Birth of entertainer Kitty Carlisle Hart

September 3, 1910

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Kitty Carlisle Hart.
© Jill Krementz, all rights reserved.
Used with permission of the photographer.

Born on September 3, 1910 [some sources say 1911, 1914], Kitty Carlisle Hart began a musical career at a young age and kept performing into her nineties. Though she was born in New Orleans, she was raised partly in Paris and London, where she studied singing and acting with private tutors. She began a stage career in New York, and was then tapped by Hollywood. She made her first movie, Murder at the Vanities, in 1934.

While acting in the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera (1935), she met Moss Hart, who would go on to write the plays You Can't Take it With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner, and to direct the landmark Broadway production of My Fair Lady. The two were married in 1946, and later had two children. Moss Hart died in 1961.

After her husband's death, Kitty Carlisle Hart continued to perform, appearing in the movies Radio Days, Six Degrees of Separation, and Catch Me If You Can. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1967, as Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus. From 1956 to 1991, she became known to a broad audience as a regular astute panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. She also had a significant career offstage. From 1976 to 1996, Hart served as chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts. In that role, she lobbied for arts funding, once testifying before the legislature in defense of the controversial work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. When she stepped down from the Council, Albany named a theater in her honor.

Hart was also an active philanthropist, serving on the boards of the Visiting Nurse Service and the Girl Scouts, and hosting fundraisers for the Manhattan School of Music, refugee children, American Indian causes, and democratic politicians. She published an autobiography, Kitty, in 1988.

In her 90s she performed a one-woman show entitled My Life Upon the Wicked Stage, in which she sang classics from American musical theater and told stories of working with Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, and—of course—Moss Hart. A review of the play described Hart as "a woman who has seen it all, almost done it all, and still remains sincerely curious about the world." In January, 2006, she performed a 95th birthday show. She died at her home in Manhattan in April 2007.

To learn more about Kitty Carlisle Hart, visit We Remember.

See also: "Kitty Carlisle Hart Sings Out".

Sources:New York Times, August 11, 1976, October 9, 1988; Star Tribune (Minneapolis), May 19, 2002; The Christian Science Monitor, October 11, 2002; The Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 17, 2005; www.kittycarlisle.com; jwa.org/discover/weremember/carlisle.

"23 souls, big as well as little," arrive in North America

September 4, 1654

Early in September 1654, a group of Jews, described in the public records as "23 souls, big as well as little," arrived on the docks of the new world Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.

We know about their arrival because on September 7, presumably quite soon after their arrival, the captain of their ship the St. Catherine sued them for the cost of their freight and food en route. Of the six names of this initial group mentioned in surviving court records, two were women. Historians have speculated that there may have been more women than men in this original group.

A number of Jewish traders had already found their way to the New World before September 1654, but the presence of women and children among the New Amsterdam 23 signaled that this group had come not merely to make their fortunes, but to make a home. Accordingly, later American Jews have dated the founding of the American Jewish community to the arrival of this group.

See also: "Still Lives" and the Women of the 23 Souls, Jewesses with Attitude; Jewish Women on the Map - Shearith Israel Graveyard.

Sources: Arnold Wiznitzer, "The Exodus from Brazil and Arrival in New Amsterdam of the Jewish Pilgrim Fathers, 1654," Publication of the American Jewish Historical Society, 44:1 (September, 1954): 80-97.

Unprecedented Jewish Women's Congress meets in Chicago

September 4, 1893

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Date: unknown

On September 4, 1893, the Jewish Women's Congress opened as part of the World Parliament of Religion at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. Press accounts of the Congress reported that "women elbowed, trod on each others toes, and did everything else they could without violating the proprieties" to find a place in the overcrowded hall. Over four days, they heard twenty-five women from all over the United States, many of whom had never spoken publicly before, address questions of Jewish women's roles in religion, history, and philanthropy.

The Congress was primarily the result of work by Hannah Greenebaum Solomon, who by 1893 was already a prominent Chicago activist. Born on January 18, 1858, Solomon and her older sister Henriette were the first Jews admitted to the elite Chicago Woman's Club in 1871.

Solomon's commitment to creating a Jewish women's congress was fostered when male organizers of a proposed Jewish Congress demonstrated no inclination to offer women any meaningful role on their program. She worked with other women from Chicago's ultra-Reform Congregation Sinai to bring together an unprecedented formal gathering of Jewish women from around the country.

On the last day of the Congress, the assembled delegates voted to create a permanent organization, the National Council of Jewish Women [NCJW], with Solomon as its first president. Under her leadership, the Council grew to 3300 members in fifty sections in its first three years. Noting that secular organizations could provide social services as well as sectarian ones, Solomon sought to steer the NCJW toward religious renewal as its primary goal. To that end, she fostered study circles designed to encourage women to renew their commitment to religion.

The Jewish Women's Congress and formation of NCJW represented and spurred a growing trend toward organization and activism among American Jewish women, crystallizing a new public identity that shaped their contributions to their communities and synagogues throughout the 1890s and into the twentieth century. Today, the NCJW works through over 100 sections nationwide on advocacy for women and children in both the U.S. and Israel.

To learn more about Hannah Greenebaum Solomon, visit Women of Valor and Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: The National Council of Jewish Women, and This Week In History for November 15, 1896, "National Council of Jewish Women holds first national convention"; NCJW in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1893; Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893-1993 (Tuscaloosa, 1993), pp. 9-35; jwa.org/exhibits/wov/solomon/; Jewish Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 1283; Karla Goldman, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism (2000), pp. 185–189; www.ncjw.org.

