Labor leaders announce their engagement at May Day Parade

May 1, 1916

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She bragged, "I was Bessie Abramowitz before he was Sidney Hillman," but her early union activism did not keep her from marrying the soon-to-be-famous labor leader in 1916. They announced their engagement by publicly heading the clothing workers' contingent in the Chicago May Day parade. They are shown here in 1922, with their daughters, Selma, left, and Philoine.

Institution: Philoine Fried

Born in Russia in 1889, Bessie Abramowitz Hillman immigrated to Chicago at age 15 to escape an arranged marriage. Within five years, she had become a leader among the workers in a garment factory. In 1910, she instigated a walkout by 16 women to protest a pay cut. Although the strike was ridiculed at first, it soon spread to thousands of workers in several plants, and won the support of reformer Jane Addams and her influential Hull House settlement. As a result, Hillman was hired as an organizer for the Women's Trade Union League. She would be active in union activity for the rest of her long life.

In 1914, when the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America split from the more conservative United Garment Workers, Abramowitz was elected to the Amalgamated's executive board. Marking their joined lives and work, Abramowitz and Amalgamated president Sidney Hillman announced their engagement on May 1, 1916, while marching at the head of the clothing workers' contingent of the Chicago May Day Parade. They were married two days later. Because wives were expected not to work, her union work for the following 30 years was as a volunteer. During the 1920s, she organized workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Connecticut, working with both immigrant and native-born workers. In 1937, she became the education director of the Laundry Workers Joint Board. Her work with the laundry union's large non-white membership drew Hillman into civil rights work.

When Sidney Hillman died in 1946, Bessie took a paid position as vice president for education in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union, a position she held until her death. In that role, she not only spoke at conferences and organized summer schools for workers, but also pushed the union to work for civil rights and peace. Hillman's union work led to involvement in broader social justice causes as well. She worked with the Child Welfare Committee of New York, the American Association for the United Nations, the National Consumers League, and the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee, as well as many other organizations. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed her to his historic President's Commission on the Status of Women, which documented widespread economic discrimination against women and was an important element in the rise of second wave feminism.

Bessie Abramowitz Hillman died on December 23, 1970.

To learn more about Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: 10 Things You Should Know About Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, Jewesses with Attitude; Labor Movement in the United States.

Sources: Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1991); Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 632-634; New York Times, December 24, 1970.

Publication of Gladys Rosen's Jewish bicentennial guidebook

May 2, 1975

Born and raised in New York City and educated at Columbia University, Gladys Rosen became the program specialist at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in the early 1970s. There, she drew on her training in history and Judaic studies to write several guidebooks focused on American Jewish history. First, in 1971, Rosen wrote a manual entitled "Guidelines to Jewish History and Social Studies Instructional Material." Designed to counter the absence of information about Jews in elementary and secondary school history textbooks, the manual presented brief summaries of Jewish history from the Biblical era to the modern era, and provided a bibliography of books covering world and American Jewish history.

Four years later, with the U.S. Bicentennial approaching, the American Jewish Committee published another Rosen booklet, entitled "Jews in American Life: A Guide to Local Programming for the Bicentennial." Publication was announced on May 2, 1975. Sold for $1 per copy, the booklet was directed to the Jewish community, encouraging Jews to bring the story of Jewish contributions to American history into Bicentennial celebrations. The booklet included guidelines for developing local community archives and family genealogies, and for conducting oral histories. While the AJC's publicity highlighted the achievements of a variety of Jewish men, from colonial militiaman Asser Levy to Confederate cabinet member Judah Benjamin, it did little to disseminate information about Jewish women's contributions.

In addition to writing these and other publications, Rosen helped organize conferences for the AJC on the Jewish family, the changing role of the Jewish woman, and Jewish education. She was also active in continuing education projects, serving as the assistant director of the Academy for Jewish Studies Without Walls and the Jewish Studies Summer Seminar series. In addition, Rosen has edited two books: Jewish Life in America: Historical Perspectives (1978) and (with Steven Bayme) Jewish Family and Jewish Continuity (1994).

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

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 1168; New York Times, October 30, 1971, May 3, 1975.

Longest-serving federal employee Lillie Steinhorn retires

May 3, 2000

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Lillie Steinhorn, who holds the national record for being the longest employed federal employee, is a narrator in Weaving Women's Words: Baltimore Stories. Photo by Joan Roth.

When Lillie Steinhorn retired from the Social Security Administration on May 3, 2000, she ended a 65-year career as a federal employee. Her longevity at the Social Security Administration set a record, making her the longest-serving federal employee. She began on April 28, 1935, as a card puncher in what was then called the Bureau of Federal Old Age Benefits. She remained at Social Security for her entire career, through decades of changes and modernization. From card punching, Steinhorn moved into positions as a dictating machine operator, a statistician, and a research analyst. After working in Washington, DC, for the first few years, she returned to Baltimore, where she had been born and raised. After fifty years with the SSA, Steinhorn explained to an employee magazine that she intended to stay, saying, "I love the people I work with, and it gives me a good feeling to know that I play a small part in helping serve the public."

Steinhorn joined the civil service in the midst of the Great Depression, at a time when the federal government was expanding rapidly in an effort to provide work for millions of unemployed Americans and to revive the economy. It was also a time when thousands of women joined the workforce, often when their husbands and fathers could not find work. During the war years that followed, thousands more women streamed into jobs vacated by men who had gone overseas as soldiers. When the men returned, many of these women were pushed out of their wartime jobs. Steinhorn faced this problem when a supervisor tried to demote her to make room for a returning veteran. Demonstrating her characteristic tenacity, Steinhorn protested and was allowed to keep her job. By the time she retired in 2000, women's presence in the workforce was an accepted part of modern American life.

Outside of her work for the government, Steinhorn was active in B'nai B'rith Women, including in that organization's Dolls for Democracy program. The post-war program created dolls in the likenesses of famous people from American history, for use in elementary school classrooms. A second set of dolls representing different ethnic backgrounds was meant to teach tolerance. Steinhorn also likes to travel, and over the years has visited China, India, Scandinavia, and Costa Rica, among other places. Steinhorn served as one of twenty-nine narrators in the Jewish Women's Archive's Weaving Women's Words community oral history project in Baltimore. She died June 15, 2009.

To learn more about Lillie Steinhorn, visit Weaving Women's Words.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 165; jwa.org/exhibits/baltimore/steinhorn.html; www.ssa.gov/history/lsoral.html; www.ssa.gov/history/oasis/julyaugust1985.pdf; Baltimore Sun, Obituary.

Birth of opera singer Roberta Peters

May 4, 1930

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Album cover of "Roberta Peters Sings Operatic Arias," September 18, 2007.

Roberta Peters has achieved international fame for her soprano voice and performing success. Born on May 4, 1930, and raised in New York City, Peters began voice lessons at age 13 and auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera at age 19. Though she had no performing experience, she impressed the general manager enough to earn a contract to appear in Mozart's The Magic Flute. Scheduled to debut in February, 1951, Peters in fact made her debut on November 17, 1950, when she was called upon to replace a colleague on only six hours notice. On that day, she sang the part of Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni. The New York Times called her appearance "a very neat, well-sung, intelligent performance." It was the beginning of a long career at the Met, where Peters achieved the longest tenure of any soprano in the Opera's history.

During more than 35 years at the Met, Peters gave over 500 performances in more than 20 roles. Among the most well-known were performances as Gilda in Rigoletto, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor. Success in New York soon led to performances elsewhere. In 1951, Peters debuted at London's Covent Garden in The Bohemian Girl. Tours in Chicago, San Francisco, Germany, and Austria soon followed. In 1972, she performed at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, where she received the Bolshoi Medal. It was the first time the Medal had been awarded to an American-born artist.

In addition to her operatic career, Peters has been an ambassador of classical music to the general public. In recitals and master classes throughout the world, and in a record 65 appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, Peters has brought her music to the people. In her television appearances and recitals on college campuses and for Jewish groups, Peters sings American, European, and Yiddish folk songs as well as classical arias. She has performed often in Israel and also in specifically Jewish works like Abraham Kaplan's Kedushah Symphony (1982). In 2000, at age 70, she was still singing in about 25 concerts each year.

Peters has also devoted energy to social and philanthropic causes. She has served as chairman of the National Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Carnegie Hall Corporation. She has performed in benefit concerts for AIDS research, and established a scholarship fund at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush appointed her to the National Council on the Arts. She has received awards from the Federation of Women's Clubs (1964) and the Foundation for Jewish Culture (1997). In 2000, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani presented her with the Handel Medallion for enriching New York City's cultural life.

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

See also: This Week in History, November 17, 1950.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1046-1048; www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=41:45646~T1; New York Times, November 18, 1950; New York Daily News, November 3, 2004; Roberta Peters, A Debut at the Met (New York: Meredith Press, 1967).

Birth of Nacha Rivkin, founder of the first U.S. girls' yeshiva

May 5, 1900

Born in Poland on May 5, 1900, Nacha Rivkin immigrated to the United States in 1929, settling with her husband and two children in Brooklyn, New York. Since there was no Jewish girls' school, the Rivkins sent their eight-year-old daughter to public school and taught her Hebrew and Jewish subjects at home. But it was not long before Rivkin sought a better solution. Within a year, Rivkin had worked with Rabbi M.G. Volk and two other teachers to open the Shulamith School for Girls in Borough Park, Brooklyn. It was the first girls' yeshiva in the United States. Rivkin taught kindergarten and first grade and supervised curriculum development.

At the Shulamith School, Rivkin introduced innovative methods for teaching Hebrew to young children. Rejecting rote memorization, and drawing instead on the work of educational theorists Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget, she taught language skills through song, games, stories, and pictures. In 1954, she published Reishis Chochma, a book drawn from the curriculum she had developed at Shulamith. A second volume followed in 1967. The books are now in their nineteenth printing, and are used in 550 Jewish day schools in the Torah Umesorah system. In addition, a collection of songs that Rivkin wrote to celebrate holidays and teach the Hebrew alphabet were published as Shiru Li in 1960. Rivkin was also a talented painter, producing over 200 paintings of still lifes, nature scenes, and Jewish themes, mostly in oils.

After her retirement from the Shulamith School, Rivkin taught pedagogy at the Sarah Schenirer Teachers Seminary in Brooklyn. Through this work, and through her influential books, she had an enormous impact on Jewish early childhood education in America. In 1980, she was honored by Yeshiva Torah Vodaath for her accomplishments. After her death in 1988, a women's yeshiva in Bayit Vegan, Jerusalem, was named the Machon Nacha Rivkin Seminary for Advanced Torah Studies, in her honor.

