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Ellen Smith

Ellen Smith is curator of the American Jewish Historical Society. Her recent publications include Portraits of a Community: The Image and Experience of Early American Jews and The Jews of Boston, coedited with Jonathan D. Sarna. Among Smith’s major exhibitions are On Common Ground: The Boston Jewish Experience, 1620–1980, Send Us a Lady Physician: Women Doctors in America, 1870–1920, and The Jews of Boston. She is one of nine national scholar members of the Henry Luce Foundation grant project, “The Visual Culture of American Religions,” and a founding advisory board member of the Center for Jewish Women’s Studies at Brandeis University.

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Lina Frank Hecht

Lina Frank Hecht was a prominent figure in the Jewish philanthropic community in late nineteenth-century Boston. Known for the creation of a Jewish Sunday school for new immigrants, Hecht influenced generations of children through her leadership and generosity.

Fanny Goldstein

Librarian, social activist, and founder of National Jewish Book Week, Fanny Goldstein helped institutionalize national pride in ethnic and immigrant backgrounds through her work in libraries and settlement houses, and in her lectures and writing.

Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks

After sending her children from New York to England, Bilhah Franks began writing to her son. These letters relate her experiences of New York society and her combination of devotion to Judaism and anger at its superstitions. Franks offers a window into the attempts of colonial American Jews to retain their religious identity while still participating in the larger society.

Golde Bamber

Golde Bamber envisioned and institutionalized new educational structures to serve Jewish immigrant communities in Boston in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She served as director of the Hebrew Industrial School for Girls for forty years. Bamber’s pioneering work influenced settlement house, vocational, Jewish, and nursery school education in Boston and beyond.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Ellen Smith." (Viewed on December 13, 2024) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/smith-ellen>.