Books

Abrams, Jeanne E. Jewish Women Pioneering the Frontier Trail: A History in the American West. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 279p.
This first scholarly book focusing exclusively on the history Jewish women in the western states demonstrates both that their contributions to the region were disproportionate to their numbers and that their pattern was different from Jewish women in the eastern U.S., where Jewish communities were more numerous and much larger — and from the Upper Midwest, where there was more Jewish involvement in homesteading and farming than in other regions. Many Jewish women in the West became businesswomen in their own right, rather than in family operations found in the East. Others took advantage of the more open opportunities available in the West and went to universities. Some were able to attend professional schools, becoming lawyers and doctors. Living in states that passed women’s suffrage earlier than elsewhere, Jewish women also entered politics. As they did in other places, Jewish women in the West created Jewish institutions and sustained the Jewish community. The stories of individuals related in the book included both notables and ordinary women.

Agosin, Marjorie. Uncertain Travelers: Conversations With Jewish Women Immigrants to America.Edited and Annotator Mary G. Berg. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, for Brandeis University Press, 1999. 214 p.
Interviews with nine women who arrived in the United States from Latin America and Europe between 1939 and 1970. They discuss their childhood experiences in wartime, their education, anti-Semitism encountered in their homeland and in the U.S., and their families, careers, and emotional lives. The women are social worker Zezette Larsen (b. Brussels, 1929), microbiologist Elena Ottolenghi Nightingale (b. Livorno, Italy, 1932), social work professor Susan Bendor (b. Budapest, 1937), psychologist Matilde Salganicoff (b. Buenos Aires, 1930), Renata Brailovsky (b. Breslau, Germany [now Poland], 1931; moved to Chile, then to the U.S.), Harvard professor of French and comparative literature Susan Rubin Suleiman (b. Budapest, 1939), psychotherapist Katherine Scherzer Wenger (b. Satu Mare, Romania, 1950), neonatologist Silvia Zeldis Testa (b. Valparaiso, Chile, 1950), and anthropologist Ruth Behar (b. Havana, 1956).

Antin, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Antin. Edited by Evelyn Salz. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999. 160 p.
Collection of 150 letters that provide a fuller portrait of Antin than do her published works. Salz finds the letters “affirm her ardent patriotism but reveal her concerns that she give an accurate portrayal of Russian Jewish history. They document her firm belief in open immigration and the possibility of citizen action to bring about political change. They record her Zionist work. And, finally, they lay bare the depths of despair that the end of her marriage caused” (p.xxii).

Antler, Joyce, editor. Talking Balk: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, for Brandeis University Press, 1998. 301 p.
Essays analyze the images of Jewish women in mass media, narratives, and stories from throughout the twentieth century. Antler sees two parallel developments reflected: 1) Jewish women were regarded in multiple ways within the context of their times, and 2) images of Jewish women helped create an American Jewish cultural identity, a necessary prerequisite for becoming American. Jewish women themselves had many means of response, from internalized self-hatred and attempts to “pass” as non-Jewish to “talking back” to the image creators. Contents: “Translating Immigrant Women: Surfacing the Manifold Self,” by Janet Burstein; “Projected Images: Portraits of Jewish Women in Early American Film,” by Sharon Pucker Rivo; “The ‘Me’ of Me: Voices of Jewish Girls in Adolescent Diaries of the 1920s and 1950s,” by Joan Jacobs Brumberg; “From Sophie Tucker to Barbra Streisand: Jewish Women Entertainers As Reformers,” by June Sochen; “The Jewish-American World of Gertrude Berg: the Goldbergs on Radio and Television, 1930-1950,” by Donald Weber; “Sweet Natalie: Herman Wouk’s Messenger to the Gentiles,” by Susanne Klingenstein; “Cinderellas Who (Almost) Never Become Princesses: Subversive Representations of Jewish Women in Postwar Popular Novels,” by Riv-Ellen Prell; “Faith and Puttermesser: Contrasting Images of Two Jewish Feminists,” by Bonnie Lyons; “Our Mothers and Our Sisters and Our Cousins and Our Aunts: Dialogues and Dynamics in Literature and Film,” by Sylvia Barack Fishman; “The Way She Really Is: Images of Jews and Women in the Films of Barbra Streisand,” by Felicia Herman; “From Critic to Playwright: Fleshing Out Jewish Women in Contemporary Drama,” by Sarah Blacher Cohen; “Eschewing Esther/Embracing Esther: the Changing Representation of Biblical Heroines,” by Gail Twersky Reimer; “Claiming Our Questions: Feminism and Judaism in Women’s Haggadot,” by Maida E. Solomon; “Epilogue: Jewish Women on Television: Too Jewish or Not Enough?” by Joyce Antler. (Some of the essays are individually listed and annotated elsewhere on this bibliography.)