Learn more about Nacha Rivkin in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1157-1158.

Barbara Dobkin Received Honorary Degree

May 5, 2011

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Photograph courtesy of HUC-JIR.

On May 5, 2011 Barbara Dobkin, Jewish feminist philanthropist and the Founding Chair of the Jewish Women’s Archive, received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s Graduation at Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York.

“Renown for her passionate advocacy on behalf of women’s issues, Barbara Dobkin has been a catalyst in envisioning new directions to enhance women’s leadership, spirituality, and service to humanity,” said Rabbi David Ellenson, president of HUC-JIR. Indeed, as evidenced by her pivotal role in the creation of the Jewish Women's Archive, she has been a visionary leader in Jewish women’s organizations and an effective advocate for women’s causes in both the Jewish and secular worlds. Currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of American Jewish World Service, she is also founder of Ma’yan: The Jewish Women’s Project, and Founding Chair of the Hadassah Foundation. She continues to serve on the JWA Board and is also a board member of Advancing Jewish Professionals and the Jewish Community, the Women’s Funding Network, the White House Project, the Women Donors Network, and Lilith Magazine.

To learn more about Barbara Dobkin, visit:

Source: "Barbara B. Dobkin, Chair of the Board of Trustees of American Jewish World Service, to Receive Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion," HUC-JIR Press Room.

Publication of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"

May 6, 1943

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Book cover of the 25th Anniversary edition of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, published on May 6, 1943, though not her first novel, was the first to win a wide following for the philosophy she called Objectivism. She explained that: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

The Fountainhead illustrated this philosophy through the tale of a visionary architect who sticks to his artistic convictions against massive social opposition. The book was not embraced by critics, but it eventually became a best-seller, and was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper in 1949. Together with Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957), The Fountainhead has become one of the central texts of an Objectivist movement that emphasizes capitalism, individualism, and the pursuit of individual ambition.

Although her idea that altruism is bad and selfishness good contradicts traditional Jewish values, Rand's promotion of individual ambition was typical of Russian Jewish immigrants of her generation. Rand herself came from Russia to the United States at age 21, drawn by the conditions depicted in American movies, and eager to leave Stalinist Russia. Jobs as a screenwriter and script reader in Hollywood supported her writing, and also introduced her to husband Frank O'Connor.

Literary critics and philosophers have never taken Rand seriously, but her works have garnered popular acclaim. Despite mostly negative reviews, her four novels remain in print and have together sold over 25 million copies, and Objectivist discussion groups and internet sites abound.

Learn more about Ayn Rand in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: This Week in History for December 21, 1942; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Ayn Rand's grave, Early Workplace of writer Ayn Rand, and Ayn Rand quote at Epcot Center, Walt Disney World.

Sources:http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer? pagename=about_ayn_rand_aynrand_biography; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1124-1126; http://www.objectivistcenter.org.

Poet Maxine Kumin wins Pulitzer Prize

May 7, 1973

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Early on in life, Maxine Kumin discovered the difficulties inherent in being a woman and a writer: “It was commonplace to be told by an editor that he’d like to publish more of my poems, but he’d already published one by a woman that month.” She persevered, and American literature is the richer for it.

Institution: Sylvia Edwards, Longview Community College

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on June 6, 1925, Maxine Kumin earned a B.A. in history and literature from Radcliffe in 1946. She published her first book of poems, Halfway, in 1961. By then, Kumin had already published three books for children: Sebastian and the Dragon (1960), Follow the Fall (1961), and Summer Story (1961). Four years later, in 1965, Kumin published a second book of poems, The Privilege, and her first novel, Through Dooms of Love. The novel, about a pawnbroker and his "romantic, cause-loving" daughter, was praised by a New York Times reviewer as "serious and effective," and "precisely rendered, with a compassion that is passed on effortlessly to the reader."

Since then, Kumin has published more than a dozen books of poetry, along with several novels, short story collections, essay collections, and a memoir. She has also published numerous children's books, including four co-authored with poet Anne Sexton. Kumin's 1972 poetry collection, Up Country: Poems of New England, won the Pulitzer Prize on May 7, 1973.

Kumin has been compared to Robert Frost and to Henry David Thoreau, for the way in which her poetry engages the New England landscape and is deeply rooted in a sense of place.

Kumin's identity as a woman and a Jew also shines through her work. Several of her novels, including The Designated Heir and Passions of Uxport, examine themes of love, marriage, and women's struggles to define their identities. Many poems, including a series that explores Kumin's own family history, address Jewish themes, especially relationships between Jews and non-Jews.

Kumin has received many awards for her work. Among these are a grant from the National Council on the Arts (1966), the American Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1980), and a $10,000 fellowship for "distinguished poetic achievement" from the Academy of American Poets (1985). In 1996, she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, but resigned in 1998 to protest the lack of diversity on the board of chancellors, which had never included a Black woman poet.

Kumin's collection, Still To Mow, was published in 2007. Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 was published in 2010.

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

See also: Poetry in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 766-767; New York Times, April 11, 1965; September 4, 1966; November 19, 1972; November 18, 1985; November 14, 1998; Washington Post, Times Herald, May 8, 1973.

Poet Muriel Rukeyser receives $1000 literary award

May 8, 1942

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On May 8, 1942, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters jointly presented awards to ten artists working in music, literature, and visual art. Among the recipients in literature was a young poet named Muriel Rukeyser. Although she had not yet turned 30, Rukeyser had already published five volumes of poetry; a sixth, as well as her first prose work — a biography of scientist Willard Gibbs — would appear later the same year. Rukeyser's first book, Theory of Flight (1935), had won the Yale Younger Poets award, but it was her second book that established her as a serious artist. With the publication of U.S. 1 in 1938, she was hailed as "a dramatic lyric poet" whose "images of motion, of the driven mind and body are distinctly exciting and right." Critics credited U.S. 1 with dispensing with the "piling up of obscure detail" which had marked her first book. Rukeyser went on to publish 17 additional books of poems over four decades, culminating in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser in 1979. She also wrote several children's books and published translations of works by Gunnar Ekelof and Bertold Brecht.

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

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

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

Although Rukeyser's work always had its critics, she was recognized for her talent during her lifetime. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Copernicus Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award, and was elected president of PEN. The New York Times called her collected poems "richly rewarding." Rukeyser died on February 12, 1980. A Library of America edition of Selected Poems by Rukeyser, edited by the noted poet Adrienne Rich, was published in 2004.

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

Read about Muriel Rukeyser on JWA's blog, Jewesses with Attitude.

See also: This Week in History for January 31, 1938 "Muriel Rukeyser publishes second book of poems," and December 15, 1913 "Birth of poet Muriel Rukeyser"; Jewish Women "On the Map" - Muriel Rukeyser's Poem "Rune" and Muriel Rukeyser plaque outside the New York Public Library; Poetry in the United States.

Sources:New York Times, January 31, 1938, March 27, 1938, April 22, 1942, July 22, 1942, February 13, 1980; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1191-1193; http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/tobeajew.htm; http://www.glbtq.com/literature/rukeyser_m.html.

Esther Ruskay speaks at founding of NY section of National Council of Jewish Women

May 9, 1894

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When New York City's section of the National Council of Jewish Women met for the first time, on May 9, 1894, the evening's speaker was Esther Ruskay. Born in 1857, Ruskay had been a member of the first graduating class of Normal College (now Hunter College) in 1875. She became known as a leading advocate for Jewish traditionalism, but was widely respected throughout the Jewish community, even becoming the first woman to speak from the pulpit of Temple Emanu-El, New York's flagship Reform synagogue.

In her 1894 speech, Ruskay castigated those who saw Judaism as out of step with modernity and particularly those who looked to deracinated movements like the Ethical Culture Society for spiritual and ethical guidance. At a time when many Jews were criticizing Judaism as increasingly irrelevant and seeking to Americanize Jewish practice, Ruskay held firmly to tradition. In the same speech, she urged that Hebrew be taught regularly to Jewish children "in the same spirit of educational fervor" as was given to training in Latin and Greek.

Ruskay pushed the early National Council of Jewish Women (founded in 1893) to focus its efforts on strengthening Judaism. She successfully urged the Council to commit to protecting the Jewish Sabbath and respectfully but firmly challenged the NCJW leaders from Chicago who believed that Judaism could be sustained with a Sabbath observed on Sunday. A frequent contributor to the English-language American Jewish press and the New York Sun, Esther Ruskay believed that adherence to traditional Jewish observance could vitally enrich life lived amid modern societal demands. A collection of her writing was published by the Jewish Publication Society in 1902 under the title Hearth and Home Essays.

Ruskay was instrumental in the founding of the New York Educational Alliance, the Young Women's Hebrew Association, and the Vacation Home for Girls. She died at age 53 in 1910.

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

See also: This Week in History for November 15, 1896 and Feburary 6, 1902; Modern Jewish Family in the United States; Through the Year: Celebrated Esthers; National Council of Jewish Women;

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 968-979, 1193-1194; Esther Ruskay, Hearth and Home Essays (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1902); personal correspondence from John Ruskay to JWA, September 2004.

Singer Sylvia Blagman Syms dies during standing ovation

May 10, 1992

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Portrait of Sylvia Syms and Bob Wyatt, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948, by William Gottlieb. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

On May 10, 1992, at New York City's Algonquin Hotel, Sylvia Syms finished singing her last song, raised her right arm to acknowledge the audience's standing ovation, and collapsed of a heart attack. The cabaret singer died the same evening at age 74. Syms's death ended a career that had spanned half a century.

Born in New York in 1917, Syms first became interested in jazz through radio broadcasts of live shows on New York's famed 52nd Street, then also known as "Swing Street." As a teenager, too young and too poor to be admitted to the city's jazz clubs, she hid in coatrooms to listen to such greats as Art Tatum, Lester Young, Mildred Bailey, and the woman who would become her mentor and role model: Billie Holiday. Syms made her own debut in 1941, at a 51st Street club called Kelly's Stable. In 1946, she made her first recording, "I'm In the Mood for Love."

In 1949, Syms was discovered by Mae West, who gave the singer the role of Flo the Shoplifter in a revival of Diamond Lil. Syms would go on to play Bloody Mary in South Pacific, Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, and Gypsy in Tennessee Williams's Camino Real. At the same time, she continued to perform in jazz clubs as a cabaret star, or as she preferred to call herself, a saloon singer. The intimate atmosphere of the club or saloon suited Syms, who told a 1974 interviewer that "her religion [was] people" and once said that "when you perform, it's a one-to-one love affair with the people out there. That's how it has to be."