Jill Abramson began work as first female Executive Editor of New York Times

September 6, 2011

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On September 6, 2011, 57-year-old Jill Abramson rode the subway to her new job as the first woman in the top editorial post at the country’s most prestigious newspaper. A New York City native and Harvard graduate, Abramson had worked at the Times since 1997, including three years as Washington bureau chief in the early 2000s.

Not long ago women and minorities were second-class citizens at the Times. It was out of the question that a woman would ever be an editor. In a New Yorker profile of Abramson, Ken Auletta described a 1962 conversation between Eileen Shanahan, who went on to become a well-regarded economics reporter, and the assistant managing editor, Clifton Daniel. “All I ever want is to be a reporter on the best newspaper in the world,” Shanahan told him. “That’s good,” Daniel replied, “because I can assure you no woman will ever be an editor at the New York Times.”

Jill Abramson’s appointment as Executive Editor represents a breakthrough for women but not for Jews. Of the last six editors to lead the paper, four, including Abramson, have been Jewish. In Abramson’s case, her background was the secular Judaism of New York’s Ethical Culture Society. Her parents were both from upper-middle class Jewish families, but they did not belong to a synagogue, and she quipped that “the Times substituted for religion” in her childhood home.

Although a Jewish family has owned The New York Times for over a century, until the early 1960s Jewish reporters and editors were encouraged to hide their ethnicity lest the paper be perceived as a “Jewish paper.” As the Daily Forward reported, “today, the Times is unabashed about the Jewishness of many of its most high-profile staffers and executives.” 

In 1994, Abramson and Jane Mayer co-authored Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, a thoroughly researched account of how much evidence against Thomas was concealed during his confirmation hearings. Her capacity for more personal writing is on displayed in The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout, a 2011 book based on a popular column she wrote for the Times website.

See also: Jill Abramson ascends to top spot at the New York Times and Mazel tov to the women of the Forward 50, Jewesses with Attitude.

Sources: The Jewish Woman with Journalism’s Biggest Job, The Daily Forward; Ken Auletta's profile of Jill Abramson in the New Yorker.

Bessie Breuer’s play “Sundown Beach” opened on Broadway.

September 7, 1948

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Bessie Breuer's Memory of Love

The first and only play by fiction writer Bessie Breuer was one of the newly formed Actor’s Studio's first productions. Directed by Elia Kazan and starring 23-year-old Julie Harris, it closed after only seven performances after being panned by critics as “emotional vaudeville.”

Breuer had much more success writing novels and short stories, four of which won the prestigious O. Henry Award for short fiction. Born Elizabeth Freedman in Cleveland in 1893, she grew up in St. Louis where her father was a rabbi, composer, and choirmaster, who died in the catastrophic 1918 flu epidemic.

She became a reporter on a St. Louis paper at the age of 16 and briefly studied journalism at Missouri State University. In 1911, she moved to New York and worked on the Tribune, first as editor of the Women's Page, then for a short time as editor of the Sunday edition. She left to fulfill her desire to be, as she considered it, "a real writer," an artist, rather than a journalist.

After a stint with the American Red Cross and Ladies Home Journal, she moved to France in the early 1920s and began writing fiction. She published six novels and many short stories. Her first novel, Memory of Love, was published in 1935 and made into a film in 1939.

The difficult choices facing women in post-suffrage America figure largely in Breuer's work. In an autobiographical sketch for Twentieth Century Authors, she explained how she saw her role as a woman who was unafraid to write sexually explicit fiction. "Somewhere Freud has said that psychologists have frank records of the male, but the female is shrouded and secreted and known to no man. That has been to me our great sin as writers, those of us who are women: that nowhere in our history as artists have we been the earth shakers because we dared not. So I try, oh, just a tiny bit, to write of what I truly see and have known; and not being a member of some powerful literary clan, am scolded for my lack of morality, or ignored."

As Vicki Lynn Hill writes on the Novelguide website, “Breuer's fiction will strike the modern reader as unexpectedly contemporary, in part because of Breuer's innovative narrative techniques and her interest in the relationship between woman's sexual and social identities.”

Sources: Adapted from Novelguide.com’s American Women Writers.

Bess Myerson crowned first Jewish Miss America

September 8, 1945

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Former "Miss America" Bess Myerson has maintained the emphasis on communal affairs that began with her year as a public figure. She ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 1980 and then served as New York City Commissioner for Cultural Affairs.

Institution: The Miss America Organization

Just months after the shocking revelations of the Holocaust's devastation of European Jewry, Bess Myerson was crowned the first (and still only) Jewish Miss America on September 8, 1945.

Her victory was seen by many as a symbolic statement of America's post-war rejection of the crimes and prejudices that ravaged Europe as well as a representation of the vitality of the American Jewish community. Raised in a Jewish cooperative in the Bronx, Myerson was unfamiliar with the anti-Semitism that confronted her throughout the pageant. Myerson refused to adopt the suggested less-ethnic pseudonym, Beth Merrick. "It was the most important decision I ever made," she recalled. "It told me who I was, that I was first and foremost a Jew."

Myerson received a scholarship award accompanying her title, but she did not receive automatic acceptance. Three of five sponsoring companies withdrew their support from her post-pageant tour, and there was little demand for Myerson on the speaker circuit frequented by past winners. When an invitation to speak at a country club was revoked because of her religion, Myerson began to distance herself from the usual pageant scene, and instead began lecturing at schools and other venues about discrimination and the consequences of prejudice, under the sponsorship of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

This work initiated a long partnership with the ADL as a speaker and later as a national commissioner. Myerson also created a successful television career and became involved in both local and national politics. She was appointed commissioner of New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs in 1969 and used that position to develop what was at that time the most far-reaching consumer protection legislation in the country. This work prompted Myerson to write The Complete Consumer (1979); she also coauthored The I Love New York Diet with Bill Adler in 1982. Myerson served as New York City's commissioner of cultural affairs from 1983 to 1987.