Antler, Joyce. You Never Call! You Never Write: A History of the Jewish Mother. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 321p.
A nuanced history of the American Jewish mother — stereotypes and reality — with chapters on self-sacrificing immigrant mothers, the iconic figure of Molly Goldberg, Jewish mother jokes, an anthropological study, and the “monster mother” (Sophie Portnoy), followed by a reconsideration and return to a more positive description by feminist scholars, and a postmodern take featuring Roseanne (Barr), The Nanny and more.

Apte, Helen Jacobus. Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman. Edited by Marcus D. Rosenbaum. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998. 222 p.
Personal life of a Jewish woman born in Georgia in 1889 who spent her married life in Tampa, Miami, and Atlanta. The diary spans 1909-1946, with contextual historical commentary and editing by her grandson, journalist Rosenbaum.

Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997. 329 p.
Tells Gratz’s life story (1781-1869) set in the context of the Civil War and other events and important themes characteristic of 19th century Jewish life in America: assimilation, developing an Americanized religious education, incorporating increasing numbers of poor immigrant Jews, withstanding conversion, and Anti-Semitism. Gratz, who never married, devoted herself to her large extended family and to Jewish causes. She founded the first independent Jewish women’s charitable society (Female Hebrew Benevolent Society), the first Jewish Sunday school (Hebrew Sunday School), and the first American Jewish foster home. These organizations were soon copied elsewhere. In creating institutional structures that suited American Jewish life, Gratz’ influence on the development of American Judaism was immense. The section “The Lessons of the Hebrew Sunday School” is reprinted in American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader, edited by Pamela S. Nadell, 26-42. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Benson, Evelyn Rose. As We See Ourselves: Jewish Women in Nursing.Indianapolis, IN: Center Nursing Publishing, 2001. 196 p.
Seeks to fill the gap in nursing history, women’s history, and Jewish history by “identifying the Jewish presence in nursing and by describing the contribution of Jewish women to nursing” (Preface). Most of the book focuses on American women. Covers both the promotion of nursing as a career in such publications as The American Jewess, and a negative attitude on the part of some Jewish parents towards that profession for their daughters. Profiles prominent women such as Lillian Wald and numerous other Jewish women nurses, including many who responded to a survey the author made in 1990, and discusses the creation that same year of the Hadassah National Center for Nurses Councils.

Coan, Peter M. Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words. New York: Facts on File, 1997. 432 p.
Among the 140 oral history interviews conducted through the 1990s and sampled in the book, of people who entered the United States through Ellis Island, are life stories of numerous Jewish women from throughout Europe, as well as one each from Turkey and Palestine. The volume was produced in cooperation with the Ellis Island Research Foundation. Except for a few well-known immigrants, the narrators are referred to by pseudonyms.

Cohen, Jocelyn and Daniel Soyer. My Future is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 328p.
Anthology of selected responses to the essay contest “Why I Left Europe and What I Have Accomplished in America,” sponsored by the Yiddish Scientific Institute-YIVO in 1942, not long after YIVO relocated from Vilna to New York City. Over 200 essays in Yiddish were submitted, which are still housed in YIVO. In order to make the stories more accessible, Cohen and Soyer selected nine, which they translated and annotated. Of the nine, five are by women: Minnie Goldstein, Rose Schoenfeld, Rose Silverman, Bertha Fox, and Minnie Kusnetz. The essays trace their origins in Eastern Europe, emigration to America, and events and accomplishments in their lives in America. In their introduction, Cohen and Soyer discuss the modes of autobiographical writing these essay writers echo, including the theme of loss of religious faith and practices, commitment to Socialist principles, and working their way up from poverty to comfort. Unlike most published memoirs, the YIVO autobiographies “give an intimate view of gender relations in marriage, from the joys of shared domesticity to deep conflict over money, religion, emigration, and politics, both in Europe and America” (p.14).

Cohen, Sandor B. Women in the Military: a Jewish Perspective. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Jewish Military History, 1999. 72 p.
Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museum in 1999. Replete with photographs tracing the history of women in the military and highlighting the participation of Jewish women. Twelve Jewish women, for example, were included in the first graduating class of officers in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), Fort Des Moines, Iowa, August 1942. Women from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, and other states reminisce about their stints in the WAACs (and its successor after 1943, the Women’s Army Corps, or WACs), the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs), and the Navy Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVEs). Military nurses from Confederate hospital matron Phoebe Levy Pember through Vietnam nurse Marita Silverman, and chaplains Rabbi Bonnie Koppel and Rabbi Chana Timoner are also featured. Since 1978 women serve in the regular armed forces rather than in special corps, and Jewish women have continued to be represented among them.