The people loved Syms back. She recorded fifteen albums, of which the major hit was her 1956 version of "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady. It sold more than one million copies. She was also popular with her fellow performers, earning the nickname "Buddha" (for her short stature and round figure) from Frank Sinatra. Sinatra, who also called Syms "the best saloon singer in the business," produced and conducted her 1982 album of jazz classics, Syms by Sinatra. The 1992 Algonquin show was entitled "Syms celebrates Sinatra," and was intended to be a tribute to her longtime friend and mentor. Syms's last album, You Must Believe in Spring: The Words of Alan and Marilyn Bergman was released posthumously, in June 1992.

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

See also: On the Map: Algonquin Hotel.

Sources:Jewish Women in America, pp. 1364-1366; New York Times, May 11, 1992, May 17, 1992.

Birth of singer Alma Gluck

May 11, 1884

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Alma Gluck (1884 - 1938) was a popular U.S. concert singer. By 1914, she was performing in all 48 states and in as many as 100 concerts a season. This is a press photograph from the George Grantham Bain collection, which was purchased by the Library of Congress in 1948.

Alma Gluck, who was famous in the first decades of the twentieth century for her concert performances and recording career, was born in Romania on May 11, 1884, the youngest of seven children. Her father died when Gluck (born Reba Fiersohn) was two, and the family came to the United States when she was six, their passage paid by the sweatshop wages of Gluck's eldest sister.

In 1902, she married insurance agent Bernard Gluck, and it was through him that she began her singing career. A business associate of Bernard's, who had heard Alma sing, arranged for her to take voice lessons beginning in 1906. In 1909, her teacher set up a meeting with famed conductor Arturo Toscanini, who hired her immediately. Gluck made her debut on November 16, 1909, in a Metropolitan Opera performance of Massenet's Werther. A decade later, the New York Times recalled that her character's "pretty song made a prima donna of Alma Gluck in one evening."

Although Gluck was successful in opera, she did not care for its theatrical nature and instead chose to become a concert performer. By 1914, a year after leaving the Opera, she was the most popular concert singer in the United States, performing in all 48 states and in as many as 100 concerts a season. Gluck's extensive recording career earned her the most lasting fame. Between 1911 and 1919, Gluck made 124 recordings, both of classical arias and of American folk songs. Though little-known today, Gluck's success in her time was phenomenal. Her audience, measured by concert tickets and recording sales, was matched by very few others. Her recording of "Carry Me Back to Ol' Virginny," perhaps her most popular, sold almost two million copies. On many of her records, Gluck is accompanied by violinist Efrem Zimbalist, who became her second husband in 1914. The pair also gave regular joint performances in concert.

Gluck retired from the stage in 1925, but remained active in musical causes. She was a founder of the American Guild of Musical Artists, and a supporter of the Musicians Emergency Fund. She was also a renowned hostess, regularly gathering groups of musicians in her home. In addition, she worked to support her favorite causes, singing for the Red Cross and signing on to the work of the Musicians Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy during the Spanish Civil War. Notably, she was not active in the Jewish community, instead developing ties to the Episcopal Church, in which she also baptized her three children (though never choosing baptism for herself). Gluck died of liver disease in 1938, at age 54.

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

See also: This Week in History for November 16, 1909, "Debut of singer Alma Gluck."

Sources: Jewish Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia, p.521-523; New York Times, February 19, 1919, October 28, 1938.

Amy Eilberg ordained as first female Conservative rabbi

May 12, 1985

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The first woman ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Amy Eilberg has continued to highlight the value of "gender difference," encouraging the Conservative movement to recognize and promote the unique needs and contributions of women rabbis.

Institution: Lila Corwin Berman

Amy Eilberg's ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS)'s commencement ceremony on May 12, 1985, made her the first woman rabbi in the Conservative movement.

Although the Reform movement began ordaining women in 1972, Eilberg's ordination followed a long struggle within the Conservative movement. Eilberg had been enrolled at JTS as a student of Talmud when the school's faculty voted, on October 24, 1983, to admit women to the rabbinical program. Eilberg enrolled as a rabbinical student in the fall of 1984.

Eilberg's first rabbinic position was as a chaplain at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the 21 years since her ordination, she has remained involved in issues of health care, becoming a national leader in the Jewish healing movement. She was a co-founder of the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, and directed the Center's Jewish Hospice Care program. Eilberg now teaches spiritual direction and conflict resolution and creates Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue programs in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.

Although she is not a pulpit rabbi, Eilberg has remained involved in some of the central concerns of the Conservative movement. In 1988, she contributed new rituals for women and couples grieving after miscarriage or abortion to an updated edition of the Conservative movement's rabbinic manual, Moreh Derekh. She has also written a ritual for women healing from sexual violence.

At a program held at the Jewish Theological Seminary in April, 2005, Eilberg noted that although JTS has ordained more than 150 women since 1985, female rabbis still face special challenges, including the competing demands of family and work.

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

See also: This Week in History for October 24, 1983, "JTS Faculty Senate Votes to Admit Women"; Conservative Judaism in the United States.

Sources: New York Times, February 17, 1985; May 13, 1985; http://my.brandeis.edu/profiles/one-profile?profile_id=1037; The Jewish Week, April 8, 2005; Beth S. Wenger, "The Politics of Women's Ordination: Jewish Law, Institutional Power and the Debate over Women in the Rabbinate," in Jack Wertheimer, ed., Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary (New York, 1997), pp. 485-523; The Jewish Week, November 20, 1988; J.: The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, January 17, 2003; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, http://jwa.org/feminism/index.html?id=JWA020.

Gladys Heldman launches "World Tennis Magazine"

May 13, 1953

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World Tennis Magazine cover with Gabriela Sabatini, 1990 U.S. Open Champion.

Tennis player, promoter, and women's advocate Gladys Heldman released the first issue of World Tennis Magazine on May 13, 1953. Heldman began playing tennis after the birth of her two daughters and went on to rank #1 in Texas and #2 in the Southwest in addition to playing at Wimbledon in 1954. Heldman is most celebrated, however, for her work promoting women's equal status in the tennis world. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Heldman used her magazine to push for equal coverage and opportunity for female tennis players. She was also a consistent advocate for athletes in general against the criticism of tournament organizers and the mainstream media. Heldman's writing and advocacy were honored with the J.P. Allen Memorial Award of the Lawn Tennis Writers' Association of America in 1958.

In 1970, fed up with the disparity in prize money for men and women, Heldman organized independent tournaments in competition with the U.S. Open. She went on to form the Virginia Slims Tour for professional women tennis players. Women were initially punished for competing in Heldman-sponsored events, but after three years of lawsuits and negotiations, the Virginia Slims Tour finally merged with the United States Lawn Tennis Association and, in 1973, men and women began playing in the same events for equal prizes. The struggle for equal pay continued, however. Only in 2007 did Wimbeldon agree to offer equal prize money to men and women.

Heldman retired in the mid 1970s, selling World Tennis Magazine to CBS. In 1979, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame as well as the National Tennis Hall of Fame. Heldman died in 2003 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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

See also: Jewesses with Attitude, "Wimbledon Pays Up To Pay Equal."

Sources: http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=tennis&ID=21; http://www.tennisfame.com/famer.aspx?pgID=867&hof_id=143; http://www.wm.edu/tenniscenter/heldmanobit.html; New York Times, February 13, 1958; March 26, 1961; August 15, 1972; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 615-618.

Mayyim Hayyim, a progressive community mikveh, opens

May 14, 2004

Mayyim Hayyim, a community mikveh [ritual bath] and education center in Newton, Massachusetts, opened its doors on May 14, 2004. The opening was the culmination of over three years of work by a committed group of Boston-area women led by author Anita Diamant. Mayyim Hayyim, whose name means "living waters," adopted the following mission statement: "To reclaim and reinvent one of our most ancient Jewish rituals – immersion in the mikveh – for contemporary spiritual uses and to make this new, sacred space open and accessible to all Jews in the Greater Boston area."

In opening the community mikveh, the Mayyim Hayyim founders joined a growing movement among non-Orthodox American Jews to reclaim the mikveh for new uses. Traditionally, married women are required to immerse in the mikveh after each menstrual period, while men may immerse each week in preparation for Shabbat and also before holidays. Immersion also forms a central part of the conversion ceremony. The mikveh ritual was long rejected by feminist Jews because of its association with the laws of family purity (taharat hamishpacha), which suggest that a menstruating woman is "unclean." However, in the 1990s, women began to find new meanings and uses for mikveh, creating rituals for healing after divorce, rape, or abuse; to mark milestones such as major birthdays and graduations; and to mark the end of difficult events or stages such as chemotherapy, miscarriage, or bereavement.

Mayyim Hayyim was designed to be used for these newer rituals as well as for traditional monthly and weekly immersions. Constructed to meet traditional standards of halacha (Jewish law), it was also designed to be, in Diamant's words, "a mikveh that is beautiful in design and decoration, a welcoming and inviting place." It is also meant to be accessible to individuals with disabilities, with one of the two immersion pools featuring a wheelchair lift. Although other mikvaot (plural of mikveh) exist in the Boston area, Mayyim Hayyim is the first that is not connected to an Orthodox authority; for this reason, it is more accessible to women who may not feel comfortable using – or may not be able to gain access to – an Orthodox-affiliated mikveh for a non-traditional purpose.

In addition to reclaiming and reinventing the mikveh, Mayyim Hayyim seeks to fulfill its mission through a variety of educational programs. By January of 2004, before the building even opened, Mayyim Hayyim estimated that its education programs had reached about 1,000 people. Since the opening of its building, the organization has sponsored art exhibits and public programs to engage the community. To mark its first anniversary, the group staged a performance of "Mikveh Monologues," modeled after Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," and featuring the stories of mikveh users. The script was written by Diamant and Janet Buchwald. Diamant noted in an interview that despite the seemingly narrow focus of the topic, "all religious rituals use water as a metaphor for change and transformation and purification...there's a potential for universal appeal." "Mikveh Monologues II," presented in March 2006, raised $200,000 for Mayyim Hayyim.

See also: Mikveh; This Week in History for October 1, 1997 (for Anita Diamant); Jewesses with Attitude: Colors of Water, Celebrating Old-New, Mikveh Dreams, Ending Abuse Through Activism and Ritual.

Sources: www.mayyimhayyim.org; The Forward, March 11, 2005; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 25, 2001; The Jewish Advocate, January 29, 2004.

Jennifer Gorovitz became first female CEO of a major Jewish federation

May 14, 2010

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Jennifer Gorovitz became the first woman CEO of a major Jewish federation in May, 2010.

Image courtesy of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.

