. Drache) Head & Heart: A Woman's Guide to Financial Independence.

To learn more about Susan Weidman Schneider, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Lilith Magazine; "Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity: Bringing it home" and Q&A with Joyce Antler: Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity" on Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 854-856; New York Times, August 1, 1976, October 27, 1991; Susan Weidman Schneider, Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today (New York, 1984); http://www.lilith.org; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, http://jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA061.

First American woman rabbi

June 3, 1972

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Sally Priesand.

Sally Priesand made history on June 3, 1972, when she was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), becoming the first female rabbi in American history and the first woman to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary.

Priesand, who grew up in Cleveland, was the first of a number of women who had studied at Hebrew Union College to make her way all the way to ordination. She continued in the rabbinical program after completing the joint undergraduate degree offered by HUC-JIR with the University of Cincinnati, receiving important support along the way from the HUC-JIR president, Nelson Glueck.

Priesand faced both opposition and derision during her training. Initially, many of her classmates and teachers believed that her quest for ordination was only a "passing fancy" and that she was really in rabbinical school in search of a husband. Later, some congregations refused to accept her as a student rabbi in their pulpits. The Dean of the College worried publicly about how Priesand would fulfill her rabbinic duties while raising children. Ironically, perhaps, Priesand eventually decided that to fill her chosen role effectively, she would not be able to raise a family of her own.

Priesand proved her doubters wrong. Upon graduation, she secured a post as assistant rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, considered one of the premier reform synagogues in the country, with some 750 families. She served that congregation, as assistant and associate rabbi, for seven years.

In 1979, however, Priesand left Stephen Wise when she realized that she would not be chosen to succeed the ailing senior rabbi. It was a disappointment for Priesand, who had always believed that her "ability, sincerity, and dedication" would outweigh her gender if she did a competent job. She told the New York Times that she had learned that "competence and commitment are enough for a man, but not for a woman." In the wake of her departure from Stephen Wise, Priesand began to speak more publicly about the need for the Reform movement to more actively support women in the rabbinate.

Despite her symbolic role as the first woman rabbi, Priesand did not start on the rabbinical path as an outspoken advocate of women's issues. As a rabbinical student, she said that although she thought the feminist movement was "important," she was "not an active supporter of women's lib." However, she did write her rabbinical thesis on women's roles within Judaism, and, beginning in 1979, she actively pushed the Reform movement to supplement its spoken support of female rabbis with actions that would further their acceptance by congregations. In particular, she advocated for the hiring of female faculty at HUC-JIR, and the addition of women to the movement's various governing boards.

Priesand served as the part-time rabbi of Temple Beth El in Elizabeth, NJ, and as a chaplain at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital from 1979 to 1981. In 1981, she became the rabbi at Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, NJ, where she nurtured the kind of community that, as a student, she had hoped a congregation could become. Priesand is recognized and admired as a pioneering figure in world Jewry. The Rabbi Sally J. Priesand Visiting Professorship of Jewish Women's Studies was created in her honor to support a visiting professor every year on one of the campuses of HUC-JIR. Priesand has also been active within the larger Reform movement, serving on the executive boards of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Rabbinic Alumni Association, and the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Rabbi Priesand retired from Monmouth Reform Temple on June 30, 2006 after 25 years of service to that congregation.

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

See also: This Week in History for February 8, 1976, May 12, 1985, October 23, 1973, and May 19, 1974; Rabbis in the United States; "A Reluctant Pioneer" and "Celebrating the First Lights of Women Rabbis," Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1102-1104; www.spoke.com/info/p6r6rli/RabbiPriesand; New York Times, October 31, 1970; November 22, 1970; April 13, 1971; December 9, 1979; Pamela Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985 (Boston, 1998); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA059; www.forward.com/articles/418/.

Wendy Wasserstein first woman playwright to win Tony Award

June 4, 1989

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Photo courtesy of Jill Krementz, Lincoln Center Theater.

Born and raised in New York City and educated at Mount Holyoke College and the Yale School of Drama, Wendy Wasserstein was already an established playwright when she won the Tony Award for Best Play for The Heidi Chronicles on June 4, 1989. She was the first woman ever to win the Tony for best play. The Heidi Chronicles, which explores art historian Heidi Holland's disillusionment with the idealism that characterized the 1960s, also earned Wasserstein a Pulitzer Prize for drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Susan Blackburn Prize. The play was later adapted for television.

Like The Heidi Chronicles, Wasserstein's earlier plays also centered on strong but conflicted modern women. Uncommon Women and Others, written as her Yale master's thesis and first produced in 1975, follows five Mount Holyoke graduates through their first five years after college, as they discuss men, sex, marriage, careers, and the patriarchal nature of society. It is considered the first serious dramatic treatment of contemporary women's issues. Later plays follow similar themes. The Sisters Rosensweig (1992), set in London in 1989, dramatizes the very different lives of three middle-aged sisters. An American Daughter (1997), the most overtly political of Wasserstein's plays, focuses on the sexism to which women are subjected in the public arena as it follows the travails of a nominee for the post of surgeon general. Although all the plays deal with serious topics, they are equally marked by a wry sense of humor.

Although Wasserstein's plays have met with both popular and critical success, some of them—especially Isn't It Romantic (1983) and The Sisters Rosensweig—have been criticized as "too Jewish." Wasserstein responded to this criticism by observing, "When your name is Wendy Wasserstein and you're from New York, you are the walking embodiment of 'too Jewish.'"

In addition to plays, Wasserstein wrote three musicals, several television plays, and numerous essays. Her essays appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, New Woman magazine, and in the collection Bachelor Girls (1991).

Wasserstein's last play, Third, was produced at Lincoln Center in the Fall of 2005. Wasserstein died in New York City on January 30, 2006. Her first novel, Elements of Style, was published posthumously in April 2006.

To learn more about Wendy Wasserstein, visit We Remember, Making Trouble and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: "Wasserstein's Elements of Style" and "And the winner is ... no one?", Jewesses With Attitude; Theater in the United States; Mt. Holyoke College, Jewish Women On the Map.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1456-1459; New York Times, March 31, 1989; June 5, 1989; July 19, 1989; Gail Ciociola, Wendy Wasserstein: Dramatizing Women, Their Choices, and Their Boundaries (Jefferson, NC, 1998).

Sylvia Porter one of first women honored as "Headliner"

June 5, 1943

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On March 10, 2000, the Business Journalism Hall of Fame honored Sylvia Porter as one of the "100 business news luminaries of the twentieth century," one of only six women to receive this tribute.

Institution: The Business News Luminaries Business Journalism's Hall of Fame

When the National Headliners' Club included women in its ranks of prizewinning journalists for the first time in 1943, Sylvia Porter was one of just two women to receive a Headliners' award. On June 5, 1943, she was honored for "outstanding" work in financial and business reporting. By then, Porter had been working in journalism for a decade, but the award was only the first of many Porter would earn over a career that spanned half a century.

Born in Brooklyn in 1913, Porter enrolled at Hunter College after high school, intending to study English and history. When her family lost $30,000 in the stock market crash of 1929, she changed her major to economics, determined to understand what had happened. After college, she began to write articles for financial journals and a column for the American Banker; she obtained a freelance position with the New York Evening Post in 1935. In 1938, the Post made Porter its financial editor; she was the first woman to join the financial desk of a major American newspaper. As editor, Porter began writing a daily column, which appeared under the byline "S.F. Porter" to disguise her gender. Her column ran in the Post five days a week until 1978, when she moved it to the New York Daily News. Through syndication, the column reached 40 million readers in 450 newspapers around the world.

Porter's columns were marked by a combination of thorough knowledge and plain language. She made it her mission to explain finance to the average reader. This same combination of deep understanding and commonsense advice also characterized Porter's many financial guidebooks. The first of these, How to Make Money in Government Bonds, appeared in 1939. It was followed by How to Live Within Your Income (with Jacob K. Lasser, 1948), Money and You (1949), and Managing Your Money (1953, 1962). In 1975, Sylvia Porter's Money Book: How to Earn It, Spend It, Save It, Invest It, Borrow It, and Use It to Better Your Life made the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than a million copies.

Porter's personal finance column earned numerous awards. In both 1946 and 1948, she was honored by the New York Newspaper Women's Club for the best column in any field. In 1951, she was recognized by the New York chapter of Theta Sigma Phi, an honorary organization for women in journalism. Later the same year, she was named a "key woman of the year" by the women's fashion division of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York. Porter died on June 5, 1991. Her last book, Planning Your Retirement, was published posthumously the following September.

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

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp.1097-1099; New York Times, May 28, 1943; February 16, 1946; February 15, 1948; April 27, 1951; August 4, 1951; December 11, 1951; June 7, 1991.

"What is Women's History?"

June 5, 2005

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Undeterred by the ridicule of conservative male historians in the 1960s and 1970s, Gerda Lerner was a trailblazer in the field of women's history with such works as Black Women in White America and The Female Experience.