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

See also: On Jewesses with Attitude: Beauty and Power and Ms. JewSA; This Week in History for June 16, 2010 Loren Galler Rabinowitz crowned “Miss Massachusetts.”

Sources: Jewish News Weekly, www.jewishsf.com; www.missamerica.org; jwa.org;Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 962–964.

Birth of "Grand lady of the southwest frontier" in New York City

September 10, 1857

Flora Langerman Spiegelberg, the "grand lady of the southwest frontier" was born on September 10, 1857. Spiegelberg was born in New York City and educated in Germany, but after marrying Willi Spiegelberg (a Southwesterner whom she met while he was visiting his parents in Germany) she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Although her husband with some other relatives had already established a prosperous mercantile business in Santa Fe, Spiegelberg, upon her arrival, found that she was only the eighth woman in town. Instead of giving into culture shock, Spiegelberg devoted herself to improving her new community.

The success of her husband's store enabled Spiegelberg to put all her energy into community service. In 1879, she helped to establish the first non-sectarian school in Santa Fe, and the following year raised $1,000 from the Santa Fe business community to purchase an acre of land for a new three-room schoolhouse. In addition, she ran not one but two religious schools: a Hebrew school on Saturdays and a Catholic Sunday school. Spiegelberg also created the first children's playground and garden in Santa Fe.

In addition to all of her efforts on behalf of Santa Fe's growing community, Spiegelberg was also a moderately successful children's writer, and some of her work was broadcast on the CBS radio network in the 1930s. In 1937, she published Reminiscences of a Jewish Bride of the Santa Fe Trail, a collection of stories from her own life.

To learn more about Flora Langerman Spiegelberg, viit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

See also: In Focus Western Pioneers; Jewish Women On the Map - Santa Fe.

Sources: jwa.org/discover/inthepast/infocus/westernpioneers/flspiegelberg.html; http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/swja/v12flora.htm.

9/11

September 11, 2001

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks touched and devastated every community in the United States. A series of profiles of the victims, published by the New York Times, included this portrait of Deborah Kaplan:

She set up the tent.

Anyone who has tried it knows the frustration of erecting a tent in the woods with children waiting. But during a vacation at Niagara Falls the summer of 2001, Deborah Kaplan snapped together her family's brand-new ripstop shelter without breaking a sweat.

"She was the best at that stuff," said her husband, Harold. "She was the engineer. That was her domain."

It was a peculiar domain for an Orthodox Jewish woman from Brooklyn, one of only three women engineers in her graduating class at Cooper Union. She went on to work for the Port Authority, but Mr. Kaplan said engineering was not her passion. Her family was.

For years, Mrs. Kaplan, 45, worked only part-time. Even after she was transferred from Journal Square in Jersey City to the World Trade Center this spring she took the 3 o'clock train home to be with her four children, he said.

When the family moved to Paramus, N.J., Mrs. Kaplan discovered that the local yeshiva did not give the children the traditional items used to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. She did not complain. Instead, she found a whole-sale supplier of the lulav, a palm branch, and the etrog, a citrus fruit from Israel. She sent forms to parents, took orders, and collected payments.

Mrs. Kaplan was so efficient she ended up ordering lulavs and etrogs for five area synagogues. "If you had to count on someone for anything," said Nina Glaser, a friend, "you knew you could count on Debbie."

Source: Howell Raines, Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from the New York Times (2002).

Bella Abzug Addresses Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing

September 12, 1995

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"We argue generally that gender equality is a prerequisite and a precondition for social development....

"Unless we can really deal with all their concepts and show them where it's wrong to emphasize demographics and population control issues without regard to women's empowerment, without regard to reproductive rights, without regard to reproductive health, without regard to sexual rights and sexual health, without regard to raising the status of women, then we will have failed in educating to make a whole new turn-around in the social policy affecting population and development."

Notes

1. Quote from Bella Abzug, "Proposed Text to be Printed in Colloquy Highlights Women's Empowerment: the United Nation's Role, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia Education Fund," in Abzug file at WEDO, 6 May 1995.

Bella Abzug's plenary address to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing on September 12, 1995 set a tone of international cooperation and commitment that helped define the conference and its influential legacy.

After a historic career as a pioneering U.S. Congresswoman and activist, Abzug approached Beijing as a symbolic moment of feminist possibility. A long-time advocate for women's equality as well as human rights, she insisted on taking part in the Beijing conference despite illness and her confinement to a wheelchair.

The conference focused primarily on probing the living conditions for women including women's health, education, and economic status. Success in defusing the tensions over Zionism that had marked previous United Nations women's conferences facilitated constructive dialogue among the 7,000 delegates. The Beijing conference managed to synthesize numerous conflicting nationalistic feminist approaches into an international human rights feminist vision, offering resolutions that have continued to define national agendas for changing women's lives around the world.

In her address Abzug stated that, "Imperfect though it may be, the Beijing Platform for Action is the strongest statement of consensus on women's equality, empowerment and justice ever produced by governments. The Beijing Platform is a consolidation of the previous UN conference agreements in the unique context of seeing it through women's eyes.... We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past."