Coser, Rose Laub, Laura S. Anker, and Andrew J. Perrin. Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. 162 p.
Based on interviews with women who came to America after World War II collected as part of a “World of Our Mothers” project conducted in the early 1980s, this work is a collaboration between a sociologist (Coser) and historian (Anker). Coser wrote Part One: “Immigrant Women and Families” (edited by Perrin following Coser’s death), and Anker Part Two: “Women, Work, and Migration.” Extensive quotations from the interviews let the women speak for themselves. Among the findings is that work outside the home was very important to the majority of women in establishing their self-worth and for the female friendships forged in the workplace. One significant difference between the Jewish and Italian women was that the Jewish women received more help from relatives and organizations than did their Italian counterparts. The authors deposited the complete interview transcripts in the Henry A. Murray Research Center, Radcliffe Institute.

Danzi, Angela D. From Home to Hospital: Jewish and Italian American Women and Childbirth, 1920-1940. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997. 200 p.
Contrasts the choice of most Jewish women giving birth after 1920 to consult physicians and have their babies in hospitals with the varying patterns of Italian women. Some Italians continued to give birth at home, assisted by midwives; others went to hospitals. Still others had their first births at home and later deliveries in hospitals. Danzi’s interviews reveal that the choices were shaped by advice from women relatives and friends and personal relationships with physicians.

Diner, Hasia R. and Beryl Lieff Benderly. Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America From Colonial Times to the Present.New York: Basic Books, 2002. 462 p.
Distills a generation of scholarship on the history of Jewish women in America into a sustained and lively narrative that emphasizes the influence of gender on all facets of the lives of Jewish women (and men). Supports the notion that without an understanding of the distinctive experiences of Jewish women with respect to education, family, work, community, and leisure, American Jewish history is incomplete and inaccurate. While primarily a social history, Her Works Praise Her is filled with portraits of individual women, some already renowned and others deserving to be better known.

Epstein, Helen, editor. Jewish Women 2000: Conference Papers From the HRIJW International Scholarly Exchanges, 1997-1998. Working Paper, 6. Waltham, MA: Hadassah Research Institute on Jewish Women, 1999. 242 p.
Among the papers are three that address North American Jewish women’s history and contemporary status: “Jewish Women in the United States,” by Riv-Ellen Prell; “Canadian Jewish and Female,” by Norma Baumel Joseph; and “Bookends,” by Pamela S. Nadell, which discusses the writing of Jewish women’s history from The Jewish Woman in America, edited by Charlotte Baum, Paula Hyman, and Sonya Michel (Dial Press, 1975) through Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (Routledge, 1997) and her Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985 (Beacon Press, 1998).

Feldberg, Michael, editor. Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, in association with the American Jewish Historical Society, 2002. 243 p.
Compilation of 120 of the weekly “Chapters in American Jewish History” columns in the English-language Jewish newspaper, The Forward, from 1997 onward, written by Feldberg. Women who have been the subject of these vignettes include (in the order in which they appear in the book): Abigail Levy Franks, Emma Goldman, Rebecca Gratz, Penina Moïse, Alice Davis Menken, Emma Lazarus, Tiby Savitt, Ernestine Rose, Frances Wisebart Jacobs, Minnie Low, Celia Greenstone, Regina Margareten, Lane Bryant Malsin, Henrietta Szold, Golda Meir, and Ruth Gruber. Each column is approximately 800 words.

Ford, Carol Bell. The Girls: Jewish Women of Brownsville, Brooklyn, 1940-1995. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 217 p.
Based on oral history interviews, The Girls examines the lives of 41 Jewish women from the same neighborhood in Brooklyn who came of age in two decades, the 1940s and 1950s. While women of both decades were expected to work only until marriage, the work choice of the 1940s cohort was by and large restricted to office work, whereas some of the 1950s women attended college and became teachers. Many in both groups re-entered the workforce by the late 1960s — the 1940s women mostly to offices and the 1950s group to a variety of careers following a return to college for completion of undergraduate and graduate degrees. Adds significantly to the scant information on Jewish women of the post-war period.

Goldman, Karla. Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. 275 p.
Traces how the “redefinition of women’s religious place,” achieved through step-by-step elimination of separate seating by sex in the sanctuary, the introduction of organs and mixed choirs, and expansion of roles for women in communal organizations, was used by nineteenth century male leaders of Reform Judaism to Americanize their movement. These reforms, along with others that created a more decorous atmosphere in the sanctuary emulated middle and upper class Protestant churches in an attempt to gain respectability. Women were no mere bystanders to change. They founded temple sisterhoods and the National Council of Jewish Women, moving American Jewish women to a more “conspicuous public religious identity” (p.172). Goldman situates these developments within the context of nineteenth century American Jewish life and society at large.