Institution: The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

On June 5, 2005, acclaimed historian Gerda Lerner received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In granting the degree, the president and rector of the Hebrew University noted, "For many young people, your remarkable academic career, achieved despite the harrowing experiences suffered during the Nazi era in Europe, provides a model of what may be accomplished in the face of adversity." The following day, as part of a conference in her honor, she gave a keynote address titled, "What Is Women's History and Why Should We Study It?" Lerner is widely regarded as uniquely positioned to answer that question, having shaped the field of women's history from its earliest beginnings.

Born on April 30, 1920, and raised in an assimilated middle-class home in Vienna, Gerda Lerner fled Europe for New York in 1939, after being imprisoned for six weeks by the Nazis. Two years later, she married film editor Carl Lerner. Gerda Lerner had been active in student politics in Vienna, and she remained politically active in the U.S. In the 1950s, she became active in the Congress of American Women, a left-leaning women's group concerned with economic and social issues. She also campaigned for civil rights for African Americans and worked in support of the United Nations. Both Lerners were involved with the Communist Party, and Carl was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. During this period, Lerner published several short stories and a novel, No Farewell (1955), set in Vienna on the eve of Nazi occupation.

In the late 1950s, Lerner set out to write a novel about the abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké. Realizing that she needed to know more about their historical context, she enrolled in courses at the New School for Social Research. Enthralled by the topic, she completed a Ph.D. in history at Columbia in 1966. Her dissertation was published as The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967). Since then, Lerner has made an indelible mark on the field of history.

In the late 1960s, a growing number of women were entering the profession, and their presence reshaped the field. Lerner led this change, directing the country's first graduate program in women's history, at Sarah Lawrence College. In 1980, she moved to the University of Wisconsin, where she established a Ph.D. program in women's history. At the same time, Lerner was active in demanding equality for women within the ranks of the profession. In 1981, she became president of the Organization of American Historians, the first woman to hold that position since 1946.

In addition, Lerner's scholarship broke new ground. A 1969 article, "The Lady and the Mill Girl," introduced class analysis into women's history. The anthology Black Women in White America (1972) showed the importance of African-American women's history, and remained for many years the only available text for teaching that history. Other important works include The Majority Finds Its Past (1979), The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), which won the Joan Kelly Prize of the American Historical Association, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993), and Why History Matters: Life and Thought (1997).

In 1995, Lerner's lifetime of work was recognized in her native Austria, when she was awarded both the Kaethe Leichter Prize, honoring exiled Jewish intellectuals, and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, the highest honor given by the State of Austria. In 2002, she published an autobiography, Fireweed, detailing her political life before she entered the academy. Lerner remains Professor Emerita of U.S. women's history at the University of Wisconsin and is currently Scholar-in-Residence at Duke University. She is in demand as a speaker, and gives frequent lectures at campuses around the country.

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

See also: Discover: Women's History Month; This Week in History for July 18, 1979, "Pioneering women's history summer institute"; "Happy 90th Birthday, Gerda Lerner" and "A Shout-Out to Dr. Gerda Lerner", Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 827-829; Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography (Philadelphia, 2002); www.afhu.org/site/press_releases/news_bog2005.htm; www.dukenews.duke.edu/2004/03/califf_0304.html; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA048.

First Jewish woman lawyer admitted to Washington state bar

June 6, 1901

Bella Weretnikow, who became the first Jewish woman lawyer in Washington State, was born in Russia in 1880. Seeking better luck in America, her family immigrated to Winnipeg, Canada, in 1882 before settling in Seattle in 1893. There, Bella attended a public high school and then entered the University of Washington at age 16. She graduated in 1900 with a bachelor's degree in political and social science, with honors in German, and another bachelor's degree in pedagogy.

Immediately upon her graduation, Weretnikow entered the University of Washington Law School, which was at that time open to anyone who could pay the fee and meet the entrance requirements. In fact, Weretnikow had completed the first year's work concurrently with her senior year of college. She therefore was able to graduate from law school on May 31, 1901, one of two women in a class of fifteen. Hers was the first class to graduate from the brand-new law school. Just six days later, on June 6, 1901, Bella Weretnikow was admitted to the Washington state bar.

Weretnikow found work in the law office of Frederick R. Burch, and soon won her first case in King County Superior Court. In addition, she continued to help run her mother's dry-goods store and manage property belonging to the family. Her law career, however, came to an end in 1905. Like many women of her generation, Weretniknow left the professional arena upon her marriage. Lewis N. Rosenbaum had seen a few lines in the American Israelite newspaper announcing Weretnikow's graduation from law school, contacted the young woman, and soon moved from Tennessee to Seattle to woo and wed her. He, too, was a lawyer.

The Rosenbaums lived alternately in New York and Seattle during the course of a marriage that lasted fifty years, until Lewis's death in 1956. Together, they raised five children and were active in their local synagogues. Bella wrote an autobiography, today housed at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, excerpts of which were published in the American Jewish Archives Journal in 1967. Bella Weretnikow Rosenbaum died on December 17, 1960.

Sources: Molly Cone, et al., Family of Strangers: Building a Jewish Community in Washington State, (Seattle, 2003); Judith Rosenthal, "Bella Weretnikow: Seattle's First Jewish Female Attorney," Columbia, Spring 2004; American Jewish Archives Finding Aid, http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/collections/01_r.html; jwa.org/archive/jsp/perInfo.jsp?personID=1023.

Alysa Stanton ordained as first African-American female rabbi

June 6, 2009

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Rabbi Alysa Stanton and Gail Reimer at the White House reception for Jewish American Heritage Month 2010

Alysa Stanton became the world's first African-American female rabbi when she was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati on June 6, 2009.

Alysa Stanton was raised in a Pentecostal Christian home in Cleveland, Ohio. She was first exposed to Judaism as a child while living in a Jewish neighborhood in suburban Cleveland Heights. Stanton's mother had always encouraged her to explore different religions, and Stanton became especially drawn to Judaism, receiving her first Hebrew grammar book from her devout Christian uncle at age 10. After moving to Colorado, Stanton became increasingly serious about Jewish learning and, during her college days, drove over 140 miles every week between Fort Collins and Denver to study with a Conservative rabbi in an Orthodox synagogue. She eventually had a traditional conversion in 1987.

Stanton didn't always feel accepted by the Jewish community or by her African-American Christian friends. She encountered racial prejudice while studying in Israel and experienced the discomfort many American Jews felt worshiping beside a non-white person in synagogue. At the same time, many of her African-American Christian friends felt that she had "sold out" or "grown horns" as a result of her decision to convert to Judaism.

Not surprisingly, it was a long time before she thought seriously about the rabbinate. She studied social psychology, neuropsychology, and interpersonal relationships at Lancaster University in England in 1983-84; received a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology in 1988; earned a Master of Education degree in counseling and multiculturalism in 1992 from Colorado State University; and received a professional counselor license in 1998.

In 2002, Stanton began her rabbinic training at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem and then in Cincinnati; she served as a chaplain, received clinical pastoral training, and promoted interfaith dialogue at Reform communities in the United States.

A single mother of an adopted daughter, in August 2009, Alysa Stanton became the rabbi of Congregation Bayt Shalom, a predominantly white congregation of about 60 families in Greenville, North Carolina, affiliated with both the Reform and Conservative movements. "My goals as a rabbi are to break down barriers, build bridges and provide hope," Stanton told CNN. "I look forward to being the spiritual leader of an inclusive sacred community that welcomes and engages all."

See also: "Mazel Tov, Alysa Stanton!" and "Women front and center at this celebration of Jewish American Heritage," and "Alysa Stanton, First Black Female Rabbi, Will Leave N.C. Congregation," Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7639090; www.mercurynews.com/ci_12478024; www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/05/21/north.carolina.black.rabbi/.

Carole King Releases "Tapestry"

June 7, 1971

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Carole King, 2008.

Singer-songwriter Carole King achieved stardom with the release of her album Tapestry on June 7, 1971. The album won four Grammy awards and eventually sold more than 10.5 million copies, more than either Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water (9 million) or the Beatles' Abbey Road (6 million). Though it was King's second solo album and greatest success, Tapestry was far from her first venture into the music industry.

Born in Brooklyn in 1942, King briefly attended Queens College, where two of her classmates were Paul Simon and Neil Diamond. After a year, she left college to marry Gerry Goffin, who also became her songwriting partner. They had their first hit in 1961, when the Shirelles took their "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" to the top of the charts. Later, the team wrote "(You Make Me Feel) Like A Natural Woman" for Aretha Franklin and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees, among many other successes. When singers began shifting from the work of songwriters to using their own material in the late 1960s, King and Goffin dissolved both their marriage and their artistic partnership. King struck out on her own, releasing her first solo album, Writer, in 1970. Though later records never matched the phenomenal sales of Tapestry, two more records released in the 1970s, Music and Wrap Around Joy, did reach gold status.

In 1987, King and Goffin were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame; in 1990, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1989, King received the National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award.