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

See also: This Week in History for November 2, 1970 Bella Abzug elected to Congress and November 18, 1977 Bella Abzug convenes National Women's Conference in Houston; In Focus Jewish Women in Politics; Jewish Women and GLBT Pride; Go & Learn Primary Sources and Lesson Plans Queen Esther and Bella Abzug: Costumes, leadership, and identity and Women Protesting Nuclear Weapons Testing: Bella Abzug with Women Strike for Peace, 1961; On Jewesses with Attitude What Would Bella Do?, The Lessons of Women's Equality Day, Jewish Women Politicians: Progressively Passionate?, Happy International Women's Day, and A Victory in the fight to make hate crimes history; Bella Abzug poster

Sources: http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/abzug/; gos.sbc.edu/a/abzug.html; http://www.jofreeman.com/womenyear/beijingreport.htm; feminist.org/news; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism.

"New York Times" reviews Yezierska's "Bread Givers"

September 13, 1925

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Picture of author Anzia Yezierska with an article in the Lima News of July 3, 1922.

Anzia Yezierska's best-known novel, Bread Givers, received a glowing review in the New York Times on September 13, 1925. "Bread Givers enables us to see our life more clearly, to test its values, to reckon up what it is that our aims and achievements may mean. It has a raw, uncontrollable poetry and a powerful, sweeping design," the Times wrote. Yezierska, dubbed the "Cinderella of the Sweatshop" by the popular press, wrote Bread Givers about the daughter of an immigrant family who struggles against her Orthodox father's rigid idea of Jewish womanhood.

Yezierska immigrated as a young girl with her family to the United States in the early 1890s. Her fiction centered upon the lives of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City around the turn of the century. Her work featured female protagonists struggling with issues of economic survival, Americanization, and the tension between immigrant parents and their children.

In addition to Bread Givers, Yezierska wrote a number of other books. Her first, a collection of short stories entitled Hungry Hearts, was turned into a 1922 silent film. The film's producer, Samuel Goldwyn, offered Yezierska a $100,000 contract to write screenplays. Yezierska moved to Hollywood but was unable to feel at home there and moved back to New York City. Yezierska's first novel, 1923's Salome of Tenements, was also made into a silent film, though it did not become as well known.

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

See also: This Week in History for December 3, 1922, Los Angeles film debut of Anzia Yezierska's "Hungry Hearts"; Go & Learn: Primary Documents and Lesson Plans, Immigration and Generations: Anzia Yezierska's Children of Loneliness; Anzia Yezierska's papers in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: New York Times, September 13 1925; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1520-1522; www.myjewishlearning.com.

Ray Frank preaches on Rosh Hashanah!

September 14, 1890

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Journalist Ray Frank made her name as a "latter-day Rebecca." She was the first Jewish woman to preach from the pulpit in America and was known for her ability to bring feuding Jewish religious factions together.

Institution: American Jewish Historical Society

On September 14, 1890, Ray Frank became the first Jewish woman to preach formally from a synagogue pulpit in the United States.

Frank worked as a correspondent for several Californian newspapers, and this work brought her to Spokane, Washington, on the eve of the High Holy Days. Frank was shocked to find that no synagogue services were scheduled, since many affluent Jews lived in the area.

A prominent member of the community who knew of Frank's reputation for Jewish learning offered to arrange Rosh Hashanah services if Frank would give a sermon. Frank agreed, and word of the event spread; Jews and Christians alike came to hear her speak, filling the city's opera house.

Frank's sermon entreated her audience to overcome the differences between Reform and Orthodox ritual that had divided Spokane's Jewish community and to form a permanent congregation. Frank so impressed her audience that they invited her to remain through the High Holidays, and she delivered a sermon on the eve of Yom Kippur as well.

After these sermons, Frank was much in demand as a speaker throughout the 1890s across the country. The press speculated about Frank's rabbinic aspirations, and many headlines referred to her, incorrectly, as the first woman rabbi (America's first female rabbi was not ordained until 1972). Although Frank expressed no interest in becoming a rabbi, her actions forced American Jewry for the first time to consider seriously the possibility of women rabbis.

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

See also: Jewish Women On the Map - Ray Frank's Rosh Hashana Sermon, Spokane Opera House, 1890; Go & Learn: Primary Documents and Lesson Plans, Ray Frank's Yom Kippur Sermon, 1890; "Ray Frank: Lady Preacher of the West" and "Lessons from 'A Lay Sermon by a Young Lady,'" Jewesses with Attitude; Discover High Holy Days: New Words for a New Year; Ray Frank poster; Ray Frank's papers in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: jwa.org/exhibits/wov/frank/; jwa.org.

First female cantor leads Rosh Hashanah services

September 15, 1955

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Betty Robbins was born in Greece, immigrated with her family, first to Poland and then to Australia, and ultimately made her home in the United States. In 1955, she was appointed the cantor of New York's Temple Avodah— perhaps "the first woman cantor in five thousand years of Jewish history."

Institution: Sandra Robbins

Betty Robbins, the world's first female cantor, led Rosh Hashanah evening services at Temple Avodah of Oceanside, New York, on September 15, 1955. Her appointment as cantor marked the first time that a woman performed the traditional role of cantor in a synagogue anywhere in the world. It generated a tremendous amount of publicity, even making the front page of the New York Times. Robbins had been unanimously approved as the Reform congregation's cantor by its board of trustees the previous July, after the congregation found itself without a cantor for the High Holy Days.

Although Robbins did not have formal training as a cantor, she had spent her childhood in Poland singing with her synagogue's boys' choir, eventually becoming its soloist (once she adopted a boy's haircut to please the choir's director, who was reluctant to allow a girl to join). Robbins spent much of the rest of her career teaching religious school, and formed and directed several adult and children's choirs. In her retirement, she conducted religious services on many worldwide Jewish holiday cruises. Betty Robbins passed away in 2004.