Guberman, Jayne K. In Our Own Voices: A Guide to Conducting Life History Interviews with American Jewish Women. Boston: Jewish Women’s Archive, 2005. 103p.
Produced for the Jewish Women’s Archive, In Our Own Voices is blueprint for conducting life history interviews based on ten frameworks, each introduced by a Jewish women’s history scholar: family (Paula E. Hyman), education Pamela S. Nadell), work (Hasia Diner), community service (Dianne Ashton), Jewish identities (Karla Goldman), home and place (Jenna Weissman Joselit), leisure and culture (Riv-Ellen Prell), health and sexuality (Beth Wenger), women’s identities (Joyce Antler), and history and world events (Regina Morantz-Sanchez). Includes photographs by Joan Roth and an introduction by Joyce Antler.

Hyman, Paula E. Jewish Feminism Faces the American Women’s Movement: Convergence and Divergence. Ann Arbor: Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, 1997. 20 p.
In this David W. Belin Lecture in American Jewish Affairs, Hyman reflects on the origins and development of Jewish feminism in the 1960s and early 1970s, as affected by the American women’s movement, and later inward turn towards influencing Jewish institutions, religious practices, and the field of Jewish Studies. Finds most Jewish feminists to be in the liberal feminist camp, striving for equality, except among the Orthodox, who favor an essentialist feminist view in which women are nurturers with a higher degree of spirituality.

Igra, Anna R. Wives Without Husbands: Marriage, Desertion & Welfare in New York, 1900-1933. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 175p.
Uses a sampling of case files from the National Desertion Bureau, a Jewish agency in New York set up to locate husbands of destitute wives who applied for aid, Igra delineates how and why marriage became an instrument of private and later public social policy. The concept of “desertion” was more about money than presence or absence of husbands. According to Igra, “[i]t was a woman’s marital status combined with her application for aid that earned her the label “deserted woman” (p.2). Themes explored in the book include the shift from responsibility of both husband and wife to support their family, which was more characteristic of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, to the husband as sole breadwinner, which was the dominant view in America; the establishment of domestic relations courts; characterization of deserters as self-indulgent; and antidesertion reformist rhetoric of female dependence. Igra also analyzes the dispositions of the 300 cases she examined and how Depression relief programs in the 1930s incorporated policies developed by the National Desertion Bureau and its supporters. In an epilogue she discusses persistent aspects of the antidesertion reform movement, including the linkage between law enforcement and the welfare system and the assumption that marriage keeps women and children out of poverty.

Jackson, Naomi M. Convergent Movements: Modern Dance and Jewish Culture at the 92nd Street Y. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000. 288 p.
In this study of the influence of the 92nd Street Y on dance history from the 1930s through the 1950s, much attention is paid to the contribution of Jews in shaping contemporary dance. Chapter 7, “Synthesizing the Universal & Particular: Producing ‘Jewish Dance’ at the Y” (pp.171-206) describes several individual Jewish dancers and choreographers, mostly female, who performed works with Jewish themes at the Y, including Lillian Shapero, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, Pearl Lang, and Katya Delakova.

Joselit, Jenna Weissman. Aspiring Women: A History of the Jewish Foundation for Education of Women. New York: Jewish Foundation for Education of Women, 1996. 76 p.
History spanning some 115 years and numerous name changes of a New York City institution devoted to educational opportunities for women. Begins in 1880, with the Downtown Sabbath School (later the Hebrew Technical School for Girls), where founder Minnie Louis and her staff dispensed “religion and cookies in equal measure” (p.6). Describes the cultural and vocational training offered early in the twentieth century and the shift in the 1930s to offering college scholarships, eventually to both Jewish and non-Jewish young women. Includes numerous photographs.

Kafka, Phillipa, editor. “Lost on the Map of the World”: Jewish-American Women’s Quest for Home in Essays and Memoirs, 1890-Present. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 255 p.
Contains an excerpt Dina Elenbogen’s manuscript Drawn From Water: An American Poet Encounters Israel and the Ethiopian Jews, articles on Anzia Yezierska’s The Bread Givers (by Philippe Codde), E.M. Broner’s A Weave of Women (by Ranen Omer-Sherman), and Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (by Tobin Belzer), as well as contemporary essays by Barbara Finkelstein, Batya Weinbaum, Ruth Knafo Setton, and Phillipa Kafka, all of which dwell on aspects of Jewish American women’s identity and search for “home.”

Kalinowski, Andrea. Stories Untold: Jewish Pioneer Women 1850-1910: The Art of Andrea Kalinowski. Santa Fe: Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts, distributed by the Museum of New Mexico Press, 2002. 32 p.
Catalog of a traveling exhibit organized by the Museum of Fine Arts of the work of Andrea Kalinowski who designed quilt patterns to tell the stories of individual Jewish women pioneers. Each quilt design is accompanied by an excerpt from a memoir or archival resource. The catalog includes an interview with Kalinowski and color reproductions of ten quilts and their accompanying stories. Exhibit is online athttp://www.storiesuntold.org/main.html.