King continues to record regularly and tour occasionally. A 1999 concert at New York's Madison Square Garden honored her lifetime of achievement with performances of her songs by a long list of successful vocalists. King's own performance was called "warm and welcoming" by the New York Times, whose reviewer also wrote that "melodies like Ms. King's are indeed beyond fashion." King released Love Makes the World in 2001 and The Living Room Tour in 2005.

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

See also: Jewish Women and Jewish Music in America.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 739-740; Mitchell S. Cohen, Carole King: A Biography in Words and Pictures (New York, 1976); James E. Perone, Carole King: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1999); Washington Post, May 24, 1973; New York Times, October 16, 1999.

Birth of feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin

June 9, 1939

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Feminist seders have provided an important context for developing women’s spirituality. In 1975, a group of Israeli and American women decided to create their own Passover seder based on their experiences as Jewish women. Now an annual event held in Manhattan, it has been attended by Esther Broner, Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Bella Abzug, Grace Paley and several other "Seder Sisters" who have played important roles in the development of Jewish feminism. Shown here are Bella Abzug, Phyllis Chesler and Letty Cottin Pogrebin at the Women's Seder in 1991.

Photographer: Joan Roth

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

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

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

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

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

To learn more about Letty Cottin Pogrebin, visit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution and Jewish
Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for November 27, 1972; "Our Ten Plagues", Jewesses with Attitude.

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

European Debut of Judith Malina's Living Theatre

June 15, 1961

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Photograph by Charles Rotmil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

See also: Theater in the United States; Judith: Part of the Hanukkah Story.

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

Jennie Grossinger Day!

June 16, 1968

Jennie Grossinger, who helped make the Catskills resort Grossinger's into the most famous retreat of its kind, was born in Austria on June 16, 1892. At age eight, she immigrated with her family to New York, where she struggled to learn English and succeed in school. At thirteen, she left school to work in a garment factory, providing her family with much-needed income. In 1914, her father bought a piece of land in the Catskills, intending to leave factory work and return to farming. It soon became clear that the rocky soil would never support a prosperous farm, and Jennie suggested that the family take in boarders. The first year, the family charged $9 a week and cleared a net profit of $81. From that modest beginning, Grossinger's was born.

Although the initial farmhouse lacked heat, electricity, and indoor plumbing, its other amenities helped to make it a success. Jennie Grossinger's mother, Malka, was a good kosher cook, and Jennie's warm personality was credited with making guests feel at home. In addition, Jennie's husband Harry (a cousin with the same last name), who had stayed in New York, was able to send guests their way. By 1919, the family had made enough money to sell the original farmhouse and buy a nearby hotel. Grossinger's thrived in the 1920s, becoming an opulent resort with tennis courts, a children's camp, crystal chandeliers, and an auditorium that featured world-class entertainers. It was in this decade that Grossinger's became a destination of choice for upwardly mobile East Coast Jews.

Although the decade of the Great Depression brought hard times, Grossinger's managed to stay open. One innovative development was the establishment of a training camp for boxers. The boxers provided much-needed income, while Grossinger's provided a Jewish atmosphere and facilities. In the years after the Second World War, Grossinger's fame spread from Jews to non-Jews. While maintaining its kosher kitchen, the resort began to attract a non-Jewish clientele. Part of this was due to the successful national distribution and marketing of "Grossinger's Rye," accompanied by Jennie Grossinger's image and signature. By 1970, non-Jews were estimated to make up one third of the 150,000 annual guests. In the post-war years, such prominent figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, and Nelson Rockefeller visited the resort.

In addition to providing what the New York Times called "the tone of the place" at Grossinger's, Jennie Grossinger was active in a variety of philanthropic endeavors. She endowed a clinic and a convalescent home in Israel. In 1955, she was recognized by the Jewish War Veterans for "devoted service to the Jewish community and to the promotion of interfaith understanding." The same year, she was honored by the South Hudson, NJ, Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress "for her humanitarianism and her contributions to the happiness and welfare of others." In 1968, Governor Nelson Rockefeller designated June 16, Grossinger's birthday, as Jennie Grossinger Day in New York State. It was the first time such an honor had ever been bestowed on a living woman.

Although she turned over the administration of Grossinger's to her children in 1964, Jennie Grossinger remained the soul of the resort. According to her obituary, she fostered "an atmosphere that combined urgent family solicitude for guests with an elegance that gave to many an opulent feeling they never enjoyed at home." She continued to live in a cottage on the resort property until her death on November 20, 1972. In 1985, Grossinger's was sold to a group of investors, passing permanently out of the family hands. The resort has been closed ever since, as it has passed from one investor to another, none of which has succeeded with renovation plans. Only the Grossinger's golf course remains open to the public.

To learn more about Jennie Grossinger, 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. 556-558; New York Times, March 16, 1955, May 19, 1955, November 21, 1972, October 19, 1985; www.brown.edu/Research/Catskills_Institute/hotelnews/grossinger4.html; www.brown.edu/Research/Catskills_Institute/hotelnews/grossinger2.html; Joel Pomerantz, Jennie and the Story of Grossinger's (New York, 1970); Antler, Joyce, You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother (New York, 2007), pp. 116–121.

Birth of Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, editor and commentator on American Jewish life

June 17, 1908

Born in Germany on June 17, 1908, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin became a major commentator on the nature of American Jewish life. Raised in Frankfurt, Weiss-Rosmarin was active in Jewish and Zionist organizations throughout her youth. After studying at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig, she earned a doctorate in Semitics, philosophy, and archeology at the University of Wurzburg in 1931. Later that year, she immigrated to New York with her husband.

Unable to find a teaching position in Assyriology, her academic specialty, Weiss-Rosmarin and her husband opened the School of the Jewish Woman in Manhattan in October 1933, initially under the auspices of Hadassah. Dedicated to combating what she saw as women's inadequate access to Jewish education, Weiss-Rosmarin offered classes in Hebrew, Yiddish, Bible, and Jewish History. In 1935, she introduced a school newsletter, which soon became the Jewish Spectator. Although the school closed in 1939, Weiss-Rosmarin edited the Spectator for another fifty years.

The Spectator, billed as "a typical family magazine, with a special appeal to the woman," covered a wide range of Jewish topics, including fiction, poetry, and Weiss-Rosmarin's editorials. It was through these editorials that Weiss-Rosmarin wielded influence on the American Jewish community. Though her opinions were sometimes controversial, her columns were distinguished by passionate yet nuanced and logical arguments on a range of topics. A Zionist from her youth, she used her column to argue for Jewish-Arab coexistence in Israel, and attacked bureaucracy and inefficiencies in Jewish communal organizations such as the Jewish Agency. Always dedicated to Jewish education, she argued for the primacy of the synagogue over the federation, and advocated for Jewish day schools even when many American Jews saw them as un-American. She argued for changes in Jewish family law, especially the laws governing divorce, but opposed women's prayer groups on the grounds that self-segregation was no better than segregation imposed by others. In her column, she pushed for egalitarianism in both worship services and in Jewish public life.

In addition to editing the Spectator, Weiss-Rosmarin contributed to other Jewish periodicals around the world, including a regular column in the London Jewish Chronicle. She also served on the boards of the National Jewish Curriculum Institute and the Jewish Book Council, and as national co-chair of education for the Zionist Organization of America. She taught briefly at both New York University and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and published books on a variety of subjects, including women's roles in Judaism, and the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Weiss-Rosmarin died of cancer in 1989.

To learn more about Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Modern Jewish Family in the United States; Trude Weiss-Rosmarin in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1463-1465; New York Times, September 3, 1967.

First North Carolinian graduates from Smith College

June 18, 1901

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Gertrude Weil, 1901.
Courtesy of North Carolina Office of Archives and History.

On June 18, 1901, Gertrude Weil became the first North Carolina resident to graduate from Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Born and raised in Goldsboro, NC, Weil returned to her hometown after college. She immediately began to apply the lessons of women's rights, political action, and social justice she had absorbed at Smith, becoming a lifelong leader of progressive social causes.

Born in 1879 to a prominent and civically involved German-Jewish family, Weil was educated in the Goldsboro schools until age 15, when she was sent to the coeducational and progressive Horace Mann School in New York City.

Weil took up her family legacy of social service after graduating from Smith. Her first communal role was with the Goldsboro Women's Club, of which she soon became president. Her zeal was soon recognized by the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, and she became an officer in that organization. Her enthusiasm for the work earned her the nickname "Federation Gertie." Although she was offered the presidency of the Federation in 1919, she turned it down in order to concentrate on the fight for women's suffrage.

Weil first became involved with the suffrage movement in 1914, when she helped found the Goldsboro Equal Suffrage Association. By 1917, she was an officer in the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League; she became the League's president in 1919. Her involvement in such a controversial issue was rare for a Jewish woman, especially in the South. Fearing the repercussions of anti-Semitism, particularly after the 1913 lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta, most Southern Jews maintained a low political profile. Weil, however, stood at the forefront of a very public and bitter campaign. Despite her best efforts, women's suffrage had to advance without North Carolina. Her state's legislature failed to ratify the 19th amendment in 1920. Undaunted, Weil turned her efforts to a new cause, founding the North Carolina League of Women Voters to educate women about voting and other newly-won rights.