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

See also: Jewish Women On the Map - Temple Avodah; Cantors: American Jewish Women.

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia pp. 1158-1159

"Crossing Delancey" released

September 16, 1988

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Joan Micklin Silver couldn't interest a Hollywood studio in doing a film about early Eastern European immigrants to New York, which would incorporate some Yiddish. So she wrote, directed and co-produced Hester Street (1975) herself.

Institution: Private collection

Joan Micklin Silver's Crossing Delancey, a Jewish-themed romantic comedy, was released in theaters on September 16, 1988. Crossing Delancey is a story of love between a professional Upper East Side woman and a pickle seller from the Lower East Side. In the movie, Silver portrays a romance that is both specifically Jewish and universally understood, which no doubt helped to account for the movie's mainstream success.

Crossing Delancey was Silver's second major Jewish-themed movie, the first being 1975's critically acclaimed Hester Street. Silver adapted Hester Street from Abraham Cahan's 1896 novella, Yekl. That movie was a personal one for Silver in many ways, as the Russian Jewish immigrant characters in the movie reflected Silver's own heritage. Every major studio turned down Hester Street, and so Silver and her husband distributed the film themselves. The movie proved to be quite successful, and helped to renew popular interest in the lives of immigrant Jews. In addition to her Jewish-themed works, Silver has directed Between the Lines (1977), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), Loverboy (1989), and Big Girls Don't Cry...They Get Even (1992). Silver's passion for directing extends both to theater and the small screen, including the television movie In the Presence of Mine Enemies (1997), which takes place in the Warsaw Ghetto.

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

See also: Film Industry in the United States; We Remember Mina Bern.

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia pp. 1256-1257

B'nai B'rith Women Denounces B'nai B'rith International

September 17, 1984

On September 17, 1984, B'nai B'rith Women (BBW) denounced a B'nai B'rith International (BBI) resolution to admit women to the previously male-only organization. Many BBW members feared that such inclusion would lead to the disintegration of BBW's autonomy as a separate women's organization with its focus primarily on women's issues. Although BBI representatives stated that the proposed change was meant to advance gender equality, BBW thought that BBI's real reasons were financially motivated, and felt that maintaining their independence was critical.

The issue of whether women could join the male B'nai B'rith organization (founded in 1843) first arose in the nineteenth century. The first lasting women's auxiliary chapter was formed in San Francisco in 1909. A network of women's auxiliaries soon arose, supporting the male chapters and establishing activities of their own. These chapters officially federated in 1940 and renamed themselves B'nai B'rith Women in 1957. Women delegates were not allowed to vote at national B'nai B'rith conventions until 1953.

The conflict over the continued existence of a women's organization within the B'nai B'rith umbrella continued for several years after the 1984 debate, coming to a head in the late 1980s. In September 1988, BBI officially decided to admit women to its organization. In response, BBW passed a resolution declaring its own separate legal status. In 1990 the two groups reached an agreement that recognized BBW as an independent, self-governing organization affiliated with B'nai B'rith.

BBW declared full independence from B'nai B'rith in 1995 and changed its name to Jewish Women International (JWI). Today, Jewish Women International focuses on three main issues: domestic violence, the emotional well-being of children, and the expression of Jewish life and values. JWI also still supports many of the organizations that it did while a part of B'nai B'rith such as Hillel, The B'nai B'rith Youth Organization, and the Children's Home and Group House in Jerusalem.

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

See also: This Week in History for July 20, 2003, JWI conference on Jewish domestic violence; "Jewish Women International: Seven Years Later, Jewesses with Attitude; B'nai B'rith Women in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Lilith #14 Fall-Winter 1985-1986; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia pp. 166-167

Birth of dance scholar Selma Jeanne Cohen

September 18, 1920

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International Encyclopedia of Dance, Oxford Press.
Edited by Selma Jeanne Cohen.

Selma Jeanne Cohen, who sought to make dance scholarship a respected academic discipline, was born on September 18, 1920. Early in her career, Cohen taught dance history at Hunter College and the High School of the Performing Arts, teaching many future dance company directors such as Arthur Mitchell, Bruce Marks, and Eliot Feld. She wrote a number of scholarly articles about dance, and struggled to make dance a credible subject of scholarly research. In 1959 she founded the quarterly journal, Dance Perspectives. The success of this journal eventually led to the publication of The International Encyclopedia of Dance (1997).

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

To learn more about Selma Jeanne Cohen, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and We Remember.

See also: This Week in History for July 26, 1998 "Selma Jeanne Cohen's "Encyclopedia of Dance"; Wikipedia article on Selma Jeanne Cohen; Dance Performance in the United States; On the Map.

Source: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 252-254.

Julie Rosewald becomes the first woman to lead services in an American synagogue

September 20, 1884

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Julie Rosewald in unknown opera role, possibly Prascovia in L’Étoile du Nord," given the bridal-looking veil. From: A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds. (Buffalo: Charles Wells Mouton, 1893), 1812.

As the solemn First Day of Rosh Hashanah (5645) got underway on a Sabbath morning in 1884, congregants at San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El experienced something entirely new. A woman soprano soloist led the music for the service, chanted portions of the worship normally reserved for a cantor, and directed the choir.

Cantor Max Wolff (1839-1884) had died three weeks earlier, after serving the congregation for 10 years. The congregants turned to Julie Eichberg Rosewald, an internationally renowned Jewish opera singer and vocal instructor, who had recently settled in San Francisco with her husband. They asked her to be the shaliach tzibbur, “messenger of the congregation” who leads prayer, and she agreed. This made September 20, 1884, the first recorded time a Jewish woman led services in an American synagogue.