Klapper, Melissa R. Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 310p.
Explores the nexus of gender, class, and Jewish identity for American Jewish girls in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, through diaries, periodicals, school records, etc. Pays particular attention to middle class adolescents who lived in places other than New York City and who were born in the U.S., sometimes into families already here for generations. The first chapter provides grounding in the history of adolescence, Jews in America, and gender roles. The second discusses the formal education of Jewish girls (see also her “‘A Long and Broad Education’: Jewish Girls and the Problem of Education in America, 1860-1920” listed elsewhere on this bibliography); the third at alternative forms of education for working class girls (see also her “Jewish Women and Vocational Education in New York City, 1885-1925” listed elsewhere on this bibliography); and the fourth at the gendered nature of Jewish religious education. While boys continued to be sent to traditional cheders, parents were more willing to send girls to more Americanized supplemental religious schools, or to Zionist or Yiddish schools. As Jews acculturated, the responsibility for continuing Jewish life fell more and more on women, and the importance of educating girls Jewishly increased. The last chapter takes up the engagement of Jewish girls with youth culture, but circumscribed by their desire to remain within Jewish religious culture.

Kolmerten, Carol A. The American Life of Ernestine L. Rose. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999. 300 p.
Biography of an atheist, socialist, freethinking suffrage leader and fiery orator, born in Poland to a rabbi and his wife in 1810. She lived in America from 1836-1869, where she campaigned vigorously for women’s rights; but as a foreigner and Jew (despite her atheism), she was considered an outsider by other leaders of the American women’s movement, and she spent the rest of her life in England.

Levin, Martin, and Esther Kustanowitz. It Takes a Dream: the Story of Hadassah. Hewlett, NY: Gefen, 2002. 407 p.
A narrative history of the Women’s Zionist Organization of America for general audiences, abridged by Kustanowitz from a 1997 edition by Levin, which in turn was an updated edition of his Balm in Gilead (New York: Schocken, 1973). Based on interviews with participants and published accounts, although specific sources are not generally cited or listed.

Litt, Jacquelyn S. Medicalized Motherhood: Perspectives From the Lives of African-American and Jewish Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000. 189 p.
Demonstrates how the process of medicalization of mothering through advice given by pediatricians and other experts “reflected and fueled ethnoracial and social class divisions among women” (p.13). Based on interviews with 18 Jewish and 20 African American women who raised their children in the 1930s and 1940s. Chapter 1 surveys the history of “scientific motherhood.” Chapter 2 shows how Jewish mothers adapted medicalized motherhood to signify their move up into the American middle class. Chapter 3 looks at working class African Americans, who remained distant from modern medicine. Chapters 4-6 examine the influence of women’s networks on the acceptance of medicalized motherhood. The networks facilitated the adoption of medicalized motherhood by both Jewish and African American middle class women, but did not do so for poor and working class African Americans.

Lonstein, Ann. NCJW, the First 100 Years: A History of the National Council of Jewish Women, Greater Minneapolis Section. Minneapolis: NCJW, Greater Minneapolis Section, 1999. 20 p.
Sixteen-page history of the local section of the National Council of Jewish Women.

McCune, Mary. ‘The Whole Wide World, Without Limits:’ International Relief, Gender Politics, and American Jewish Women, 1893-1930. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. 280p.
The quotation in the title comes from National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) founder Hannah G. Solomon who in 1920 optimistically touted the expansion of women’s sphere through the activities of her organization and others over the prior 30 years. While the roles had definitely expanded and the accomplishments were many, McCune traces how three Jewish women’s efforts in three organizations were affected by gender politics. Two of the groups were women’s organizations: the NCJW and Hadassah, while the third was the Workmen’s Circle (Arbeiter Ring). During the period studied, NCJW attracted upper-class women of Central European/German descent; Hadassah also drew on such women for its leadership, though members were more from Eastern European backgrounds, while the Workmen’s Circle women were working-class and socialist. Hadassah was explicitly a Zionist organization; NCJW and Workmen’s Circle members varied in their attitudes towards formation of a Jewish state. Organized chronologically, the first chapter discusses the founding and early years of the organizations, paying attention to gender and class. Chapter two describes their relief efforts during World War I, both in concert with Jewish men and gentile women. Chapter three looks at the struggles NCJW and Hadassah faced after the War to assert their independent identities away from male-led groups and chapter four finds those two organizations drawing together in their projects, though they still differed towards Zionism. The last chapter details the formation of separate women’s groups within the Workmen’s Circle. (Since portions of the book appeared earlier as articles, for further description, look for McCune citations in the Journal Articles and Book Chapters section of this bibliography.).