Over the next five decades, Weil was a major presence in Goldsboro's civic life. Awarding her a Smith College medal in 1964 (the first year the medals were bestowed), the college president noted that Weil's "career of public service [was] so extensive that it is difficult to find in the State of North Carolina a cultural, charitable, welfare, civic or educational organization with which [her] name . . . has not been connected." Her affiliations ranged from the Temple Sisterhood to the Art Society, from the Girl Scouts to the Community Chest, a Depression-era relief agency. She taught Sunday School, worked for labor reform legislation, and funded a county nurse before the creation of a public health system.

Among these varied causes, one of the most significant was racial integration. Long before the start of the national civil rights movement, Weil joined organizations working for interracial cooperation. In 1930, she participated in the Anti-Lynching Conference of Southern White Women, and then joined the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. These groups countered the assertion that lynching was necessary to protect white women from the supposed sexual threat of African-American men. In 1932, Weil was appointed to the North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Her dedication to civil rights remained strong through the decades. She continued to live in downtown Goldsboro long after most white people had left, inviting African-American neighbors into her house in defiance of Southern norms. In 1963, she convened a Bi-Racial Council in her home. In addition, she was active in establishing parks and pools for underprivileged African-American neighborhoods.

Weil's commitment to this wide variety of civic causes lasted throughout her life. When she died in Goldsboro on May 3, 1971, she left behind a strong legacy of social justice and social welfare work and a community intimately shaped by her long career of involvement in progressive activism.

To learn more about Gertrude Weil, visit Women of Valor and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Gertrude Weil poster; Teach Primary Sources & Lesson Plans: Letter from Gertrude Weil to Carrie Chapman Catt; 10 Things You Should Know About Gertrude Weil, Jewesses with Attitude; Gertrude Weil in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: jwa.org/exhibits/wov/weil/ (JWA web exhibit on Gertrude Weil); Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1459-1461; Moses Rountree, Strangers in the Land: The Story of Jacob Weil's Tribe (Philadelphia, 1969).

Mizrachi Women meet independently for first time

June 19, 1939

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The Women’s Mizrachi Federation in America, founded in 1925, was led in cities throughout the United States by women who were highly-educated, passionately religious Zionists, active both in their home communities and on behalf of Israel. This Women's Mizrachi event in 1960s Detroit, Michigan, was organized by Yetta Sperka, a playwright, speaker, and activist in women's, Jewish and Zionist causes.

Institution: Deanna Mirsky Sperka, Detroit

The Mizrachi Women's Organization opened its first independent meeting on June 19, 1939, in Atlantic City. Although it was the group's fourteenth annual meeting, it was the first conducted separately from a men's organization. Now the largest religious Zionist organization in the United States (under the name AMIT), the organization owes its creation to Freda Resnikoff.

Born in Russia in 1880, Resnikoff settled in New York City with her husband and four children in 1907. Just three years later, she helped found Bnos Mizrachi, an educational charity that was incorporated as Mizrachi Women in 1925. In contrast to secular Zionist women's organizations, Mizrachi Women was especially devoted to the needs of religiously observant Jewish girls in Palestine. The first and second major waves of European immigration to Israel consisted almost entirely of secular Jews; by the early twentieth-century, however, more and more religious Jews from both Europe and Arab countries were settling there. This demographic change created new needs and new opportunities for charitable organizations like Resnikoff's.

Originally founded to create vocational schools for religious girls in Palestine, Mizrachi Women soon became a major force in the field of education in Israel. The organization opened its first vocational high school for girls in Jerusalem in 1933, and a second school in Tel Aviv in 1938. In 1943, the organization's role expanded when it took charge of a group of children who had arrived in Israel through Youth Aliyah, as refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. Because few of the existing resettlement agencies could accommodate the needs of religiously observant youth, Mizrachi Women founded a series of child-care centers and youth villages to meet their needs. In 1984 and 1991, the organization was central to the absorption of Ethiopian Jewish youth.

In 1981, the Israeli government recognized the Mizrachi Women schools, bringing them into the public religious education network. In 1983, the organization began working with troubled youth, establishing a system of family-like settings for them. In 1996, this work was recognized by the Ministry of Education's Religious Education Prize.

In 1983, the Mizrachi Women's Organization changed its name to AMIT. In doing so, it marked its long-standing autonomy from the religious Zionist organizations of Mizrachi men. Although the organization had been autonomous since 1934, the change of name was a symbol of its independent status. Today, AMIT claims 80,000 members in 475 chapters. Freda Resnikoff died on April 29, 1965, but her daughters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughter have remained involved with AMIT, with several serving successively as national president and national vice president of the organization.

Visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia to learn more about AMIT and Freda Resnikoff.

See also: Bessie Goldstein Gotsfeld.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 48-49, 1145; New York Times, June 20, 1939.

Execution of Ethel Rosenberg

June 19, 1953

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Ethel Rosenberg’s Jewish identity was forged not by any ties to traditional Judaism but by her political radicalism. Indeed, when she and her husband, Julius, were charged with espionage, attempts were made by their fellow "leftists" to link their prosecution with antisemitism. But the established Jewish community, fearing any association with Jewish radicalism, rejected this charge. The couple was convicted on March 29, 1951, and sentenced to death, the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the Cold War.

Institution: Online repository

Although they were tried and executed more than half a century ago, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's names remain familiar to most Americans. Put to death on June 19, 1953, after their conviction for conspiracy to commit treason, the Rosenbergs were at the center of one of the most famous and controversial espionage cases of the twentieth century. Fifty-four years after her death, Ethel Rosenberg's role remains one of the most contested aspects of the whole affair.

Despite her sensational death, Ethel Rosenberg was not a lifelong political activist. Born to Russian immigrants on New York's Lower East Side in 1915, the young Ethel hoped for a career in theater or music. Although she went to work instead of to college after her 1931 graduation from high school, she studied experimental theatre at the Clark Settlement House and also studied music. She joined the Schola Cantorum, a vocal group that performed at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House. Even as she maintained the dream of a musical career, her work in a shipping company was leading her in a new direction.

At work, Ethel Rosenberg was introduced for the first time to union organizers and Communist Party members. Exploring radical political philosophy through music and theatre as well as evening discussions, she came to agree with many of the Communist Party's goals, such as fighting fascism and racism and supporting unions. When the workers in her union called a strike in 1935, she was one of four members of the strike committee. She continued to sing, however, and it was at a performance at a Seaman's Union benefit that she met Julius Rosenberg. They were married in 1939. After their marriage, Julius remained active in the Communist Party, but Ethel left both politics and music behind to focus on raising their two sons.

Following the arrest of a German-born physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the U.S. atomic bomb, a series of revelations led, in June 1950, to the arrest of Julius Rosenberg as an atomic spy. Ethel's arrest followed in July. The pair were turned in by Ethel's youngest brother, David Greenglass, apparently to protect his own wife from prosecution. Evidence suggests that Ethel was held mainly in an effort to force her husband to reveal further names and information.

On March 29, 1951, following a high-profile trial, the Rosenbergs were convicted of treason, in the form of passing atomic secrets to Russia. Ethel's refusal to fulfill a stereotypical feminine role by breaking into tears during the trial was thought to show that she was unwomanly and more attached to Communism than to her children. Her stoicism may have helped to turn the jury of 11 men and one woman against her.

The global political context was also a clear factor. In pronouncing their death sentence, Judge Irving Kaufman described the Rosenbergs' crime as "worse than murder ... causing the communist aggression in Korea," thus blaming them for the Korean War. The conviction and sentence were followed by a lengthy series of appeals.

Although a number of leftist organizations protested the verdict, Jewish organizations were conspicuously absent in the Rosenbergs' defense. Public condemnation of the Rosenbergs, a general identification of Jews with left-wing causes, and the shadow of McCarthyism made many Jews fear that their own loyalty was under scrutiny. Some Jewish leaders, including the American Jewish Committee, publicly endorsed the guilty verdict.

Following failed pleas for clemency to President Truman and then to President Eisenhower, the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953. Ethel was only the second woman ever to be executed by the federal government. To the end, both Rosenbergs insisted on their innocence. Documents recently unsealed in both the U.S. and Russia show that although Julius Rosenberg was probably guilty, Ethel's role in any conspiracy was tiny at most.

While scholarly debate over the Rosenberg case continues, their names remain a touchstone for many. Playwright Tony Kushner, for instance, offered a powerful portrayal of Ethel Rosenberg's strength and humanity in his landmark production Angels in America. Heir to an Execution (2004), a recent documentary by the Rosenbergs' granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol, presents a particularly moving portrayal of how Ethel confronted her arrest, trial and execution.

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

See also: "Remembering Ethel Rosenberg", Jewesses with Attitude; National New York Packing and Shipping Company, On the Map; Communism in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1174-1176; Marjorie Garber and Rebecca Walkowitz, eds., Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthyism, and Fifties America (New York, 1995); Ilene Philipson, Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myth (New York, 1988); Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth (New York, 1983); Joseph Sharlitt, Fatal Error: The Miscarriage of Justice that Sealed the Rosenbergs' Fate (New York, 1989); Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1951; New York Times, April 6, 1951, June 20, 1953; Chicago Daily Tribune, October 14, 1952, June 20, 1953.