On her first day as “Cantor Soprano,” as the congregation came to call her, Julie Rosewald relied on her prodigious musical memory of the southern German nusach (melody used for prayers in the service) learned many years before from her father tutelage in Stuttgart, Germany. She and her husband, Jacob Rosewald were both familiar with the contemporary synagogue music from years of service to the Baltimore Jewish community. They quickly prepared the music for the service and rehearsed the choir for the High Holidays. Julie served throughout the Days of Awe in 1884; she not only performed as a choral soloist but led all the cantorial portions and responses, providing aid to the temple’s ailing rabbi.

This momentous occasion was widely noted. The Jewish Progress reported on September 26, 1884: “The services of the various synagogues on Rosh Hashanah were thoroughly in accord with the solemnity of the occasion…. The singing was a feature of the service, Mrs. Rosewald at the Temple Emanu-El filling her arduous position with great credit.”

The time was right. An open California spirit and a late 19th century’s growing appreciation of the capabilities of women among the Reform Jews of San Francisco made it not only possible but acceptable to choose Julie Rosewald as a cantor. She could provide the high-quality classical-style music, which the congregation desired. Her status as an international “superstar” of opera, her knowledge of Hebrew and traditional chant, and her readiness to perform in a religious setting were a winning combination.

So delighted was the congregation with her singing, with the new music that she brought to the temple, and with the excellent quality of choral preparation that she continued in her position of “Cantor Soprano” for nearly ten years.

See also: "Julie Rosewald: America's first woman cantor," Jewesses with Attitude.

Source: Judith S. Pinnolis, “ ‘Cantor Soprano’ Julie Rosewald: The Musical Career of a Jewish American ‘New Woman’,” American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol. 62, No. 2 (December 2010), pp. 1-53.

Jewish Women Watching declare "Sexism is a sin"

September 21, 2001

"Jewish women/girls hold your community accountable. Sexism is a sin. Jewish Women Watching." This ad text, a parody of the Lubavitchers' weekly ads below the first column on the front page of the New York Times imploring women and girls to light Shabbat candles, appeared in that paper on September 21, 2001, the Friday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This marked the third year that Jewish Women Watching (JWW), an anonymous and intentionally controversial Jewish feminist group, had produced public campaigns around the High Holy Days aimed at challenging sexism and elitism within the Jewish community.

While Jewish Women Watching may be an anonymous organization, they have certainly made their presence felt in the broader Jewish world. Their publications use satire and shock value to reflect their concerns about sexist, classist, and homophobic trends within the mainstream Jewish community. For example, their pamphlet "WAY TOO MUCH. Make community a priority. Demand Jewish life at an affordable price" criticizes the high cost of actively participating in the Jewish community, such as a summer at a Jewish camp, Jewish day school tuition, and High Holy Day seat tickets.

In 2005, JWW challenged the Conservative movement during the 20th anniversary celebration of the ordination of the first Conservative woman rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). They distributed a flyer and a hoax JTS press release contrasting the Conservative movement's avowed commitment to gender equality and diversity with the realties that some Conservative synagogues exclude women from full participation, there are often great pay inequities between men and women Conservative rabbis with comparable experience, and the exclusion at that time of "avowed homosexuals" from Conservative rabbinical and cantorial schools.

Its New Year's greeting for 5768 (2007-8) challenged JTS to offer full inclusion of LGBT voices, local Jewish federations to hire female executives, all congregational movements to speak out against the Iraq war and American congregations and Hillels to address human rights abuses perpetrated by the U.S. and Israel.

See also: "'Treyfing' Sukkot" and "How do we value women's work?" on Jewesses with Attitude.

Source: http://www.jewishwomenwatching.com/.

Birth of Babette Deutsch: Poet, Novelist, Critic

September 22, 1895

Celebrated poet, novelist, critic, and editor Babette Deutsch was born on September 22, 1895. While still a student at Barnard College, Deutsch had her first poems published in magazines, and her first volume of poetry, Banners, was published only two years after she graduated. Many more volumes of poetry followed, including 1928's Honey Out of A Rock, which touched on varied biblical and Jewish themes. Deutsch also wrote a number of novels, including A Brittle Heaven (1926), In Such a Night (1927), and The Mask of Silenus (1933).

In addition to her work as a poet and novelist, Deutsch was a noted literary critic, as well as a writer of fiction and biographies for children. In 1958 she was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1969 served as that organization's secretary. Deutsch was on the advisory board of the National Book Committee, chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, and a consultant for the Library of Congress.

Although Deutsch led a busy professional life, she also devoted much of her time to the Jewish community. Deutsch often worked with the Young Men's Hebrew Association, serving as a lecturer in their Poetry Center. Much of her poetry reflected her Jewish heritage, and her last three books of poetry all dealt with her anger at the horrors of the Holocaust and her efforts to make sense of such great tragedy. Deutsch died in 1982.

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

See also: Berlin Salons: Late Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Century; Babette Deutsch in the Virtual Archive.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 328-329; New York Times, November 15, 1982.

First solo show for sculptor Louise Nevelson

September 22, 1941

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

Louise Nevelson, one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century, was born on September 23, 1899, in Kiev, Russia. Nevelson is perhaps best known for her monumental box-shaped sculptures made out of fragments of wood, which she often found discarded on neighborhood streets. Today, her work can be found in modern and contemporary art museums all across the world. In 2000, in recognition of Nevelson's success, the U.S. government issued special Louise Nevelson commemorative stamps, each highlighting one of the monochromatic sculptures for which she became so well known. (See This Week in History for April 6, 2000.)