After nearly eight months in an interim leadership role, Jennifer Gorovitz was named Chief Executive Officer of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Federation, which ranks among the 20 largest Jewish federations on in North America. While women make up 75% of American federation staffs, Gorovitz was the first woman to head a major one..

An attorney by trade, Gorovitz gave up practicing law in 2004 to take care of her two young children and pursue a career within the Jewish community. She was well acquainted with federation work. Her great-grandfather, grandmother, and mother were all active federation members; Gorovitz’s own involvement began when, as an undergraduate at Stanford University, she led a federation-run campaign for Ethiopian Jewry.

Upon joining the SF Jewish Community Federation, Gorovitz spent five years in various roles before being appointed CEO. She had served as Chief of Staff for former CEO Daniel Sokatch, who left the position to head the New Israel Fund.

“I like to wrestle with challenging situations,” Gorovitz told JWeekly, a California newspaper. “I do not shy away from things that are troubling or anguishing. That’s part of making a contribution. It would be easier to do something different, but this is what excites me on a daily basis.”

See also: "Jewish Women On the Map" - Jennifer Gorovitz, Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco.

Sources: Moving up: New CEO is first woman to head a major Jewish federation, JWeekly; Congratulations to Jennifer Gorovitz – and to our Federation!, Jewish Community Federation of San Fransisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.

Birth of Judaica librarian Fanny Goldstein

May 15, 1895

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Fanny Goldstein (1895-1961) was the first female Judaica librarian, and the first woman to direct a branch library in Massachusetts, the West End Branch Library. She is best known as the founder of Jewish Book Week, which later evolved into National Jewish Book Month.

Born on May 15, 1895 [some sources say 1888], Fanny Goldstein devoted her life to books and community. She was the first female Judaica librarian and the first woman to direct a branch library in Massachusetts, where she was head of Boston's West End Branch for many years. A prominent figure in the Boston Jewish community, she is best known as the founder of Jewish Book Week, which began when Goldstein organized a display of Jewish books at the Boston Public Library in 1925. Goldstein worked tirelessly to bring authors to participate in Jewish Book Week in Boston and to export the concept to other cities.

The West End Branch Library under Goldstein addressed the needs of the diverse ethnic populations (especially Italian, African-American, and Jewish) of Boston's West End. Goldstein created programs and collected books that appealed to each of the community's populations and which brought them together as one community. The West End Branch, which she directed from 1922 to 1957, offered a model of the public library as community center.

Goldstein served as the first chairman for National Jewish Book Week, sponsored under the auspices of the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), in 1940. The national effort was designed to increase awareness of American Jewish literature. The JWB sponsored exhibits and discussions across the country during the designated week each year. The Week took on new meaning, and new urgency, during World War II when the JWB recast it as a response to the persecution of European Jewry. In 1941, the chairman of the National Jewish Book Week committee told the New York Times that one of the goals of the Week was "to cultivate and strengthen our internal life, so as to be in a position later on to reciprocate fully by aiding European Jewries to replenish their depleted resources."

Goldstein compiled significant and pioneering bibliographies in Judaica, including what was probably the first bibliography on books about Jewish women. In 1947, Goldstein published The Jewish Child in Bookland: A Selected Bibliography of Juveniles for the Jewish Child's Own Bookshelf, a Jewish-themed reading list for children. In Boston, she maintained an extensive archive of book reviews, photographs, pamphlets, and correspondence related to Judaic topics. In Spring 2004, the Boston Public Library exhibited selections from this archive together with materials documenting Goldstein's career as part of a series of special events, organized with the Jewish Women's Archive, celebrating 350 years of Jewish communal life in North America.

Today, Jewish Book Week has become Jewish Book Month, celebrated each November with exhibits, lectures, and discussion groups in synagogues, schools, libraries, and Jewish Community Centers across the country.

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

See also: Librarians in the United States.

Sources: http://www.bpl.org/research/special/collections.htm#g; New York Times, November 24, 1941; May 23, 1946; Fanny Goldstein, The Jewish Child in Bookland: A Selected Bibliography of Juveniles for the Jewish Child's Own Bookshelf (New York: Jewish Book Council of America, 1947); Fanny Goldstein Papers, MS-205, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati.

Jewish women protested kosher meat prices on Lower East Side

May 15, 1902

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New York Times, May 17, 1902.

On May 15, 1902, Jewish housewives on the Lower East Side poured into the streets, breaking windows and throwing meat. The women were protesting a jump in the price of kosher meat from 12 to 18 cents a pound. Food prices were often a source of contention for Jewish immigrant communities in New York. The May 1902 boycott highlighted the ability of Jewish women to organize and coordinate a movement throughout the boroughs. The event made headlines across the city, with some newspapers cheering on the women and others condemning them.

In early May of 1902, as the price of kosher meat rose, neighborhood butcher shops stopped selling meat in order to try to force wholesalers, often referred to as the Meat Trust, to cut their prices. The Meat Trust refused to budge and prices remained high. Unhappy with the lack of progress made by the butcher shop boycott, female consumers took matters into their own hands.

On May 14, two women organized a meeting on the Lower East Side to rally support for the proposed boycott. The next day, tens of thousands of Jewish women took to the streets and demonstrated their outrage. Riots broke out as women attacked butcher shops and customers. Police officers tried to protect butcher shops, but protesting women grabbed meat and threw it out into the streets, even dousing it in gasoline and setting it on fire. Police arrested 85 people, three quarters of them women. Encouraged by the Lower East Side, women in other neighborhoods began their own boycotts.

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New York Times, May 18, 1902.

Protest tactics were not strictly reserved for the streets. On May 17 during Shabbat Torah services, women interrupted prayers with a call to support the boycott. Women left their seats in the balcony to persuade men to back their cause and gain communal support.

To ensure solidarity, women patrolled the neighborhood. Canvassers traveled door-to-door to encourage neighbors to support the boycott. Home visits also allowed women to look into pots to make sure no secretly purchased meat was being cooked. Supporters picketed butcher shops. Sympathetic neighbors raised bail money for women who had been arrested. Fliers illustrated with skulls and cross bones warned: "Eat no meat while the Trust is taking meat from the bones of your women and children."

The press noted the women’s impressive organization and strategy. The New York Herald reported that "these women were in earnest. For days they had been considering the situation, and when they decided on action, they perfected an organization, elected officers, ...and even went so far as to take coins from their slender purses until there was an expense fund of eighty dollars with which to carry on the fight."

Three weeks into the boycott, the price of kosher meat was lowered four cents when the Meat Trust agreed to drop prices to 14 cents a pound. Even though prices would rise again, the boycott had mobilized and politicized a group not traditionally involved in organized protest. Unlike most women involved in the labor movement in this period, the women who participated in the boycott were mostly homemakers in their thirties. Although mainly immigrants, most of the women had been living in the United States for many years and were asserting what they saw as American rights—the right to demand fair prices, the right to protest publicly, and the right to speak freely and openly. The boycott would become a model for future protests and was in many ways a precursor to larger scale strikes, including the 1909 shirtwaist strike.

To learn more about the kosher meat boycott of 1902, view this online exhibit created by Julianna Monjeau.

See also: "Activist Clara Shavelson leads butcher shop boycott," This Week in History, May 27, 1935; Uprising of 20,000 (1909); Clara Lemlich Shavelson; Eastern European Immigrants in the United States; Food in the United States.

Sources Hyman, Paula E. “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902.” in The American Jewish Experience, edited by Jonathan D. Sarna (1997); Eldridge Street Synagogue Audio Clips (1 and 2).

Angela Warnick Buchdahl invested as first Asian-American cantor

May 16, 1999

Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, Angela Warnick Buchdahl was both an outsider and an insider in the local Jewish community. Her paternal grandparents were founding members of the local Reform synagogue, but as the daughter of a Korean mother, Angela and her sister were the only biracial Jews they knew. A summer in Israel with the Bronfman Youth Fellowship, where Buchdahl's roommate was an Orthodox Jew, caused her to question her own Jewish identity. Although she briefly considered leaving Judaism, she ultimately decided to make her career in the Jewish community.

After graduating from Yale, Buchdahl enrolled at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where she was invested as a cantor on May 16, 1999. At HUC-JIR's investiture ceremony, Buchdahl became the first Asian American cantor. Just two years later, she made history again with ordination from HUC-JIR, becoming the first Asian American rabbi. Buchdahl served as associate rabbi and cantor at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, and currently serves as cantor of Central Synagogue in New York City. She has published several articles reflecting on her position as a Korean-American Jew, including one titled "Kimchee on the Seder Plate," which recounts the blending of Korean and Jewish culture in her parents' home. In an interview with Reform Judaism magazine, Buchdahl said that although she does not believe that her Korean heritage defines her rabbinical work, she "might have a role to play in helping to change people's perceptions of who is a rabbi, a cantor, or a Jew."

See also: Jewesses with Attitude: Making History in the Cantorate and the Rabbinate; Living the Legacy Lesson: Exploring my Identity: Kimchee on the Seder Plate.

Sources:http://www.shma.com/june03/Angela.htm;www.centralsynagogue.org; Debbie Slevin, “If Wise Could See Us Now,” Reform Judaism, Fall 2000.

Yiddish theatre star Bertha Kalich born

May 17, 1874

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Known as the "Jewish Bernhardt," Bertha Kalich was one of the great stars of the golden age of the American Yiddish theater and, for a time, a leading light of mainstream American drama as well.

Institution: American Jewish Historical Society

Bertha Kalich, star of American Yiddish theatre, was born on May 17, 1874 [some sources say 1872 or 1875]. Raised in Lemberg, then part of Austria-Hungary, Kalich studied at the Lemberg Conservatory and joined the chorus of the local Polish theater at thirteen. She also performed in German, and later learned Romanian for a stint at the Romanian Imperial Theatre in Bucharest. Her success there put to rest, at least temporarily, fears that anti-Semitism would hinder her budding career. A story was later told that audience members had brought onions to pelt her with, but were so entranced that they threw flowers instead. The story may be apocryphal, but Kalich’s success was real. The acclaim that greeted her Romanian performances was enough to catch the eye of American producers, who brought Kalich to the U.S. in 1894.

In New York, Kalich performed mainly at Joseph Edelstein’s Thalia Theatre, where she starred as Desdemona in Othello, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and in A Doll’s House, all in Yiddish translation. Through these plays and others, Kalich sought to make her name as an actress rather than emphasizing the musical talents that had given her a start in Yiddish theatre. She also sought to raise the artistic standards of Yiddish theatre, emphasizing serious plays. She soon became a leading lady of American Yiddish theatre, and playwright Jacob Gordin wrote at least two roles especially for her: Etty in The Kreutzer Sonata and the title role in Sappho.