First syndicated appearance of "Rhymes With Orange"

June 19, 1995

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Hilary Price, author of Rhymes with Orange, a nationally syndicated comic strip. With its debut, Hilary Price became the youngest woman ever to have a nationally-syndicated cartoon strip at age 25.

The cartoon strip Rhymes With Orange appeared in syndication for the first time on June 19, 1995. With its debut, twenty-five-year-old cartoonist Hilary Price became the youngest woman ever to have a nationally-syndicated cartoon strip.

Raised in Weston, MA, and educated at Stanford, Price worked in advertising before becoming a cartoonist full time. Her cartoons first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Today, Rhymes With Orange appears in more than 100 daily newspapers across the country. The strip has also been featured in People, Glamour, and The Funny Times.

So what really rhymes with orange? Nothing. Price says she chose the title "to show the singularity of the strip's perspective." That perspective, she notes, is not "traditionally represented on the comics page" and comes out of her own experience: "Being Jewish, feminist, gay—it all informs my work." Rather than regular characters, Rhymes With Orange uses a changing cast of people, animals, and household objects to provide social commentary on the details of daily life. Price feels like she has a special opportunity to present Jewish themes: "when I get ideas about Jewish holidays for the strip I know not everyone in the general population will get it. But I also know that those who do get the Passover strip love it."

Price cites Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, and a variety of New Yorker cartoonists as influences. Vitally important, however, was the work of Sandra Boynton, one of very few successful female cartoonists during Price's youth. Price credits Boynton with showing her that a woman could succeed professionally in this male-dominated field. As a successful cartoonist herself, Price hopes to provide a similar example for young women today.

In addition to her daily strip, Price's books include Rhymes With Orange (1997), Reigning Cats and Dogs: A Rhymes With Orange Tribute to Those Who Shed (2003), and Pithy Seedy Pulpy Juicy: Eleven Rhymes with Orange Books in One (2007). Price currently lives—and draws—in Massachusetts.

See also: Jewish Women and GLBT Pride; Catching up with "Rhymes With Orange's" Hilary Price on the 15th anniversary of her national syndication, Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: Re://collections (Jewish Women's Archive), vol 6:2 (Fall, 2004); www.rhymeswithorange.com; www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/orange/bioMaina.htm.

Fanny Brice's Ziegfield Follies debut

June 20, 1910

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Fanny Brice turned to show business to fulfill her version of the American dream— and for over forty years, this "clown with the Yiddish-accent" delighted audiences throughout the country.

Institution: Private collection

In her unfinished autobiography, Fanny Brice wrote, "I lived the way I wanted to live and never did what people said I should do." What Brice wanted to do was act, and in a career that spanned over four decades, she achieved success as a comic actress on Broadway and on radio. Born in New York City in 1891, Brice acted in neighborhood amateur contests as a child, and determined early in life that she wanted a professional performing career.

Her first break came in 1907, when she joined a touring production of The Royal Slave, a popular melodrama. When the acting company went bankrupt, she joined a burlesque troupe, with which she performed for three years. It was in the 1909-1910 season that she first performed Irving Berlin's comedy song, "Sadie Salome, Go Home." Brice made the song a hit by performing it with a pronounced Yiddish accent. Though Brice reportedly spoke no Yiddish, she played into the popularity of ethnic comedy by adopting stereotypical mannerisms and the accent.

The style that Brice adopted for "Sadie Salome," relying on physical comedy, parody, and an accent, became her trademark for the rest of her career. Performing similar characters of her own creation, she found success in the Ziegfeld Follies, where she first performed on June 20, 1910, and where she ultimately performed for nine seasons. Brice was less successful in serious roles. In 1918's Why Worry? and in 1926's Fanny, she attempted to establish herself as a dramatic actress, but both shows were critical flops. During the 1920's, however, she continued to appear in the Follies and also made several successful records. In the 1921 Follies, she performed an uncharacteristically serious song, "My Man", which was a success with audiences. Yet when she became the first woman to star in a sound motion picture, also called My Man, the film was a box-office disaster. She later made five more movies, none a success.

Despite these disappointments, Brice continued to find success when she performed as a comedienne. In 1930 and 1931, she appeared in the musical revues Sweet and Low and Crazy Quilt and also began a series of popular radio broadcasts. In the late 1930s, Brice created the character for which she is perhaps best remembered, Baby Snooks. Snooks, a character Brice played for over a decade, was a terrible toddler without a trace of Yiddish accent. In 1938, Brice began a weekly radio program in which she played only Baby Snooks. Despite competition from the new medium of television, Brice's show remained popular until the end of her life. Brice died from a stroke on May 29, 1951. In her obituary, the New York Times called her "a burlesque comic of the rarest vintage."

Brice's life was profiled in movies that helped make a star of Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl (1968) and Funny Lady (1975).

To learn more about Fanny Brice, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and Making Trouble.

See also: Discover: Jewish Women in Comedy; Vaudeville in the United States; "Funny Fanny's Ziegfield Debut", Jewesses with Attitude. See where this event took place at On the Map.

Sources: New York Times, May 30, 1951; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 176-181; Herbert Goldman, Fanny Brice: The Original Funny Girl (1992); Barbara Grossman, Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice (1991); jwa.org/discover/comedy/brice.html; www.MakingTrouble.com.

Felice Gaer asks U.N. to take on anti-Semitism

June 21, 2004

On June 21, 2004, Felice Gaer gave a speech entitled "Unlearning Intolerance: Anti-Semitic Incidents Are Not Hooliganism—They Are Human Rights Abuses; The United Nations Should Address Them As Such" at the United Nations Conference on Anti-Semitism. Gaer has long been a familiar figure at the U.N. Between 1993 and 1999, she served in nine American delegations to United Nations human rights negotiations, including the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the World Conference on Women and the World Conference on Human Rights. In 2003, she was re-elected to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, where she is the first American and the only woman on the 10-member committee.

Gaer's focus on anti-Semitism in her June, 2004, talk reflected her ongoing work within and on behalf of the American Jewish community. She is the director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights at the American Jewish Committee, where she has recently used her position to critique the treatment of Israel in international forums. In particular, she has criticized major human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for paying scant attention to Palestinian violence while singling out Israel for condemnation. In addition to her work at the Blaustein Institute and with the U.N., Gaer is vice chair of the Committee Against Torture and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a body that advises Congress, the Secretary of State, and the President.

Through more than two decades of activism in these various arenas, Gaer has established herself as a leading voice in the struggle for human rights. In 2002, the Forward newspaper chose her as one of its "Forward 50," calling her "the American Jewish international human rights expert in residence."

See also: See where this event took place at On the Map.

Sources: Felice Gaer's Address to the UN Conference on Anti-Semitism; Biography of Felice Gaer; www.forward.com; www.hri.ca.

Biochemist Maxine Frank Singer receives National Medal of Science

June 23, 1992

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The President of the United States recognized Maxine Singer's important contributions to biochemistry and molecular biology, her leadership of the Carnegie Institute and her science education initatives, by awarding her the National Medal of Science “for her outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for the societal responsibility of the scientist.”

Institution: Carnegie Institution

Maxine Frank Singer, a leading biochemistry researcher and advocate of science education, was awarded the National Medal of Science on June 23, 1992, in recognition of her illustrious career in biochemistry. The award citation noted "her outstanding scientific accomplishments and her deep concern for the societal responsibility of the scientist."

After earning degrees from Swarthmore (1952) and Yale (1957), Singer joined the National Institutes of Health as a postdoctoral fellow, later becoming a staff member. She was appointed chief of the National Cancer Institute's Biochemistry Lab in 1980, a position she held until 1987. In 1988, she became president of the Carnegie Institution, a major national scientific research center based in Washington, DC.

At the Carnegie Institution, Singer created the Carnegie Academy for Science Education, which trains elementary school teachers in science. Reflecting her concern about the lack of women and members of racial minorities in scientific fields, she also created a weekend science school for elementary-age students. Among her other accomplishments at Carnegie was a $50 million capital campaign that financed Carnegie's participation in the building of two giant optical telescopes at the Institution's campus in Chile as well as other capital improvement projects.

Singer's own research interests have ranged widely within biochemistry, but have included significant work on recombinant DNA. Partly as a result of her interest in mammalian DNA, Singer has long taken an active interest in issues of science policy and ethics. Beginning in 1973, she helped to organize a series of conferences that addressed both the promises and the perils of human DNA research. She has also spoken out about U.S. public policy, advocating national investment in the human genome project but cautioning against overspending on biomedical research in space.

Singer has served on the boards of the Whitehead Institute, Johnson & Johnson, Yale, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Singer was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1979 and to the Pontifical Academy of Science in 1986. She retired from Carnegie in 2002.

