Organizations & Institutions
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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Rabbi Steven Wise was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1874, before immigrating with his family (as an infant) to New York. He grew into one of the most renowned American Reform rabbis and Zionist leaders of the 20th-century. In 1922, Wise founded the Jewish Institute of Religion. He was also a founding member of the…
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“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) wrote these words memorialized on the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus was born to a Jewish family in New York, near Union Square, on July 22, 1849. She held a strong classical education along with fluency in German and French.…
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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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Revered as “the foremost rabbi in America,” Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900) was born in the Austrian Empire, the son of a schoolteacher. He received his early Jewish education from both his father and grandfather before moving to Prague to pursue additional secular studies. He served as a rabbi in Radintz, Bohemia, before immigrating to the…
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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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On August 4, 1854, the renowned abolitionist and famous author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), wrote a letter to Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819–1900) thanking him for sending her a copy of his recently published History of the Israelitisch Nation. She wrote, “It is with some deep emotion that I receive from…
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On June 16, 1892, Jennie Grossinger was born to a Jewish family in the province of Galicia, at the time a region of Austria – though later incorporated into Poland, and eventually into the Ukraine. Jennie Grossinger and her family immigrated to New York’s Lower East Side in 1900, a reprieve from the antisemitism, pogroms…
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On June 29, 1922, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) gathered to debate on the most vital of questions: May women be ordained as rabbis? Meeting in Cape May, New Jersey, the convention invited both ordained rabbis – only male at the time – and women guests (mainly rabbis’ wives) to engage in conversation. …
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