In 1905, Kalich made her debut on the English-language stage, in the title role of Victorien Sardou’s Fédora. A reviewer for the New York Times lauded her “remarkable emotional power” and “tremendous natural force,” but also criticized her performance as lacking in subtlety. The opening night audience, however, responded with a standing ovation and nearly a dozen curtain calls. She was one of just a few actresses to transition successfully from Yiddish to English theatre. Kalich continued to appear in English roles for another decade, but her emotional style gradually fell out of favor for the light American theatre then in vogue. She did, however, appear in revivals of roles she had first performed in Yiddish, and also in several early films. By 1915, she was returning more and more frequently to the Yiddish stage, in Philadelphia and Chicago as well as New York. In Yiddish theatre circles, her performances in English only enhanced her prestige. In turn, her success on the English-language stage helped raise the status of the Yiddish theatre.

Kalich retired from the theatre in 1931, having gradually lost her sight to a malignant eye tumor. Unable to give up theatre entirely, she appeared occasionally even after her retirement, including in several productions mounted for her benefit. Her last appearance was in a staging of Louis Untermeyer’s poem “Heine’s Death” at the Jolson theatre, in February, 1939. She died in New York just a few months later, on April 18, 1939. Her New York Times obituary estimated that she had performed some 125 roles in seven languages.

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

See also: Yiddish Musical Theater in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America, 715-717; New York Times, May 23, 1905, April 19, 1939.

Lily Winner publishes a defense of open immigration in the "The Nation"

May 18, 1921

The May 18, 1921, issue of The Nation included an essay by Lily Winner entitled "American Emigrés." The article asked, "why has America the 'melting-pot' failed to Americanize? Why is Congress, in its hysterical weathervane fashion, passing bills to restrict immigration when, by casual inquiry, it could ascertain that the margin between arrivals of new people and departure of old, is so slight as not to fill the hearts of employing capital with boundless joy?" Winner explained that while American businesses were eager for the cheap labor of immigrants, these workers found little welcome in American society. She condemned the lack of programs to teach American manners and values, and lamented the frequent return of immigrants who, American capital in hand, could begin new lives back in their homelands. Today her essay seems to combine a still timely critique with intolerant ethnocentrism. In fact, Winner's concern for the maltreatment of immigrants in American cities placed her among the progressive voices of her time.

Immigration was only one of the causes dear to Winner's heart. In addition to urging acculturation of foreigners, she became deeply involved in the birth control movement, writing frequent articles for Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review. The Review, considered radical in its day, was "dedicated to the principal of intelligent and voluntary motherhood." Winner's essays, like others in the magazine, called for the emancipation of women and their right to control their own fertility on the grounds that such control would make them better mothers of the children they chose to bear. Winner also wrote frequently for a Jewish periodical, The Modern View. Displaying the breadth of her writing talents, her pieces in the View were mainly stories that spoke to the temptations and challenges of assimilation but which usually ended with the heroine's recommitment to Jewish ritual and values.

By the time Winner gained her by-line in these diverse publications, she had already made a name for herself as a playwright. In 1915, while still a 24-year-old stenographer in Missouri, where she was born and raised, Winner co-wrote The Crutch, which was accepted in that year by the Shuberts, who planned to stage it with actor Louis Mann in the starring role. Winner went on to work not only as a writer for niche publications but also as a globetrotting journalist. She wrote about the medieval cities of Germany, royal ghosts in England, and her 1924 meeting with the Pope. She also worked for a time as the advertising manager of the Perry Photo Novelty Corporation. At a time when white middle-class American women were just beginning to take on public roles as reformers and workers in significant numbers, Winner carved out an uncommon career that brought her travel, adventure, and income.

See also: Jewesses with Attitude, "They Say History Repeats...", Lily Winner and immigration, then and now

Sources:Lily Winner Scrapbook, 1915-1924, copy at the Jewish Women's Archive, recompiled by Helene Weitzenkorn, July 2004.

Jane Eisner appointed first female editor of the "Forward"

May 18, 2008

Jane Eisner, a veteran journalist with a long history of "firsts," was appointed to be the first female editor of the Forward on May 18, 2008. Published in New York for a national readership, the Forward is the country's oldest and largest Jewish newspaper. Founded as a Yiddish language daily in 1897, it added an English edition in 1983.

Over the course of her long career, Eisner has broken many barriers. In 1976, she became the first female editor of the Wesleyan University paper. During her 25-year-long tenure with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Eisner was the first female City Hall bureau chief, the first mother to be a foreign correspondent (she worked in London), and the first female editorial page editor. Before being named editor of the Forward, Eisner served as vice-president for national programs and initiatives at the National Constitution Center, based in Philadelphia.

Eisner's interests have long focused on constitutional issues and values, engaging youth in the democratic process, and the evolution of marriage, child-rearing, and education in the United States. In 2004, she published Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy.

The Forward has historically been regarded as a progressive, left-leaning newspaper with a strong focus on social issues, a legacy for which Eisner expressed enthusiasm. "I feel very strongly about the underlying values of social justice and equality that are really a part of the history here from the very beginning, and I admire that tremendously," she said. "I think that there was a real activist role that the Forward played in the community in its heyday and I think that could be again."

See also: Jane Eisner on Jewesses with Attitude: Nine more women for the Forward 50; The Western Wall: Ground zero for the struggle for equality and pluralism

Sources: "Eisner Breaks Glass Stelya at Jewish Forward," www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3655; About Jane Eisner, Forward.com.

Sandy Sasso ordained as first female Reconstructionist rabbi

May 19, 1974

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso became the first female Reconstructionist rabbi when she was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in Philadelphia, on May 19, 1974.

Very involved in her Reform Philadelphia congregation and youth group as a girl, Sandy Eisenberg thought from the age of 16 that she would like to become a rabbi even though she was aware that this role had not been open to women. She recalls that during a high school seminar, her rabbi, who knew of her interest in the rabbinate, asked her to read out loud a passage from Leo Trepp's Eternal Faith, Eternal People which noted that no woman in America had been ordained as a rabbi yet.

Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Jewish Reconstructionism, had been reluctant to turn his movement into a formal denomination with a rabbinical school of its own. When RRC was founded in 1968, however, it was assumed that women would be welcome as students. Eisenberg was nonetheless aware that she would be anomaly as a female rabbinical student and delayed applying to RRC until the end of her senior year in college. She enrolled in the fall of 1969, joining RRC's second class of rabbinical students.

While in school, Sandy Eisenberg married her classmate, Dennis Sasso, making them the first rabbinical couple in history. Like the Reform movement's Sally Priesand, who became the first woman ordained by a rabbinical seminary in 1972, Sasso found that, as a rabbinical student, others looked to her as a voice for women's roles and progress within Judaism. She soon became identified as one of the voices of feminist Judaism.

After her ordination, Sasso served as rabbi of the Manhattan Reconstructionist Congregation. In 1977, she and her husband were hired to serve as the rabbis of Beth El Zedeck in Indianapolis, which is identified both with the Conservative and Reconstructionist movements. She thus became the first woman to serve a Conservative congregation and the first woman to serve as rabbi in partnership with her husband at the same congregation. Not surprisingly, Sasso holds title to many firsts as a woman rabbi, including becoming the first rabbi to become a mother when her son David was born on June 22, 1976.

Sasso is very active in interfaith activities and lectures at Butler University and the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. She is the author of eleven acclaimed children's books (with a forthcoming twelfth due for publication in Spring 2009) as well as a monthly column on religion and spirituality for the Indianapolis Star. She also recently published a book for adults on midrash, God's Echo – Exploring Scripture with Midrash, and speaks nationally on children and spirituality. Today, Sasso and her husband serve as the senior rabbis of Congregation Beth El Zedeck in Indianapolis.

See also: Celebrating Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, the first woman Reconstructionalist rabbi, Jewesses with Attitude; On the Map, "Congregation served by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso"; Reconstructionalist Judaism in the United States.

Sources: Personal communications from Sandy Sasso to the Jewish Women's Archive, May 2005 and May 2008; Pamela S. Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985 (Boston, 1998); www.beliefnet.com/Columnists/k-s/Rabbi-Sandy-Sasso.aspx.

Death of comedian Gilda Radner at 42

May 20, 1989

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Gilda Radner. Image courtesy Michael Radner.

Gilda Radner's death from ovarian cancer on May 20, 1989 at age 42 cut short a vital life and comedic career. Born in Detroit in 1946, Radner became widely known as a hilarious member the first cast of Saturday Night Live.

Radner attended the University of Michigan, but left school to move to Toronto where she began her professional acting career. As part of Toronto company of the improvisational group Second City Comedy, she worked with her future SNL colleagues Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Bill Murray. Radner moved to New York in 1973 where she performed Off-Broadway in "The National Lampoon Show." In October 1975, she appeared in the premier of Saturday Night Live and she remained with the show until 1980, winning an Emmy Award in 1978.

Radner created numerous memorable characters, like Roseanne Roseannadanna, while on SNL which established her as one of the cast's most popular members. While on SNL, Radner appeared in numerous skits which drew attention to her Jewish identity. Her fake advertisement for "Jewess Jeans," mocked the materialism of young Jewish women, but also presented the "Jewess" as a role model to which women from other ethnic and racial groups should aspire. A skit which focused on the celebration of Hanukkah offered a rare positive enactment of Jewish ritual on 1970s TV.

In 1979, Radner appeared in a solo Broadway show, Gilda Radner - Live from New York, and in succeeding years appeared in a number of movies. During the filiming of Hanky Panky (1982), she met her second husband, actor Gene Wilder, with whom she would act in Haunted Honeymoon (1986), before Radner was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Radner, who had struggled thoughout her career with issues related to eating disorders, battled cancer with fierce humor and continued engagement in the world. In an 1988 appearance on It's Gary Shandling's Show, she celebrated her own physical and comedic resilience. She also wrote an autobiography during her illness, It's Always Something, describing her career and the support she'd found within the Wellness Community in battling her illness. After a year of reemission, Gilda Radner's cancer reemerged, and she died on May 20, 1988.

In addition to her comedic legacy, Radner's death helped to sharpen the movement for cancer awareness and early detection and treatment. In addition to the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles established by Gene Wilder, Gilda's Clubs throughout North America offer a crucial supportive environment for women and their families in the struggle against cancer.

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

See also: Jewish Women in Comedy: Gilda Radner; Film Industry in the United States;

Gilda Radner on Jewesses with Attitude:
How Gilda Radner taught me to love my nose
Live from Youtube, it's Gilda Radner
"Jewesses: Jappy, Bizarre, or Cool?"
"Boyfriend Trousers? I Want Jewess Jeans"
"Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month"
"Comedy, Cultural Memory & Legacy".