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

See also: This Week in History for December 31, 2002, "Maxine Frank Singer steps down as head of Carnegie Institution"; Jewish Women On the Map - The Maxine F. Singer building and the Carnegie Institution for Science; Science in Israel.

Sources: carnegieinstitution.org/singer/.

Anna Halprin receives lifetime achievement award in modern dance

June 23, 1997

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Anna Halprin. Image courtesy of DLambertNJ.

On June 23, 1997, Anna Halprin received the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in modern dance. The award, which was presented at a ceremony in Durham, N.C., carried a $25,000 prize, the largest dance award presented annually. The award citation praised her for inspiring "generations of dancers" and for "multi-faceted ideas [that] have transcended traditional boundaries." It was a fitting tribute to a woman who, since the 1950s, has pushed the boundaries of avant-garde dance.

Halprin took interpretive dance lessons as a child, and decided early in life that she would pursue a dance career. Following her graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1941, she performed for a few years on Broadway, and then moved to San Francisco, where she founded her own company, the San Francisco Dancers Workshop. With the Workshop, she created new pieces that pushed the boundaries of modern dance. One famously controversial piece was the 1969 "Parades and Changes," which included a scene where dancers removed their clothes and wrapped themselves in paper. Nudity in art would soon become relatively commonplace, but at the time it had never been seen in such a mainstream venue as the Hunter College Playhouse, where the piece premiered.

By the late 1970s, Halprin was moving in a new direction, using dance as a form of therapy. In 1981, she staged a dance "exorcism" on California's Mount Tamalpais, where a serial killer was stalking the trails. She has also created works that involve the participation of all those present, and an annual spring ritual, "Circle the Earth: A Planetary Dance for Peace." In addition, Halprin works extensively with people with cancer, HIV, and AIDS, especially through two ongoing workshop groups for HIV-positive men and women. Although she has been criticized for her devotion to therapeutic work, she remains an influential teacher of dance. Those she has mentored include Meredith Monk, Trisha Brown, and Yvonne Rainer.

The 1997 ADF award was only one of many that Halprin has received. She has also been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Education Association Fellowship, and an American Dance Guild Award. In 2000, the Dance Heritage Coalition named her one of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures." In an interview following that announcement, she explained her philosophy of art, saying, "I work toward a future where … art is honored for its power to inspire, teach, transform, and heal. I work for a future where all the peoples, creatures, and landscapes of the world are dancing together."

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

See also: Dance Performance in the United States. See where this event took place On the Map.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 587-588; www.artistswithaids.org/artforms/dance/catalogue/halprin.html; New York Times, June 7, 1997; June 22, 1997; June 25, 1997; August 26, 2001.

Spotlight on work of AIDS activist Mathilde Krim

June 24, 1983

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Biologist Mathilde Krim recognized soon after the first cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) were reported in 1981 that this new disease raised grave scientific and medical questions and that it might have important socio-political consequences. She dedicated herself to increasing the public's awareness of AIDS and to a better understanding of its cause, its modes of transmission, and its epidemiologic pattern.

Born in Como, Italy, on July 9, 1926, Krim was raised in Geneva, Switzerland, where she studied biology at the University of Geneva and earned a Ph.D. in 1953. At that time, she was one of a very small number of women with advanced degrees in science. It was also during her doctoral studies that Krim converted to Judaism, inspired in part by learning the truth about the Holocaust and in part by her association with Jews from Israel (then Palestine) who were studying at the University. In 1953, Krim moved with her husband and daughter to Israel, where she found a position at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. At Weizmann, she contributed to studies that laid the foundation for amniocentesis, became one of the first experts in culturing cells, and studied the viruses thought to cause some forms of cancer.

After a move to New York with her second husband in 1958, she joined the research faculty at Cornell Medical College and later at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. For many years, she was deeply involved in the study of interferons, natural substances that were considered promising for the treatment of cancer. Just as the study of interferons was falling out of favor, AIDS was becoming a major public health concern. Krim left full-time research and became involved in AIDS treatment and activism.

In 1983, she founded the AIDS Medical Foundation (AMF), the first private organization concerned with fostering and supporting AIDS research. The new Foundation was profiled by the New York Times on June 24, 1983; the Times reported that the group had already won an endorsement from New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Krim was able to draw on her husband's contacts in Hollywood (he was chairman of Orion Pictures) and in the Democratic Party (he was the Party's finance chairman and an advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter) to win publicity and funds for her work. She was also joined by at least a dozen other New York City medical researchers, who hoped to use AMF funds to find both the causes of and effective treatments for AIDS. In 1990, AMF merged with a like-minded group based in California to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) that soon became the preeminent national nonprofit organization devoted to mobilizing the public's generosity in support of trail-blazing laboratory and clinical AIDS research, AIDS prevention, and the development of sound AIDS-related public policies. Krim is amfAR's Founding Chair and was, from 1990 through 2004, the chairman of its Board.

In addition, Krim now holds the academic appointment of Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management at Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. She holds fifteen doctorates honoris causa and has received many other honors and distinctions. In August 2000 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

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

See also: "World AIDS Day," Jewesses with Attitude; Science in Israel; Jewish Women On the Map - amFAR - The Foundation for AIDS Research.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 761-763; New York Times, June 24, 1983, November 3, 1984, February 14, 1988, January 30, 1990, May 27, 1991; www.amfar.org/page.aspx?id=4616; www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2005/04/28f.html; www.aegis.com/news/ads/1990/AD901187.html.

First woman to cycle the globe begins journey

June 25, 1894

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Figure 1: Annie Londonderry in the firnal incarnationof her bicycle riding costume. Source: Annie Londonderry--the first woman to bicycle around the world, by Peter Zheutlin. © Peter Zheutlin.

Her adventure began with a bet. In 1894, a gentleman in Boston bet another gentleman, $20,000 against $10,000, that no woman could travel around the world by bicycle, a feat that had been completed for the first time by a man in 1885. Although it is not clear why she was chosen, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky set out from Boston on June 25, 1894, to attempt the journey. Married and a mother of three children under age six, she was an unlikely choice but a good example of the ways that the bicycle was transforming women's lives. Besides providing women with a respectable form of independent transportation, the popularity of the bicycle led to changes in women's dress, for example, as bloomers replaced unwieldy and inconvenient full skirts.

Under the terms of the bet, Kopchovsky, who had ridden a bicycle for the first time only days before her departure from Boston, was supposed to begin her journey penniless, earn $5000 above her expenses along the way, and finish her trip in 15 months. Her resourcefulness was in evidence from the first day. On her way out of Boston, she hung a placard advertising Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company from her bicycle, and accepted $100 from the company's representative in return. In addition, she agreed to be known as Annie Londonderry.

Kopchovsky, alias Londonderry, reached Chicago in September, and there she nearly gave up the trip altogether. Ultimately, however, she traded in her 42-pound ladies' bicycle for a men's model that weighed half as much, and set out again in the opposite direction, headed back east. She sailed from New York for France in November. In France, Kopchovsky earned money by carrying advertising on her clothing and her bicycle as she rode the main streets of Marseilles and other cities. Later in her trip, she would give lectures in which she embellished her story with lurid details of accidents, near-death experiences, and dangers narrowly averted.

Because the terms of the bet did not specify how many miles she had to ride, Kopchovsky sailed from Marseilles all the way to East Asia, with brief stops in Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. After a tour through China, she was in Japan by March. On March 23, she arrived back in the United States through San Francisco Bay's Golden Gate. Over the next six months, she bicycled across the southwest, great plains, and midwest, reaching Chicago on September 12, 1895, just under 15 months from her original departure from Boston, and only ten months after her re-departure from Chicago.

She had done what the Boston gentleman had bet $20,000 no woman could do. Not only had she circumnavigated the globe by bicycle, an astounding athletic feat in itself, but she had done it alone, proving that a woman could make her own way in what was still very much a man's world. Bucking the entrenched gender norms of her day, she had fended for herself and survived physical injury, mechanical problems with her bicycle, and the scrutiny of the press. In Chicago, Kopchovsky collected her $10,000 prize and then rejoined her family. After a move to New York, she wrote sensational features for the New York World for a time, including an account of her trip. She seems to have then retreated to family life, raising her three children and largely disappearing from the historical record. She died in 1947.

To learn more about Annie Kopchovsky, visit Jewesses With Attitude..

See also: Jewesses on Wheels, Jewesses with Attitude; Riding the Wheel of Health: The American Jewess's Progressive Perspective on Women's Bicycling; Jewish Women On the Map - Massachusetts State House.

Sources: Peter Zheutlin, "Chasing Annie," Bicycling, May 2005; www.annielondonderry.com/.

Loren Galler Rabinowitz crowned “Miss Massachusetts”

June 26, 2010

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Loren Galler Rabinowitz, skating. From Wikimedia Commons.

Loren Galler Rabinowitz: a gifted pianist, Bronze-medal winning ice skater, and poet who graduated from Harvard in 2010 with plans to pursue a career in medicine, won the Miss Massachusetts title in 2010. She went on to compete in the Miss America competition in Las Vegas in January 2011, in the hopes of using the scholarship money to finance her medical education. She followed in the footsteps of the first, and (so far) only, Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson, crowned in 1945.

