Women
The American Jewish Archives contains records of Jewish leaders serving as chaplains in the US military dating back to the Civil War; however, not until 1986 did the first commissioned active-duty female chaplain join such ranks. Cincinnati native Julie Schwartz was a student at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati in 1985 when she received ecclesiastical approval from…
Founded in 1929, the Bake Shop, a Jewish bakery in Cincinnati, employed over thirty women in need of work. Funded by the United Jewish Social Agencies, the Bake Shop served the Walnut Hills and Avondale communities for upwards of forty years. Recipe cards from the Bake Shop, preserved at the American Jewish Archives, reveal Jewish…
Two 19th-century ketubot. The first is from 1857 and is for the marriage of Solomon Joseph and Rebecca Abraham, both of Charleston, S.C. The other is from 1873 and is for the marriage of David Nieto and Esther Belasco—residents of Kingston, Jamaica.
American Jewish educator and philanthropist Rebecca Gratz grew up outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she lived with her eleven siblings and her parents in a high-society family. In 1801 she established the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances which helped families affected by the Revolutionary War. After this she became…
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…
Golda Meir was the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. She was born May 13th, 1898 in Kiev and immigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1906. As a child she was drawn toward helping others; she once raised money for classmates who could not afford to purchase textbooks. Her parents were set on her getting married rather…
“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.…
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…
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…
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…