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1121-1122; Making Trouble (film, 2007); www.MakingTrouble.com.

Atlantic City hotel apologizes to Bertha Rayner Frank for anti-Jewish discrimination

May 21, 1907

In May 1907, Baltimorean Bertha Rayner Frank's vacation turned into a cause célèbre when she was confronted with the reality of anti-Jewish social discrimination. The recently widowed Mrs. Frank had been in residence for a few days at the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel in Atlantic City where members of her family had stayed earlier in the year. When Frank went to reserve lodgings for two of her nieces, however, she was confronted with a clerk's inquiry as to whether her nieces were "Hebrews," and the accompanying explanation that "We don't entertain Hebrews."

Greatly "affronted," Frank, who was the sister of U.S. Senator Isidor Rayner from Baltimore, left the hotel abruptly, and her predicament landed on the front page of major American newspapers. The New York Times story detailed Mrs. Frank's outrage: "I was so annoyed at this insult to Jews at large, never having heard directly of such a thing happening to self-respecting Jews of good position, that I immediately ordered my trunks packed and left the hotel."

The fact that many upscale hotels and resorts discriminated against Jews was in fact, as the Times reported, "well known." The first major public case that brought the practice to public attention occurred in 1877 when Joseph Seligman, a prominent financier and pal of President Grant, was excluded from the Grand Hotel in Saratoga, New York. In 1907, according to the Times, many prominent Jews, having sent inquiries for accommodations to hotels in Atlantic City, had received cards engraved with the message that "The patronage of Hebrews is not solicited."

In the initial Times article reporting on the Frank case, the hotel management equivocated about their policy toward Jews, noting that "We have many well-known and prominent Hebrews among our regular patrons, and we never have any difficulty with them," but also maintaining that "We have always reserved the right to exercise a certain degree of discrimination in respect to our patrons."

What seemed most shocking both in 1877 and 1907 was not the fact that hotels might choose to discriminate in their clientele, but that such socially respectable individuals as Seligman and Frank should be among those excluded. Both the Times article about the "affront" and an accompanying article described Frank's respectability and philanthropic involvement in both Jewish and "non-sectarian" causes in great detail, noting that she "is a woman of exceptional culture and wide acquaintance, received and welcomed by people of the highest social position in this country and Europe."

Frank's own comments reveal that what she found offensive was not so much that the hotel might exclude Jews but that they would dare to exclude Jews of her stature and acquaintance, declaring "if you can't distinguish people who are quite on a par with the best in the land you really should employ a detective to keep you acquainted with those who are unobjectional [sic] Jewish people. You seem to entertain a very mixed assemblage... many of whom I should not care to meet and certainly not to know." There was an implicit understanding that while hotels might have reason to exclude uncultured Jews of Eastern European origin, it was outrageous to apply such discrimination to well-established German Jews of "good position."

Apparently under some pressure from the unwanted publicity, the hotel managers sent Mrs. Frank a public apology on May 21, 1907. They assured her that she had been " a welcome guest in our house as your family had been before," and expressed their exceeding regret "that you should have been given the impression that either you were not welcome or that your friends were not wanted." Their letter, however, did not address whether the hotel intended to exclude Jews who were not among Mrs. Frank's friends and family.

One New York State senator, inspired by the affront to Mrs. Frank, brought a bill to the New York Senate that would have banned public announcements such as were used by numerous establishments stating that "Jewish patronage is not solicited." Such statements, however, continued to be promulgated for many decades.

The whole episode illustrates the unsettled place occupied even by those early 20^th-century Jews who had most reason to feel that they had a firm claim to American acceptance and privilege. The fact that even the wealthy sister of a U.S. Senator could feel the unwelcome pain of exclusion emphasized the marginality of all American Jews. Implicit as well in both the outrage and apologies occasioned by the incident were the ugly prejudices and apprehensions brought forth by what both WASPs and acculturated Jews saw as the unrefined conduct of nouveau riche Eastern European Jews. As far as Bertha Rayner Frank and her family had come in America, American Jews were still a long way from the acceptance and inclusion that she and her Eastern European counterparts equally craved.

See also: Leisure and Recreation in the United States

Sources: "Hotel Affronts Senator's Sister," New York Times, May 18, 1907; "Apology to Mrs. Frank," New York Times, May 23, 1907; "Bill to Protect Jews in Hotels," New York Times, May 24, 1907.

Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls opens

May 22, 1899

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As a young woman, Baroness Clara de Hirsch (née Bischoffsheim, born Antwerp, June 13, 1833; died in Paris, April 1, 1899) assisted her father in his work, becoming knowledgeable in business, legislative and philanthropic affairs. After her marriage to Baron Maurice de Hirsch in 1855, she guided his interests towards philanthropy, and specifically, towards aiding the poor, persecuted, and oppressed of his co-religionists. Designated his sole administrator, she dispensed fifteen million dollars in charity to organizations around the world after his death. Among the beneficiaries of her largesse was the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls, to which the Baroness gave a total endowment of $800,000.

Institution: 92nd Street Y, New York City

Funded by a bequest from the British Baroness Clara de Hirsch, the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls opened its doors on New York's East 63rd Street on May 22, 1899. Two years in the planning, the Home was designed "to benefit working girls ... to improve their mental, moral, and physical condition, and train them for self-support." With bedrooms for 100 young women, the Home was designed to shelter both American-born and immigrant young women either working or preparing to work.

In addition to lodging, the Home provided meals, physical exercise, and classes in housework, millinery, laundry, dressmaking, and other "domestic" and "industrial" skills. Reflecting the anxieties of its time, the Home sought as much to protect the girls' morals as to ensure their physical health. The Home's initial Board of Directors, composed mostly of women of German-Jewish heritage, believed that positions as domestic servants would be safe and appropriate for their charges, and that all the girls should ultimately marry and be homemakers. Therefore, they sought to train them in the skills that would serve them well in both roles.

In addition, the Home provided educational and social opportunities. Because it was meant to serve mainly Eastern European immigrants, the Home offered English language classes as well as elementary education classes. In addition, basic Jewish religious instruction was offered for one hour a week. Outside of these classes, residents were offered literary and social clubs, access to a library, and trips to museums, parks, and concerts. Finally, the Home sponsored regular dances in an effort to keep girls away from the corrupting influence of the public dance hall.

Mirroring similar efforts by Jewish and non-Jewish clubwomen around the country, the Clara de Hirsch home combined two distinct but related aims. Supporters hoped to aid and support newcomers who might struggle to survive and thrive in the harsh urban conditions faced by immigrants. In addition, they sought to Americanize their charges and teach them a well-defined version of middle class respectability.

Over time, the Home's programs changed in response to changes in city life and the needs of New York's young women. Reacting to the imposition of immigration restriction laws and an expansion of educational opportunities for women, the Home closed its trade school in 1926, ending the classes in millinery, sewing, and other "industrial arts." In the next decade, the institution became home to rising numbers of European Jewish refugees, and also to self-supporting students. In 1960, facing a declining demand for its services, the Home merged with the 92nd Street YMHA, closing its doors on 63rd Street and contributing its assets to the building of new dormitories at the Y.

To learn more about Clara de Hirsch, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Sarah Lavanburg Straus; Go & Learn Lesson Plans and Primary Documents, Immigration and Generations: Anzia Yezierska's Children of Loneliness.

Sources:New York Times May 1, 1897, April 24, 1898, May 23, 1899, May 18, 1949; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 232-234.

Susan Sontag publishes last essay

May 23, 2004

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In her essays, or "case-studies," examining art and the "modern sensibility," Susan Sontag covered topics from photography to illness to fascism. One of the most widely read cultural critics of her generation, she was a lightning rod for both praise and vilification. She is pictured here on a visit to Israel to receive the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, an event which engendered much debate regarding her relationship with the Jewish community.

Institution: Jerusalem International Book Fair

Public intellectual and controversial essayist Susan Sontag published her last essay, "Regarding the Torture of Others," in the May 23, 2004, edition of the New York Times Magazine. The essay discussed the recently-released photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the Bush administration's response, and the power of photography to shape ideas and memory in the modern world. "Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events," Sontag wrote, and, "to live is to be photographed … but to live is also to pose. To act is to share in the community of actions recorded as images." About the photos of prisoners degraded and tortured in Iraq, she wrote that "what is illustrated by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality." And, she added, despite the administration's stated wishes, "the pictures will not go away. … even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable."

Like other commentaries written around the same time, "Regarding the Torture of Others" condemned both the events at Abu Ghraib and the Bush administration's response. But as a cultural critic, Sontag also used her essay to interrogate the cultural moment that helped to produce the scandal, and the role of modern media (photography) both in this specific crisis and more generally as a shaping force in American culture. The essay thus echoed several themes that run throughout Sontag's work. Best-known for her essays on a variety of topics, she wrote most frequently about various aspects of popular culture and the media. Among her most famous essays are "Notes on Camp," (1964) which described an underground aesthetic of artifice and exaggeration then largely unknown outside gay culture; and "Against Interpretation" (1966), which argued that art should be experienced viscerally rather than cerebrally, appreciated for its style rather than its content. That approach to art brought controversy when it led Sontag to praise the work of Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi Germany's famous filmmaker, as aesthetic masterpieces ("On Style," 1966). Sontag reconsidered her position in a later essay, "Fascinating Fascism" (1974).

Other acclaimed essay collections included On Photography (1977), which won the Nation Book Critics Circle Award for criticism; Illness as Metaphor (1978); AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989); and her last collection, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). In addition, Sontag published four novels: The Benefactor (1963), Death Kit (1967), The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000). A review of In America characterized Sontag's fiction as "always ripe with ideas" and her prose as "lithe" and "playful."

But not everyone responded to her work with praise. Always bold and outspoken in print, Sontag drew fire from both ends of the political spectrum; for instance, the right condemned her when she wrote glowingly of North Vietnam, and the left when she denounced European communism as "fascism with a human face." As an obituary noted, she was called, variously, "explosive, anticlimactic, original derivative, … condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic … ardent, bloodless … visceral, reasoned, chilly, effusive, relevant [and] passé…. No one ever called her dull." Due in part to this divided but uniformly strong public response to her critical work, in part to her roles in pop-culture films by Woody Allen and Andy Warhol, and in part to her striking features—especially her intense gaze, and mass of dark hair with a streak of white—her image became by the late 20th century an instantly recognizable part of American popular culture.

Susan Sontag died of leukemia on December 28, 2004.

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

See also: This Week in History for October 2, 1949; "Don't call her Anna-Lou or a lesbian", Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources:New York Times, March 12, 2000, May 23, 2004, December 29, 2004; Washington Post, December 29, 2004; Jewish Women in America, pp. 1292-1295; Sohnya Sayres, Susan Sontag: The Elegaic Modernist (1990).