Mohl, Raymond A., Matilda Bobbi Graff, and Shirley M. Zoloth. South of the South: Jewish Activists and the Civil Rights Movement in Miami, 1945-1960. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. 264 p.
Traces the emergence of civil rights activism in Miami through focusing on two Jewish women activists who moved there from the North: Bobbi Graff in the left-wing Civil Rights Congress (CRC) and Shirley Zoloth in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which held numerous sit-ins in downtown Miami that forced the desegregation of public accommodations in that city. Their roles are documented through their own writings: “The Historic Continuity of the Civil Rights Movement,” a memoir written in 1971 by Graff covering the years 1946-1954, published for the first time in the book, and CORE reports, minutes, correspondence and published articles by Zoloth. The originals of the CORE materials are in the CORE Papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. The two women did not overlap in Miami and never met. Graff worked against the Ku Klux Klan and publicized police brutality against Blacks, including murders by police of some of the Black men charged with raping a white woman in the Groveland case. Red-baited in the McCarthy era, Graff fled Miami for Canada in 1954. Interviewed over 30 years later, Graff said “Our biggest crime was bringing Blacks and whites together” (p.47). Zoloth arrived in Miami a few weeks after Graff departed. She was a co-founder of the Miami CORE chapter, and her CORE reports document the Miami lunch counter demonstrations of 1959.

Morris, Bonnie J. Lubavitcher Women in America: Identity and Activism in the Postwar Era. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. 186 p.
Uses articles in the Lubavitcher women’s journal, De Yiddishe Heim, and other sources to describe the response of Lubavitcher women in post-World War II America to assimilation and feminism within American Jewish life. Shows how the women were willing agents of the Rebbe, skillfully co-opting feminist arguments and marketing the superiority of community and service to others over personal autonomy.

Nadell, Pamela S., editor. American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2003. 326 p.
Reprints significant recent articles and book chapters that chart the new research in American Jewish women’s history. (Most of them appear elsewhere on this bibliography and are described there.) Nadell provides a general introduction and introductions to sectional divisions: “Sense of Place” sets out how early Jewish settlers created a home in America. “Worlds of Difference” charts the upheaval and changes wrought by the East European migration; “A Wider World” examines the years between the World Wars and the cultural draw of New York City; and “Fierce Attachments” surveys the transitions, stereotypes, and activism of the postwar era. Contents: “Portraits of a Community: the Image and Experience of Early American Jews, by Ellen Smith; The Lessons of the Hebrew Sunday School, by Dianne Ashton; “A Great Awakening: the Transformation that Shaped Twentieth-Century American Judaism,” by Jonathan D. Sarna; “Gone to Another Meeting: the National Council of Jewish Women, 1893-1993,” by Faith Rogow; “Borrowers or Lenders Be: Jewish Immigrant Women’s Credit Networks,” by Shelly Tenenbaum; “‘We Dug More Rocks’: Women and Work,” by Linda Mack Schloff; “Organizing the Unorganizable: Three Jewish Women and Their Union,” by Alice Kessler-Harris; “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: the New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” by Paula E. Hyman; “Zion in Our Hearts: Henrietta Szold and the American Jewish Women’s Movement,” by Joyce Antler; “The Jewish Priestess and Ritual: the Sacred Life of American Orthodox Women,” by Jenna Weissman Joselit; “The Women Who Would be Rabbis,” by Pamela S. Nadell; “Budgets, Boycotts, and Babies: Jewish Women in the Great Depression,” by Beth S. Wenger; “Angels ‘Rewolt!’: Jewish Women in Modern Dance in the 1930s,” by Julia L. Foulkes; “The ‘Me’ of Me: Voices of Jewish Girls in Adolescent Diaries of the 1920s and 1950s,” Joan Jacobs Brumberg; “Rage and Representation: Jewish Gender Stereotypes in American Culture,” by Riv-Ellen Prell; “‘From the Recipe File of Luba Cohen’: A Study of Southern Jewish Foodways and Cultural Identity, by Marcie Cohen Ferris; “Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement,” by Debra L. Schultz; and “Jewish Feminism Faces the American Women’s Movement: Convergence and Divergence,” by Paula E. Hyman.

———. Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 300 p.
Recounts the long struggle for women’s ordination as rabbis, from 1889, when Mary M. Cohen argued for it in a short story published in thePhiladelphia Jewish Exponent, through the 1970s and 1980s, by which time the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Movements in the United States had all ordained women; and speculates on the possibilities within Orthodoxy today. Shows how several women in the first half of the twentieth century tried in isolation to receive ordination, but were each rebuffed. It was not until the 1960s, when female students in Jewish seminaries supported each other in making their case, buttressed by the sweeping changes in American society that opened many previously locked doors for women, that rabbinical ordination had a real chance to succeed.