Nevelson's original medium was drawing, but it was when she turned to sculpture that she found her true artistic identity. In these first sculptures, she began by nailing together pieces of wood and painting them in uniform black tones. Nevelson later added white and gold coloring to her constructions. In 1935, her work was first shown in a museum, as part of the Brooklyn Museum's exhibit, Young Sculptors, and on September 22, 1941, she had her first solo show at the prestigious Nierendorf Gallery. Since that first show, her work has been displayed in numerous other solo and group shows and exhibitions, including Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959 and at 1962's Venice Biennale. Nevelson died in 1988.

From May through September 2007, The Jewish Museum in New York City presented "The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend," the first major museum exhibit of Nevelson's work to be shown in a generation.

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

See also: This Week in History for April 6, 2000, Louise Nevelson stamps issued by U.S. Postal Service; Jewish Women On the Map - Louise Nevelson Plaza, the Nierendorf Gallery, and "Sky Landscape" in Washington D.C.; Jewish Women Artists.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 988-991; Laurie Lisle, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life (New York, 1990); www.usps.gov; jwa.org/discover/infocus/artists; www.thejewishmuseum.org/site/pages/content/exhibitions/special/nevelson/nevelson_onlinefeature.html.

Birth of "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" author, Joanne Greenberg

September 24, 1932

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Joanne Greenberg's bestselling I Never Promised You a Rose Garden offered a semi-autobiographical account of a young teenage girl's struggle with mental illness and the psychoanalytic treatment that restores her to the world.

Author Joanne Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 24, 1932. Often writing under the pseudonym Hannah Green, Greenberg has written 13 novels and four collections of short stories. Her first book, The King's Persons, published in 1963, focused on the massacre of the Jews of York in 1190 and won an award from the Jewish Book Council of America. Her best-known book, published a year later, was I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Later developed into a film and a play, the best-selling Rose Garden offered a semi-autobiographical account of a young teenage girl's struggle with mental illness and the psychoanalytic treatment that restores her to the world.

Greenberg is a graduate of American University where she studied English and anthropology. After her husband began working as a vocational rehabilitation counselor with deaf patients, Greenberg became interested in sign language and the deaf. She has since worked to create mental health programs for the deaf in hospitals throughout the country. Her novel In This Sign (1970) provides an intimate look at the life and frustrations of a deaf person living in a hearing world.

Greenberg lives in Colorado, where she teaches a popular course on creative writing at the Colorado School of Mines. She also tutors Latin and Hebrew and is active in the Beth Evergreen congregation. Greenberg continues to write and speak at schools, libraries, and book clubs. Her recent works include Appearances (2006) and Miri, Who Charms (2009).

See also: Children's Literature in the United States; Joanne Greenberg in the Virtual Archive; Freida Fromm-Reichmann in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.

Sources: www.narpa.org/greenberg.htm; www.mines.edu/Fac_staff/ senate/ dist_lecture/ greenberg_bio.shtml; www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4271351; pplofthebook.blogspot.com/ 2005/ 01/ kings-persons-by-joanne-greenberg.html.

Birth of musician, writer, journalist, Eugenia Zukerman

September 25, 1944

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Multi-talented performer and writer, Eugenia Zukerman. Photo courtesy of Vaughn Nelson.

The multi-talented performer and writer Eugenia Zukerman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 25, 1944. Zukerman started to study English at Barnard, but later transferred to the Julliard School where she studied with flutist Julius Baker. Zukerman went on to win the Young Concert Artist Award in 1971, beginning her career with rave reviews and a warm welcome by the music world. During her career, Zukerman has performed with orchestras, in solo and duo recitals, and in chamber music ensembles in North America, Europe, and Asia. Since 1998, Zukerman has served as Artistic Director of the international Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado's Rocky Mountains.

Zukerman's talent and career cannot be condensed into one area, however. In addition to her musical achievements, Zukerman is an author of two novels, a non-fiction book, and several screenplays, and is also a journalist, reporting as the arts correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning since 1980. In My Mother's Closet: An Invitation to Remember, her most recent book published in 2003, asked 40 accomplished women to share their recollections of what it was like for them as girls to imagine being a woman.

Sources: www.delosmus.com/bio/eugenia_zukerman.html; www.eugeniazukerman.com.

Emma Goldman released from jail and then reimprisoned

September 27, 1919

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Emma Goldman's deportation portrait, 1919. In post-World War I America, foreigners and their "foreign ideas" were increasingly untolerated. Following her release from prison in 1919, Goldman was immediately re-arrested on the order of J. Edgar Hoover, then director of intelligence for the U.S. Justice Department. Hoover persuaded the courts to deny Goldman's citizenship claims, thus making her liable to deportation under the 1918 Alien Act, which allowed for the expulsion of any alien found to be an anarchist. On December 21, 1919, Goldman and 248 other foreign-born radicals were deported to the Soviet Union.

Institution: The Emma Goldman Papers, University of California, Berkeley

Emma Goldman was released from a two-year prison term, on September 27, 1919, only to be immediately reimprisoned. Goldman had been charged in 1917, along with her long-time comrade Alexander Berkman, for "conspiring against the draft" as a result of their work creating the No-Conscription league in May 1917 to oppose U.S. involvement in World War I. The activists began their prison sentences in December, 1917.

After immigrating to the United States at 16 in 1885, Goldman soon became an outspoken advocate for the rights of workers and women. Incensed by the poor standard of living of the majority of workers, she began lecturing and promoting anarchism as the best method to achieve equality. Goldman's anarchistic belief in absolute freedom from governments, that served the powerful and exploited the poor and dispossessed, shaped her life-long activism.