Carol Gilligan publishes "In a Different Voice"

May 24, 1982

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Harvard University's first professor of gender studies, psychologist Carol Gilligan is the author of In a Different Voice, a landmark study showing how the inclusion of women changes the traditional paradigm of human psychology.

Institution: Online repository

Carol Gilligan has built a career out of challenging the mainstream. After earning a B.A. at Swarthmore College, an M.A. at Radcliffe, and a Ph.D. at Harvard, she taught psychology at the University of Chicago in 1965 and 1966. There, she was actively involved in the civil rights movement and in protests against the Vietnam war. With other junior professors, she refused to turn in grades that might jeopardize a student's draft exemption. Returning to Harvard in 1968, she began to question the standard theories of women's moral development, noting that they had been derived solely from studies of men. Her first book, published on May 24, 1982, was In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Challenging long-held assumptions and igniting national debate, Gilligan argued that women make moral choices from within a framework of relationships rather than according to a set of abstract rules. The book continues to be a mainstay of gender-studies reading lists and college courses.

Following the groundbreaking work of In a Different Voice, Gilligan went on to publish several more important books about women and girls. These include Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School (co-editor, 1990) and Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (1992). Though some of her methods and conclusions are considered controversial, her research had a profound impact on the fields of psychology and gender studies and on the modern women's movement.

More recently, Gilligan has widened her focus to include men and boys. In 2002, publisher Alfred A. Knopf released The Birth of Pleasure. Drawing on Greek myth, Shakespeare, Freud, Toni Morrison, and research with heterosexual couples, adolescent girls, and young boys and their parents, Gilligan presents in this book a new map of love. She argues that people tend to relive tragic stories of loss and betrayal and suggests that we can learn to relive other stories instead. In 2008, she published her first work of fiction, Kyra: A Novel. In 2009, she co-authored The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future with David A. J. Richards.

During the years of her groundbreaking research and writing, Gilligan has also been an influential teacher. She spent more than 30 years at the Harvard School of Education, where she became the first professor of Gender Studies in 1997. In 2002, she moved to New York University, where she is currently a University Professor affiliated with the law school. She is also a visiting professor with the University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Centre for Gender Studies and with Jesus College. Outside the academy, she sits on the board of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the advisory board of the Holocaust-education organization Facing History and Ourselves.

Gilligan's work has earned her wide recognition. In 1984, Ms. magazine named her the "woman of the year." She has received a Grawemeyer award for contributions to education and a Heinz Award for contributions to understanding the human condition. Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential Americans.

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

See also: Women's Studies in the United States; Catherine Steiner-Adair in Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution; "The women that frame our world", Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources:Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 512-514; http://its.law.nyu.edu/faculty/profiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=bio.main&personID=19946; http://its.law.nyu.edu/faculty/profiles/CVFiles/Carol%20Gilligan%20CV%20Spring06.pdf; http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674445430/104-7894730-1983942.

Birth of opera star Beverly Sills

May 25, 1929

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

Born on May 25, 1929 as Belle Miriam Silverman, Beverly Sills began singing in public at the age of four, when she appeared on the Uncle Bob's Rainbow Hour radio show. She began her formal musical training at age seven, under the tutelage of Estelle Liebling, who would remain her teacher until 1970. By the time she began studying with Liebling, Sills reportedly had memorized 22 operatic arias.

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

Although her father wanted her to go to college, Sills left school at 16 to tour with a Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company. Her grand opera debut came in 1947, when she played the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen, with the Philadelphia Civic Opera. Though Sills had parts with many second-tier companies, she found no permanent position until she joined the New York City Opera Company (NYCO) in 1955. Although the NYCO was considered the city's "second" opera company, inferior to the Metropolitan, Sills's voice and acting ability brought the company new success and prestige. For the next two decades, with interruptions for the births of her two children, Sills was the NYCO's prima donna, performing a variety of roles, including some particularly unusual and difficult ones.

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

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

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

Sills was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. When Sills left the NYCO, it was to become chair of the Lincoln Center board, where she was again the first woman and the first performer to hold the position. After retiring from Lincoln Center, Sills became chair of the board at the Metropolitan Opera in 2002, retiring from that post on January 25, 2005. Beverly Sills died of lung cancer on July 2, 2007.

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

See also: This Week in History for April 7, 1975, "Debut of Beverly Sills at the Metropolitan Opera."

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

Political trailblazer Belle Moskowitz wins passage of bill regulating NY dance halls

May 26, 1910

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Belle Moskowitz exercised a level of power in the political realm unprecedented for women in her time. When Alfred Smith ran for president in 1928, she was by far the most powerful woman in the national Democratic Party.

Institution: The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH, www.americanjewisharchives.org and World Wide Studio, NY.

Born in New York City on October 5, 1877, Belle Moskowitz initially studied drama, hoping for a career on the stage. Dissuaded by her parents' objections, she went instead to work for the Educational Alliance, a Jewish settlement house, where beginning in 1900 she managed the roof garden, exhibits, and musical and dramatic entertainment. Though she resigned from the settlement at the time of her 1903 marriage, she maintained an active schedule of volunteer work with the United Hebrew Charities, the New York State Conference of Charities and Corrections, and the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). Particularly influential was her work with the NCJW to force the state to regulate dance halls, which were seen as unsavory places of unhealthy amusement for working girls. A bill to force dance halls to obtain state licenses passed the New York Assembly on May 26, 1910, having passed the Senate a few weeks earlier. Governor Charles Hughes signed it into law the next day. It was Moskowitz's first foray into state politics, a realm in which she would become a figure of foremost significance.

After her first husband died in 1911, Moskowitz worked briefly for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and then for several years as a grievance clerk for the Dress and Waist Manufacturers Association, mediating between workers and the Association. In addition, she continued her volunteer work, serving on committees to rid New York of brothels and investigating gambling and police graft. In 1914, she married Henry Moskowitz, who was also involved in Progressive reform. In 1918, the Moskowitzes chose to support Al Smith for governor of New York, despite his links to the Democratic political machine. It was an unusual choice for staunch Progressives, but one that would shape the rest of Belle Moskowitz's life.

Moskowitz's first work for Smith was to organize women, who were enfranchised in New York in 1917, to support his campaign. This work brought her to Smith's attention, and when he won the election, she became one of his close advisors. Smith lost his post in 1920, but won reelection in 1922. Though he offered Moskowitz a government post, she chose instead to become the publicity director for the State Democratic Committee. In that role, she edited Smith's public papers, wrote his speeches, prepared legislation, and worked with the press, becoming one of the most influential figures in the state party.

When the Democratic National Committee convened on June 26, 1928, Belle Moskowitz was the only woman on that body. Though not physically present at the meeting, she was as influential as any man there. The networks she had created in New York helped to secure the Presidential nomination for Al Smith, the first major Catholic candidate for U.S. President. After his nomination, she directed national campaign publicity. When Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, Moskowitz stayed on as his press agent, and coordinated his campaign for the 1932 nomination, which Smith lost to Franklin Roosevelt.

Shortly after Roosevelt won the Presidency, Moskowitz fell down her front steps and broke both arms. In January 1933, at age 55, she died of a blood clot related to the injury. The New York Times reported that some 3,000 people attended her funeral. Smith, who called her death "a disaster," said that his longtime advisor "had the greatest brain of anybody I ever knew." His words were a tribute to a woman who, although she never served in an elected position, was undoubtedly the most influential female political activist of her day.

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

See also: Jewesses with Attitude "10 Things You Should Know About Belle Moskowitz" and "The Belle of the (political) party"; Settlement Houses in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 943-945; New York Times, May 27, 1910, January 3, 1933, January 5, 1933; Elisabeth Israels, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (New York, 1987, 1992).

Activist Clara Shavelson leads butcher shop boycott

May 27, 1935

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

On May 27, 1935, New York City women, organized as the City Action Committee Against the High Cost of Living, picketed butcher shops to demand a reduction in the price of meat. Convinced that wholesalers were withholding meat from the market in order to drive up prices, these wives and mothers determined not to buy meat until the price fell by ten cents per pound.

Although it echoed the kosher meat boycotts from the early years of the twentieth century, this boycott, led by veteran organizer Clara Shavelson, crossed religious and racial lines. It was the result of rare cooperation between the Communist-led United Council of Working-Class Women (UCWW) and non-Communist women's groups including neighborhood mother's clubs, church groups, and black women's groups.

At a spring meeting convened by the UCWW, delegates from all of these groups had created a national network to address the high cost of living. Their first action was the New York City meat boycott. Begun in Brighton Beach and Coney Island, the picket lines had reached Manhattan by May 27. Five days into the boycott, the Retail Kosher Meat Trade Code Authority estimated that two-thirds of New York's kosher meat shops were closed or doing no business as a result of the women's action. Though kosher butchers were the main target of the strike, women also picketed non-kosher butchers in Harlem.

By mid-June, the strike had succeeded, as over a thousand shops reduced meat prices. But success in New York was not the end of the story. By the end of the summer, women had boycotted meat in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Denver, Miami, and elsewhere. Outside of New York, where it had been limited to Jews and African-Americans, the strike also was taken up by more diverse groups of women. Significantly, the strike also led to new tactics. For the first time, housewives' groups traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby federal officials. In July, Shavelson led a group of housewives to meet with Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace; the women demanded that he force wholesalers to stop withholding meat from the market. Although Wallace denied any federal responsibility for the high prices, blaming a drought instead, a new stage in working-class and consumer women's activism had been born.

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

On the blog: 10 Things You Should Know About Clara Lemlich Shavelson

See also: This Week in History for July 12, 1982, April 22, 1912, November 22, 1909, and May 15, 1902; Clara Lemlich Shavelson in the Virtual Archive; Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs.

Sources: New York Times, May 28, 1935; May 29, 1935; June 1, 1935; Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire (Chapel Hill, 1995).

Birth of "Settlement Cookbook" author Lizzie Black Kander

May 28, 1858

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Courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society.

Lizzie Black Kander, author of The Settlement Cookbook, was born in Milwaukee, on May 28, 1858. Like many middle-class Jewish women of her time, she was deeply involved in Progressive Era reform movements that sought to aid and Americanize immigrants. Kander first became involved in local reform efforts in 1878, when she joined Milwaukee's Ladies Relief Sewing Society. Under Kander's leadership, the Society evolved into the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. It was as president of "the Settlement," Milwaukee's first settlement house, a multi-purpose reform organization modeled on Jane Addams's Hull House, that Kander made her most lasting contribution.