Rabinowitz describes herself as a “peanut in a world of beautiful amazons.” Unlike Bess Myserson, who faced anti-Semitism and discrimination throughout the pageant process, Rabinowitz felt right at home. “You don't have to be 5'10" and blonde to win. Miss America takes a much broader view of what it means to be beautiful." She adds, “The skating training comes in handy -- the posture and balance on enormously high heels…If you can do it on an eighth of an inch blade, then you can do it on stilettos,” she told a reporter. Though the 2011 Miss America crown went to Miss Nebraska Teresa Scanlan, Loren Galler-Rabinowitz remains an inspiration.

See also: Bess Myserson in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia; This Week in History for September 8, 1945 Bess Myerson crowned first Jewish Miss America; on Jewesses with Attitude: Beauty and Power and Ms. JewSA. See where this event took place at On the Map.

Sources:
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/myerson-bess; "Loren Galler Rabinowitz crowned Miss Massachusetts", icenetwork.com.

Suspicious of Forced Tonsillectomies, Jewish Mothers Rioted

June 27, 1906

Immigrant Jewish mothers in the early 20th century were hardly inclined to trust officials to protect their children. Suspicion and skepticism fueled rumors, especially when there was a kernel of truth. One day in June 1906, a rumor spread on the Lower East side that doctors were slitting the throats of Jewish children in public schools.

In response, 50,000 immigrant Jewish mothers stormed the local public schools, demanding to see their children. The children were released with no visible bodily harm. According to Yiddish professor and author Eddy Portnoy: “Thrilled at having gotten a miraculous half-day’s vacation, the kids didn’t even know what the ruckus was about. ‘I dunno sir, I t’ink the school exploded,’ one boy told a reporter from the Evening Post.”

The rumor was not without a basis in fact. Volunteer doctors had in fact performed 83 tonsillectomies on students at Public School 100. The Yiddish daily newspaper, Varhayt, got wind of this and reported children telling their mothers that the doctors had “cut [their] throats.” Unable to read the technical English on the permission slips, immigrant parents were alarmed and angered. The episode touched a nerve that supposedly well-intentioned American doctors had not predicted.

Again according to Portnoy in Tablet magazine:

Rumors of a wholesale slaughter leapt like wildfire throughout the tenements and shops. As the gossip wended its way through the neighborhood, the story grew from “doctors cut our throats” to “two children died” to a wild “83 children died.” Street-corner orators got into the act, screaming about the massacres in the schools, comparing them to the pogroms in Russian-ruled Poland.

Coming on the heels of a particularly brutal pogrom in Bialystok that had just been reported on—accompanied by gruesome photos—in the Yiddish press, the Lower East Side surgeries morphed, in the eyes of gullible parents, into evidence of an American pogrom. Accustomed to such violence in Europe, many of the recent arrivals believed such things could happen even in America.

Were such a rumor to spread today, it would be shocking if 50,000 mothers didn’t storm the local public schools.

Source: "Sore," Tablet Magazine.

"Something Rotten in America"

June 27, 1931

"For the first time in American economic life, the people are disturbed and frightened … There is something rotten in America; it is your job to lead the way out," Theresa Wolfson told the students of the Barnard College Summer School for Women Workers in Industry at the opening exercises on June 27, 1931. The school, then in its fifth year, offered six weeks of free classes in history, economics, and English literature to New York's laboring women. In 1931, 38 women representing seven nationalities and eight trades were admitted from 100 applicants. In addition to academic instruction, the students were to be offered chances to swim, play tennis, and take part in dramatics.

Born in Brooklyn in 1897, just three years after her parents had emigrated from Russia, Theresa Wolfson earned her bachelor's degree at Adelphi College (1917). During college, she spent a summer investigating wage standards in the New York garment industry; it was the beginning of a long career in labor relations. After her graduation from Adelphi, Wolfson took a position as a health worker in New York City, then worked for the National Child Labor Committee, investigating child labor across parts of the South and Midwest. Then, from 1920 to 1922, Wolfson served as executive secretary of the New York State Consumers League, where she lobbied for minimum wage and maximum hour legislation.

For her M.A. degree (1924) at Columbia University, Wolfson conducted a study of posture, lighting, and fatigue in New York's garment factories. After Columbia, Wolfson became director of education at the Union Health Center of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. At the same time, she conducted research on the barriers to organizing women workers; this research, published in 1926, brought Wolfson her Ph.D. from the Brookings Institution.

Wolfson joined the faculty of the Brooklyn branch of Hunter College in 1928. When this branch became Brooklyn College soon thereafter, Wolfson helped to develop the curricular and organizational design of the new institution. Her scholarly work also took her into public life. She served on the public panel of the War Labor Board (1942 to 1945), was involved in the New York State Board of Mediation (1946-1953) and the Kings Country Council Against Discrimination (1949-1953), and served as president of the New York chapter of the Industrial Relations Research Association. She won the John Dewey Award from the League for Industrial Democracy in 1957 for her work in mediating labor disputes.

Throughout her career, Wolfson combined academic expertise with a concrete approach to the workings and status of labor unions and to the dynamics of gender in labor and labor organizing. Combining research and social action, her focus on worker education was designed to break down barriers to the advancement of women in the workplace and gender inequality within trade unions. Wolfson believed that a worker's ability to deal effectively with society depended on a sound education. Thus, in addition to her scholarly teaching and writing, she also taught in non-academic settings, including classes for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the Summer School for Office Workers, and, after her retirement, for a continuing education program at Sarah Lawrence College. Theresa Wolfson died on May 14, 1972 at the age of 74. A scholarship in her name allows a Brooklyn College student to pursue graduate studies in labor economics each year.

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

See where this event took place On the Map.

See also: Labor Movement in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1487-1488; New York Times, June 27, 1931, June 28, 1931, May 15, 1972.

See where this event took place at On the Map.

Award for Yiddish actress, Molly Picon

June 28, 1980

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For more than eighty years Molly Picon charmed the public and helped keep the Yiddish theater alive. Best known for her potrayals of "the adorable waif" (often a boy) in Yiddish plays, she also acted, sang and danced her way through English plays, and appeared on film, television and on Broadway.

Institution: American Jewish Historical Society

Born in New York in 1898, Molly Picon moved with her family to Philadelphia before she was three. It was in Philadelphia that she performed in public for the first time, in 1903, at age five. Picon's mother, who worked as a seamstress for a Yiddish theatre, entered her daughter in a talent contest. On the way to the contest, a drunk on the streetcar challenged the child to perform then and there. She did, and then collected two dollars in coins from the passengers. She went on to win the contest, and a legendary theatre career was born.

Picon acted in local productions throughout her youth, and left high school at 16 to tour as Topsy in a Yiddish production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She soon joined a traveling vaudeville troupe, where she was cast as Winter in a production called The Four Seasons. When the troupe reached Boston in 1918, they found the city shut down due to an epidemic of influenza. Only one theatre, the Boston Grand Opera House, was functioning. Picon applied for work there, and was hired. The next year, she married the theatre's director and producer, Jacob Kalich. In 1920, the pair toured Europe, performing Yiddish theatre to great popular success. By the time they returned to New York, Picon's was a well-known name on both sides of the Atlantic.

Many of Picon's roles were in plays created for her by Kalich. Perhaps the most famous of these was Yonkele, a young Peter-Pan-like boy who wants to make the world a better place. It was a role she would play over and over into her 80s. Like Yonkele, many of Picon's most successful characters were either young boys or young girls who acted like boys. During the 1920s, she performed these roles across the U.S. and also made her film debut. Among her films was the 1923 Viennese production of Ost und West (East and West), which is now the earliest surviving Yiddish film. In 1934, she began broadcasting her first radio show, increasing the size of the audience that was already enthralled with the petite, dark-haired woman with the mischievous eyes.

Throughout the 1930s, Picon and Kalich traveled back and forth between Europe and the U.S. to perform. In 1938, they made the last Jewish film to be created in Poland before the Nazi invasion. Mamale, in which the 40-year-old Picon played a 12-year-old girl, was a musical comedy, but it also sought to document the endangered shtetl culture. During the Second World War, Picon performed for soldiers in USO camps. After the war, she brought music and theatre to displaced persons camps and then to Israel. She also performed in the first Yiddish play (Oy Is Dus a Leben! (What a Hard Life!), 1942) ever to reach Broadway, a biographical piece based on Picon's own early years.

Over the four decades after the war, Picon continued to perform in both Yiddish and English, including as an Italian mother in Come Blow Your Horn (1963), for which she won an Oscar nomination; as Yente in the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971); and with Barbra Streisand in For Pete's Sake (1974). At the age of 81, Picon created a new one-woman show, Hello, Molly (1979), which traced her long relationship with the Yiddish theatre. In 1980, she published her autobiography, titled simply Molly!. On June 28, 1980, she received a Creative Achievement Award from the Performing Arts Unit of B'nai B'rith; the following year, she was elected to the Broadway Hall of Fame. In 1985, the Congress of Jewish Culture awarded her a "Goldie" for lifetime achievement. Picon died of Alzheimer's on April 6, 1992. Her plays and films are frequently revived for a younger generation, keeping alive her legacy of contributions to Yiddish culture.