Nadell, Pamela S., and Jonathan D. Sarna, Edited by Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 2001. 322 p.
Includes essays that demonstrate the deep significance of women to the history of American Judaism. “[F]rom the colonial era to the close of the twentieth century, American women, committed to Judaism and to their own Jewish communities, repeatedly reshaped Judaism and helped to redefine the place of men and women within it” (Introduction, p.12). See descriptions of the individual essays in the Articles section of this bibliography.

Powell, Lawrence N. Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 593 p.
Most of the book chronicles Anne Skorecki Levy and her family’s experiences during the Holocaust and re-establishment in New Orleans. The last sections include description of how she challenged Neo-Nazi David Duke and his supporters by speaking in public about what had befallen her and her family.

Prell, Riv-Ellen. Fighting to Become Americans: Jews Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. 319 p.
An anthropological look at gender stereotypes throughout the twentieth century. Describes how the working immigrant Jewish woman image of the early twentieth century gave way in one generation to the epitome of conspicuous consumer. In Prell’s view, that was the ticket for the whole family into middle class American life. Through use of popular culture imagery as well as other sources, Prell demonstrates how Jewish women — especially the Jewish Mother and her Jewish American Princess daughter — became the primary seat of Jewishness in the family and the brunt of prejudices and Jewish self-hatred, while Jewish men went off to successful business and professional careers, largely “untainted” by Jewishness. See also her “Rage and Representation: Jewish Gender Stereotypes in American Culture.” In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture,edited by Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 248-266. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990, and reprinted in American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader, edited by Pamela S. Nadell, 238-255. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Reinharz, Shulamit and Mark A. Raider. American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England, 2005. 393p.
Covers significant individuals, organizations, and themes in the involvement of American Jewish women in supporting Israel from the pre-state era through the first decades of statehood. Contents: THREE GENERATIONS OF AMERICAN JEWISH WOMEN AND THE ZIONIST IDEA: Emma Lazarus and Pre-Herzlian Zionism, by Arthur Zeiger, along with The Banner of the Jew (1882), by Emma Lazarus; The Zionist Vision of Henrietta Szold, by Allon Gal, along with Keeping the Torch Burning (1936), an exchange of correspondence between Beatrice Barron and Henrietta Szold; Marie Syrkin: An Exemplary Life, by Carole S. Kessner, along with Why Partition? (Nov., 1946), by Marie Syrkin. AMERICAN JEWISH WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS AND THE ZIONIST ENTERPRISE: “Never a Rubber Stamp”: Bessie Gotsfeld, Founder of Mizrachi Women of America, by Baila Round Shargel; Formulating the “Women’s Interpretation of Zionism”: Hadassah Recruitment of Non-Zionist American Women, 1914-1930, by Mary McCune; Hadassah-WIZO Canada and the Development of Agricultural Training for Women in Pre-State Israel, by Esther Carmel-Hakim; The Impact of Zionism on the International Council of Jewish Women, 1914-1957, by Nelly Las; Women and Zionist Activity in Erez Israel: The Case of Hadassah, 1913-1958, by Mira Katzburg-Yungman. ALIYAH, SOCIAL IDENTITIES, AND POLITICAL CHANGE: Settling the Old-New Homeland: The Decisions of American Jewish Women during the Interwar Years, by Joseph B. Glass; Em Leemahot: The Public Health Contributions of Sara Bodek Paltiel to the Yishuv and Israel, by Peri Rosenfeld; Rose Viteles: The Double Life of an American Woman in Palestine, by Sara Kadosh; Irma “Rama” Lindheim: An Independent American Zionist Woman, by Shulamit Reinharz; Golda Meir and Other Americans, by Marie Syrkin; Golda: Femininity and Feminism, by Anita Shapira. WOMEN REPORT AND REMEMBER: DOCUMENTARY PORTRAITS: Contemplating Aliyah to Palestine (Chelsea, Massachusetts, 1935), by Judith Korim Hornstein; From Brooklyn to Palestine in 1939 (Kibbutz Kfar Blum, 1985), by Engee Caller; They Couldn’t Imagine an American Girl Would Do the Work (Kibbutz Revivim, 1971), by Golda Meir; Memories of Rose Luria Halprin (Norwalk, Connecticut, 1999), by Ruth Halprin Kaslove • Coming of Age in Kibbutz (Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek, 1954), by Irma “Rama” (Levy) Lindheim; Life in a Religious Kibbutz (New York, New York, 1999), by Yocheved Herschlag Muffs; I Became a Zionist on the Top Floor (Bethesda, Maryland, 1999), by Lois Slott; Remembering Israel’s War of Independence (Givat Savyon, Israel, 1999), by Zipporah Porath. Also includes a Timeline of American Jewish Women and Zionism in Historical Context, 1848-1948.