Among the Settlement's programs was a series of cooking classes for immigrants. In 1901, Kander asked the Settlement's board for $18 to print a small booklet of recipes for her students. When the board refused, she raised money from the local business community and produced the first edition of The Settlement Cookbook, which combined her recipes with instructions on cleanliness and food storage and general housekeeping tips. The first edition of the Cookbook was published on April 30, 1901. By 2004, The Settlement Cookbook, still in print, had gone through 40 editions and sold over 1.5 million copies, making it the most successful American Jewish charity cookbook of all time.

The royalties from the cookbook, which reached $50,000 by 1925, were used to support the activities of the Settlement, including hygiene classes, free baths, and sewing and English instruction. These activities reflected the dual aims of many progressive-era reform projects: to help immigrants integrate into American culture both through practical instruction in English and by introducing them to American norms of cleanliness and nutrition that were considered superior to immigrant culture. While sometimes patronizing and ethnocentric, these efforts helped many immigrant families to survive their first years in a new country when jobs and money were often in short supply. Cookbook sales paid for the construction of the Abraham Lincoln Settlement House in 1910 and the Jewish Community Center of Milwaukee in 1931.

Kander's community involvement stretched beyond the Settlement. During World War I, she headed Milwaukee's Food Conservation Council, teaching immigrants how to conserve food. During the Great Depression, she established one of the first food exchanges in the country, employing women to cook large quantities of food that were then sold at a low price. She also wrote a regular cooking column for the Milwaukee Journal. From 1909 to 1919, she served on the Milwaukee school board, helping to establish the Girls Technical High School to provide vocational training to young women. In 1939, Wisconsin honored her as one of the state's outstanding women. Kander died on July 24, 1940. The Settlement Cookbook is still in print.

To learn more about Lizzie Black Kander, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Food in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 717-718; Wisconsin Magazine of History, Spring 2004, pp. 36-49; New York Times, July 26, 1940, September 5, 1965.

Virginia Holocaust Museum unveiled plaque honoring Dr. Gertrude Elion

May 28, 2012

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The Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, VA, celebrated Jewish American Heritage Month by unveiling a Jewish-American Hall of Fame plaque honoring Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine Dr. Gertrude Elion.

Elion developed the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, the first effective anti-viral medication, and treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases. Elion joined an impressive list of American Jewish female Nobel Prize winners in science that also includes American-born Rosalyn Yalow (1977) and Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori (1947), as well as Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986), and Ada Yonath (2009), who were born and educated abroad.

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

On the blog: Gertrude Elion inducted into Jewish-American Hall of Fame; Gertrude Elion, in a Class of Her Own; Jewish Women and the Nobel Prize.

On the map: Gertrude Elion interviews at Burroughs Wellcome, June 1944

See also: This Week in History for October 17, 1988, Gertude Elion wins Nobel Prize; Gertrude Elion Poster; Primary Sources & Lesson Plans - Gertrude Elion’s Junior High Report Card, 1930; Gertrude Elion in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Jewish American Heritage Month Calendar of Events

Birth of choreographer Pearl Lang

May 29, 1921

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Pearl Lang. Photo: The Jewish Week.

Pearl Lang is well-known both for her work as one of Martha Graham's principal soloists and for her own choreography. Born on May 29, 1921 and raised in Chicago, Lang choreographed her first dance—for a school class—at the age of ten. At sixteen, she made her debut at a Chicago opera house, choreographing and performing a dance to Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. In high school, she started her own dance company and also performed as part of a Works Progress Administration program. In 1941, Lang moved to New York to study with Martha Graham and soon became a member of Graham's company. She would remain with the company on and off until 1978. Known as one of Graham's most expressive soloists, she eventually took over some of Graham's own roles when the older dancer could no longer perform them.

With Graham's encouragement, Lang formed her own company in 1953. The first piece Lang choreographed for her new troupe was Song of Deborah (1955), a duet for two women. This was only the first of many Lang pieces with Jewish themes. Later the same year, she premiered Rites, a large work set to parts of three of Bartok's string quartets. A reviewer for the New York Times called it "dramatic in theme and not altogether clear in intent, but commanding the interest unflaggingly and frequently rising to brilliant heights." When Rites was danced by the Martha Graham Company two years later, a more skeptical reviewer questioned "whether most of the experiences of life in ritual form are ideal for choreography" but nevertheless wrote that "Miss Lang is one of our most important artists, and whatever she does justifies our interest and attention."

Other significant works include The Dybbuk, based on the Yiddish play; I Never Saw Another Butterfly, based on the writings of children of Theresienstadt; Tongues of Fire, inspired by prophetic writing; and three programs of dances based on Yiddish poetry. Lang told The Forward newspaper that her signature piece, Shira, is "devotional singing in movement."

In addition to work with her own company, Lang has choreographed commissioned works for the Netherlands National Ballet, the Batsheva Dance Company of Israel, and the Boston Ballet. She has also choreographed dances for plays at the Yale Repertory Theater and the Shakespeare Festival, and has taught at the Julliard School. Lang has received numerous awards for her work. Among her honors are two Guggenheim fellowships and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Annual Cultural Achievement Award. She has also received awards from the American Dance Festival and from Artists and Writers for Peace in the Middle East. Lang continues to teach technique and choreography in New York. Her dance-drama, "The Time is Out of Joint," an adaptation of Hamlet, premiered in 2001.

To learn more about Pearl Lang, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and We Remember.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 794-796; The Forward, September 28, 2001; New York Times, April 18, 1953, May 19, 1955, September 16, 2001, October 3, 2001.

Racy actress, Adah Isaacs Menken, appears in last performance

May 30, 1868

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Adah Isaacs Menken became famous when she appeared "nude" while strapped to a horse in the melodrama Mazeppa (she was actually wearing a flesh-colored bodystocking). A shameless self-promoter, there is dispute as to whether she was born into Judaism or converted. There is no doubt, however, that she was outspoken and proud of her Jewish identity.

Institution: American Jewish Historical Society

Little is definitively known about the private life and early history of actress Adah Isaacs Menken. She seems to have been born in Louisiana, either in New Orleans or in nearby Milneburg, in 1835, but other sources place her birth in Tennessee. She always claimed to have been born into a Jewish family, but some scholars contend that she was raised Catholic and converted to Judaism with her first marriage.

If her early life is obscure, Menken made sure her later life was exactly the opposite. With four marriages in seven years, a flamboyant stage career, and a command of self-promotion, Menken rose quickly to notoriety. At a time when women were expected to be quiet, domestic, self-effacing, and out of the public spotlight, Menken smoked cigarettes, cropped her hair, and played provocative stage roles.

Of all her exploits, it was Menken's role in the melodrama Mazeppa that brought her the most lasting fame. In this adaptation of a Lord Byron piece, which opened in Albany, New York, in 1861, Menken appeared in a flesh-colored body stocking which gave the illusion that she was nude. Moreover, she appeared strapped to the back of a horse, which galloped down a ramp in the direction of the audience. The fact that Menken was an accomplished equestrian and the horse a tame one did nothing to dispel the illusion of danger. She later performed the same role in London, and this and other roles in Paris, Vienna, and all over the U.S.

Although she fed the cult of personality that grew up around her by, for example, placing photographs of herself in shop windows, Menken also aspired to recognition off the stage, primarily as a poet. Several of her poems were published in the Cincinnati-based Israelite when she lived in Ohio from 1857-59; later poems were published in the New York Sunday Mercury (1860-61). Walt Whitman encouraged her writing, and she developed friendships with Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She was rumored to be involved, at different times, in affairs with Alexandre Dumas and with Algernon Swinburne. A collection of her poems, Infelicia, was published in London within days of her death; a new edition, with some uncollected poems and essays, was published in a critical edition by Broadview Press in 2002.

Menken gave her last stage performance, in London, on May 30, 1868. She fell ill shortly thereafter, and died in Paris on August 10, 1868. The cause of death was most likely peritonitis, tuberculosis, or the combined ravages of both. She was buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.

To learn more about Adah Isaacs Menken, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: Adah Isaacs Menken On the Map; Vaudeville in the United States; Theater in the United States.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 910-912; Paul Lewis, Queen of the Plaza: A Biography of Adah Isaacs Menken (New York, 1964); http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/AMenken.html; http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/fme21.html; New York Times, October 4, 1964.

Birth of multi-talented Ruth Hagy Brod

May 31, 1911

Born in New York City on May 31, 1911, and raised in Chicago, Ruth Hagy Brod had a varied career that took her from the newsroom to Latin America and from the mainstream press to offbeat publishing.

As a child, Brod excelled in music, giving public recitals at age six and earning a bachelor's degree in music at age 18. She soon left music behind, however, and turned to journalism, going first to Hollywood, where she worked as an editor for movie and radio magazines. Moving to Philadelphia in 1938, she wrote features for the Philadelphia Ledger. Later, she would write for newspapers in Chicago and New York City as well. During the 1930s, she also worked as a radio reporter and documentary filmmaker. A decade later, she became women's editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin; while at the Bulletin she developed a program that became the "College News Conference," a weekly show where college students questioned prominent political figures. In the 1960s, she began to travel widely, producing a Peace Corps documentary on Colombia and a television series on Asian women. She worked as a newspaper correspondent in Southeast Asia and a Far East correspondent for NBC Radio, at a time when it was unusual for women to hold such roles. While making the Peace Corps documentary, she also served as an educational television advisor to the Colombian government.

Brod first entered public service during World War II, when she served as publicity director for the United War Chest campaigns and as a member of the women's advisory board executive committee for the U.S. Savings Bond division of the U.S. Treasury. Upon returning to New York from her overseas travels, she became involved in New York City politics. In the mid-1960s, she was appointed as director of public information for JOIN (Job Orientation in Neighborhoods), which worked with the U.S. Department of Labor to provide job training and placement services to young high school drop-outs. Later that decade, Brod served as a special assistant to Mayor Robert Wagner, and in 1967 she was the founder-director of the Mayor's Coordinating Council under Mayor John Lindsay. The Council functioned as a central volunteer coordinator for the city, recruiting some 6,000 volunteers in its first year.

In the 1970s, Brod embarked on yet another career, turning to publishing. She published two books of her own (both co-authored), Ena Twigg, Medium (1972) and The Edgar Cayce Handbook of Health Through Drugless Therapy (1975). She also worked as a literary agent, with clients that included Allard Lowenstein, a civil rights activist who was later assassinated, and James Hoffa, the Teamsters Union leader.

Brod died of cancer in 1980.

To learn more about Ruth Hagy Brod, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: Jewish Women in America, 186-187; New York Times, December 19, 1963, January 28, 1968, May 11, 1980.