As Goldman's prison release neared in August 1919, the director of the Justice Department's General Intelligence committee, the young J. Edgar Hoover, worked to ensure Goldman and Berkman's permanent removal from American society. Hoover pressured the courts to deny Goldman's citizenship claims, thus making her vulnerable to the 1918 Alien Act. In a letter to a governmental official, Hoover described Goldman and Berkman as "beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country," concluding that they would, "if permitted to return to the community...do undue harm."

Goldman and Berkman were deported at the end of 1919 with 247 other immigrant radicals to the new Soviet Union. After less than two years in Russia, Goldman left the country disillusioned by the violence and unforgiving rule of the Bolsheviks. She spent the remainder of her life traveling throughout Europe and Canada, politically frustrated by her status as an exile. After her death, Goldman was finally readmitted to the United States and buried in Chicago.

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

See also: This Week in History for December 21, 1919, "Deportation of Emma Goldman as a radical 'alien,'" and July 19, 1908, "Emma Goldman's "What I Believe'"; Jewish Women On the Map: Emma Goldman's Grave and Emma Goldman mural at Ahawath Yeshurun Shar'a Torah synagogue; Go & Learn: Primary Sources & Lesson Plans Letter from Emma Goldman to Lillian Wald, 1904; Jewesses with Attitude "If Emma Goldman used Google"; Patriotism and Dissent; Birth Control Movement in the United States; Emma Goldman in the Virtual Archive; Emma Goldman poster.

Sources: jwa.org/exhibits/wov/goldman; Emma Goldman Papers: sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman; Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York, 1931).

Honor for children's television activist Peggy Charren

September 29, 1995

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Winner of the 1995 Presidential Medal of Freedom and the "Women That Make a Difference Award" from the International Women’s Forum, Peggy Charren, founder of Action for Children's Television, took on the entire television industry—and won.

Institution: Peggy Charren

Frustrated with the educationally anemic cartoons filling her children's afternoons, education advocate and founder of Action for Children's Television (ACT), Peggy Charren began to push television stations and law makers to demand and develop more diverse and stimulating children's programming. On September 29, 1995, Charren received a Presidential Medal of Freedom acknowledging her almost three decades of advocacy.

Charren began her career in television as the director of the film department at station WPIX-TV in New York City, but she became concerned about the lack of educational children's programming after the birth of her two daughters. She gathered a few other women with young children, and in 1968 formed a non-profit organization called Action for Children's Television (ACT), which advocated for higher quality, less commercialized children's television programming. They used the law to challenge the broadcast industry and appealed to the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission for better alternatives in children's television. Their efforts ultimately led to the passing of the Children's Television Act of 1990.

Responding to the efforts of ACT, Congress passed the Children's Television Act in 1990, which required each station to provide programs created specifically to educate children.

To learn more about Peggy Charren, visit Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia and Women Who Dared.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 211-213; JWA Women Who Dared: jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/bio.jsp?personID=ppcharren.

Writer Ruth Gruber Born

September 30, 1911

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Photo courtesy of Ruth Gruber

Writer and activist Ruth Gruber was born on September 30, 1911. Gruber earned bachelor's and master's degrees by age 19 and a Ph.D. by 20. At the age of 21, Gruber began her career as a journalist, reporting on global politics.

In 1944, Gruber was asked by the US Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes to conduct a secret mission to escort almost 1,000 Italian war refugees to the United States. This brief break in the nation's otherwise restrictive immigration policy during World War II allowed the refugees to be "guests" of President Roosevelt throughout the conflict. Throughout her mission, Gruber was aggressively hunted as a foreign spy by Nazi seaplanes and U-boats. In her role as a spokesperson for the refugees, Gruber presented the refugees’ journey as a human interest story for the press. She told the New York Times that the refugees represented "a cross-section of every refugee now pouring into Italy," including Jews, Catholics and Protestants for whom religious services were held onboard the ship. In a touching moment in Haven, her book recounting the voyage, Gruber recalls a rabbi conducting a service as the boat passed the Statue of Liberty, and her pride in telling the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust that the poem on the base was written by Emma Lazarus, an American Jew.

After World War II, Gruber returned to journalism and continued to draw attention to the plight of European Jews as she reported on the Jewish migration to Palestine. Her reports helped advance the dissolution of Displaced Person camps in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Throughout the 1940s, Gruber worked to ensure the success and growth of Israel through her work as an activist and by sparking global attention through her news reports. Gruber continues to advocate for Jews worldwide and, for many, is herself a symbol of Jews' rescue from oppression.

Gruber has written thirteen books, seven of which focus on the subject of Israel and the Middle East from the end of World War II to the present. Her book, Destination Palestine: The Story of the Haganah Ship Exodus 1947, was used as source material for the movie and book Exodus. Gruber's memoir, Ahead of My Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent, was published in 1999, and her life was the subject of Haven, a 2001 CBS miniseries. She went on to publish Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel in 2002 and Virginia Woolf: The Will To Create As A Woman in 2005. The documentary film Ahead of Time covering her life from 1911 to 1947 premiered in New York City in 2010.

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

See also: This Week in History for August 3, 1944 "Ruth Gruber finds haven for 1,000 Holocaust refugees"; Jewish Women On the Road; Jewesses with Attitude, "A Time for Travel".

Sources: jwa.org; jwa.org/discover/today/news/gruber/index.html; www.miriamscup.com/GruberBiog.htm; Ruth Gruber, Haven: The Unknown Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees (New York, 1983).