Civic Engagement
Although America was intended as a land of liberty, religious freedom was not always guaranteed. In many colonies and later states, Jews struggled for the right to vote, the ability to serve in the government, and for recognition of their religion as equal before the law. Thomas Jefferson, a strong believer in freedom of religion,…
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The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. It abrogated poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions which had been implemented to deny African Americans and other minorities the right to vote. The murder of three voting rights activists—Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney—in Mississippi in…
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On January 1st, 1959, Caroline Klein Simon became the second woman to be sworn in as New York Secretary of State. Simon was born November 12th, 1900 in New York City. In 1925 she graduated from New York University Law School. As a woman, she struggled to find work. Simon took an unpaid job at…
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The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) issued its founding resolution on September 7, 1893. Organized by Hannah Greenebaum Solomon (1858–1942) during the World’s Fair in Chicago, the NCJW emerged as a leading voice for social reform in this period. Solomon was born in 1858 in Chicago Illinois and in 1876 was elected to the…
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Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902-1988) was a Berlin-based rabbi until fleeing Nazi Germany in 1937. Prinz was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau and served as a rabbi in Berlin until the Nazi government formally expelled him from Germany. In the U.S., Prinz became a vocal advocate for the civil rights movement as well…
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Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was born in the Russian Empire to an Orthodox Jewish family. She immigrated to the United States in 1885, though she would be exiled back to Russia and live globally in the years to come. Goldman is remembered today for her anarchist philosophy, one which preached anti-capitalist, anti-statist, anti-marriage, anti-clerical, and pacifist…
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Perhaps you have heard the names Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, perhaps have heard of the charges hailed against them and the severity of the punishment they received at the hands of the federal government of the United States. Convicted for “conspiracy to commit espionage” in 1951, the U.S. government charged that the couple had passed…
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