To learn more about Molly Picon, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Making Trouble, On the Map, and Women of Valor.

See also: Molly Picon poster; In Focus Jewish Women in Comedy: Molly Picon; Go & Learn: Primary Sources & Lesson Plans Letter from Molly Picon to her Mother, August 23, 1946; "Molly Picon: A Celebrity for the Ages", Jewesses with Attitude; Yiddish film in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1064-1068; New York Times, March 30, 1979, March 3, 1981, April 7, 1992; jwa.org/exhibits/wov/picon; jwa.org/discover/comedy/picon.html; www.MakingTrouble.com.

Reform rabbis debate women's ordination

June 30, 1922

On June 29, 1922, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the Reform movement's professional organization, meeting in Cape May, N.J., debated a resolution declaring that "women cannot justly be denied the privilege of ordination [as rabbis]." After tabling the resolution overnight, the Conference voted 56 to 11 on June 30, to affirm in principle the right of women to become rabbis. The debate, notable for its invitation to the women present (mainly rabbis' wives) to participate in the discussion, may have been successful in changing some minds. The New York Times reported on the morning of June 29 that a majority of conference attendees were opposed to the resolution, but on June 30 the same newspaper reported that "the sentiment [was] seemingly largely in favor of the entry of women."

The Cape May resolution was inspired indirectly by the ratification of the 19th amendment, in 1920, and directly by Martha Neumark, a 17-year-old student at Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati, who, that same year, asked to be assigned, like her male rabbinical school classmates, to a high holiday student pulpit. Her request raised the possibility that Neumark, daughter of a HUC faculty member, might ultimately present herself as a candidate for ordination.

When the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote, it aroused an expectation among at least some Americans that all barriers to women's full equality in American society would subsequently fall. Reform Judaism, which had already instituted many changes meant to bring Judaism into accord with the spirit of the times and which had long advocated women's equality, might have been expected to drop barriers to women's full participation. The rabbis' resolution, in fact, noted the "revolution" in the status of contemporary women and explained the vote as an acknowledgment of the "enrichment and enlargement of congregational life" which had grown out of women's contributions.

Despite the CCAR resolution, Neumark was never ordained. The College's governing board voted in February 1923 to bar female ordination, indicating that there did not seem to be any practical need for such a step. Neumark eventually withdrew from HUC (having completed 7½ years of the 9 year curriculum). Although other women would study at HUC over the years, some completing the rabbinical curriculum and many earning other degrees, no woman in the United States would be ordained as a rabbi until 1972, when Sally Priesand became the first, 50 years after the CCAR first resolved to make it possible.

See also: This Week in History for May 12, 1985 "Amy Eilberg ordained as first female Conservative rabbi"; June 3, 1972 "First American woman rabbi "; March 26, 2003 "Rabbi Janet Marder becomes president of CCAR"; February 28, 2009 "Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus installed as president of the CCAR"; February 8, 1976 "Creation of the Women's Rabbinical Alliance"; Reform Judaism in the United States; Rabbis in the United States. See where this event took place at On the Map.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1115-1120, 1136-1140; New York Times, June 29, June 30, July 1, 1922; Ellen M. Umansky, "Women's Journey toward Rabbinic Ordination," in Women Rabbis: Exploration and Celebration, Papers Delivered at an Academic Conference Honoring Twenty Years of Women in the Rabbinate, 1972-1992, ed. Gary P. Zola (Cincinnati, 1996): 171-179; Pamela S. Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985 (Boston, 1998); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA059.

Irna Phillips produces "The Guiding Light" on TV

June 30, 1952

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Guiding Light held the Guiness World Record for Longest Running TV Drama in 2009.

The Guiding Light debuted on CBS television on June 30, 1952. Its creator was Irna Phillips, who also created the soap operas As the World Turns and Days of Our Lives. Born in Chicago in 1901, Phillips was educated at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin. Although she aspired to become an actress, the young Phillips earned degrees in education and taught English, public speaking, and drama at colleges in Missouri and Ohio.

After volunteering at Chicago radio station WGN during summer vacations, Phillips turned to scriptwriting in 1930. Her first program, Painted Dreams, was one of the earliest radio soap operas, for which Phillips and a colleague played all six parts and also provided the sound effects. A second program, Today's Children, debuted on NBC radio in 1932. In 1937, The Guiding Light debuted as a 15-minute radio program featuring a fictional minister giving solace to his parishioners. The advent of television spelled the end of many radio dramas, but Guiding Light (which dropped the "The" in 1977) was among the few to move successfully to the new format. For a few years, the show aired on both radio and television, with the cast performing live twice a day, once for each medium. The show was expanded to 30 minutes in 1968, and to a full hour in 1977.

While writing Guiding Light, Phillips also produced such other popular radio serials as Woman in White, The Right to Happiness, and Lonely Women. These programs focused on realistic families coping with socially significant issues such as adoption, divorce, juvenile delinquency, and the return of war veterans. At the same time, however, Phillips was among the first writers to use what became such soap opera standards as the amnesia victim and the murder trial in her plots. She was also well known for her use of organ music to create moods, suspenseful cliff-hangers, and for having characters from one show appear on another.

After the shift to television, Phillips wrote for such shows as The Brighter Day, The Road to Life, and Another World, and served as a consultant for the prime-time series Peyton Place. Phillips died of a heart attack in 1973. Although the issues confronting characters on Guiding Light had changed considerably since its television debut more than 50 years ago, the show remained successful. Guiding Light was canceled by in 2009 by CBS and the last episode aired September 18, 2009. At the time of its cancellation, Guiding Light held the Guiness World Record for Longest Running TV Drama.

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

See also: "Irna Phillips: the woman behind TV's longest running soap opera", Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1055-1056; New York Times, December 30, 1973, June 30, 1987; www.cbs.com/daytime/guiding_light ; New York Times, April 1, 2009 CBS Turns Out ‘Guiding Light’; Guiness World Records.

Meetings held to plan National Organization for Women

June 30, 1966

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Born Bettye Naomi Goldstein, feminist revolutionary Betty Friedan (1921–2006) was considered by many to be the “mother” of the second wave of modern feminism. Her struggles against the "Feminine Mystique" and in favor of gender equality led to a fundamental transformation, not only in the way American society views women, but in the way American women view themselves.

Institution: Online repository

The foundation for the National Organization for Women (NOW), now the largest feminist organization in America, was laid in Washington, DC, at a meeting in Betty Friedan's hotel room during the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women. Although the Commissions had reported widespread discrimination against women as early as 1963, conference rules prohibited passage of any resolution suggesting that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission act on its mandate to end sex discrimination. Stymied by the rules, Friedan and 27 like-minded women decided to launch a new campaign for combating bias against women. Four months later, the group met again to approve a Statement of Purpose and by-laws for a civil rights organization dedicated to advancing gender equality. The organization's goal was "to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American Society NOW, assuming all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in fully equal partnership with men."

NOW was officially incorporated on February 10, 1967, at which time Friedan became its first president. By the time she took the helm of NOW, Friedan was already well known as the author of The Feminine Mystique, the book that many people credited with sparking the modern feminist movement by exposing the structural bases of women's problems. As president of NOW, she helped the new organization become the leading feminist voice in American society and politics. Today, NOW claims more than half a million members in 550 chapters in all 50 states. NOW works on issues ranging from economic equality to abortion rights, and from opposing racism to ending violence against women. Working through local, state, and national offices, NOW members and staff write letters, lobby elected officials, support feminist candidates at all levels of the political system, and work to educate the public on issues of concern to women.

Despite Friedan's role in founding NOW, Jewish women have not always felt welcome in the feminist movement. In particular, leftist criticism of Israel and feminist criticism of organized religion have put Jews on the defensive against women who had otherwise been their allies. In turn, some Jewish feminist leaders, including Friedan, have been criticized for being insensitive to the needs of non-white and non-middle-class women. However, as the American feminist movement has matured over time, becoming more aware of its various members and constituencies, Jewish women have found—and made—an increasingly comfortable home there. In addition, Jewish women inspired by secular feminism have found ways to bring feminist ideas and concerns into Jewish communal life.

Whatever the internal conflicts have been, Jewish women have played key roles in every aspect of the feminist transformation of American culture. In addition to Friedan, Jewish women who have figured among the most important and well-known theorists and activists of the modern American feminist movement include Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Shulamith Firestone.

See also: This Week in History for February 17, 1963 "Publication of "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan"; September 12, 1995 "Bella Abzug Addresses Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing".

See where this event took place at On the Map.

Sources:www.now.org; www.library.unlv.edu/women/now.html; Maryann Barakso, Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women (Ithaca, 2005); Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst, MA, 1998); Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism; Sonia Pressman Fuentes, Eat First – You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter (Philadelphia, 1999).