Schofield, Ann. To Do & To Be: Portraits of Four Women Activists, 1893-1986. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997. 183 p.
Labor leaders Pauline Newman and Rose Pesotta are two of the four portrayals of activists committed to bettering conditions for working women.

Schultz, Debra L. Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 229 p.
Based on interviews with 15 Northern, secular Jewish women who were among those who went South between 1960-1966 to participate in freedom rides, sit-ins, voter registration drives, and adult literacy campaigns; to teach in Freedom schools; and to help integrate public facilities. Schultz probes their reasons for participating, which included acting on the liberal values instilled by their parents, suffused with Jewish commitment to improving the world; drawing a lesson from the Holocaust, when most people stood by and did nothing to derail it; and a personal need to escape, at least temporarily, the limited choices then available to women. An important contribution to the histories of Jews, women, radicals, and civil rights, and especially to the intersection of these fields. Pages 1-18 of the book are reprinted in American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader, edited by Pamela S. Nadell, 281-296. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Schwartz, Shuly Rubin. The Rabbi’s Wife: The Rebbetzin in American Jewish Life. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 312p.
Comprehensive look at the contributions of the rebbetzin to American Jewish communal life, paying particular attention to prominent individual rebbetzins. (See also articles by her on this subject cited elsewhere on this bibliography.).

Simmons, Erica B. Hadassah and the Zionist Project. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Surveys Hadassah from its founding in 1912 through Youth Aliyah efforts during World War II and into the 1950s. Views the organization from the lens of American Progressivism. 241p.

Staub, Michael E. The Jewish 1960s: An American Sourcebook. 371p.
Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England, 2004. “Jewish Women and Feminism” constitutes Part 12 (pp. 317-348) of this anthology. “A Comfortable Concentration Camp?” by Betty Friedan, is excerpted from her The Feminine Mystique, showing her use of analogy that was deeply Jewish, if deeply flawed). “Jewish Women: Life Force of a Culture?” by the Brooklyn Bridge Collective rails against a culture centered on the Jewish man and called for Jewish women to “get together and fight to determine for ourselves what is a Jewish Woman.” Rachel Adler’s oft-cited “The Jew Who Wasn’t There: Halacha and the Jewish Woman” is next, in which Adler states that women (along with children and Canaanite slaves) were viewed by Jewish law as peripheral Jews. It is time, she argues, for changes within the system: halachic scholars should “make it possible for women to claim their share in the Torah and begin to do the things a Jew was created to do.” Paula Hyman’s “The Other Half: Women in the Jewish Tradition” also calls for Jewish feminists’ demands to be taken seriously — that they are not “self-hating,” but rather committed Jews calling for a way to fulfill themselves as Jews and as women. “Jewish Women Call for Change,” by Ezrat Nashim, a feminist group raised in the Conservative Movement, where they participated fully in religious schools, camps, and youth organizations, called upon the Movement to grant women equality in participation in religious life and encouragement to assume leadership roles in the community. In the last of the six items in the section is “The Population Panic,” Shirley Frank gives examples of worried statements about the “demographic crisis” of low birth rate among American Jews. “Why now?” she asks — at a time when women are establishing careers not hospitable to them in the past — and why just point to fertility as a guarantor of Jewish survival, instead of “making Judaism and Jewish life clearly meaningful and necessary”? She detects the whiff of antifeminism in the rhetoric. Except for The Feminine Mystique, which was published in 1963, the rest of the contributions appeared in the 1970s, when the seeds of Jewish feminism planted in the 1960s began to sprout.

Stone, Ellen Hallet. A Homeland in the West: Utah Jewish Remember.Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001. 500 p.
Selection of 65 excerpts from archived and current Jewish oral histories and reminiscences of Utah Jews, including several women. Examples include Eva Siegel (“Naches in Nephi”); Claire Steres Bernstein (“Keeping Kosher in Vernal”); Berenice Matz Engelberg (“A Minority Child”); and Esther Rosenblatt Landa (“Busy as a Bird Dog”). Footnoted and edited by Hallet Stone.

Sturman, Gladys and David Epstein, edited by. Jewish Women of the American West: An Anthology of Articles Published in Western States Jewish History. Los Angeles: Western States Jewish History Association, 2003. 232 p.
Corresponds to volume 35, no. 3-4 double issue of the journal. Reprints short articles on individual Jewish women, their organizations and endeavors in the region. Includes articles on Selma Gruenberg Lewis, the namesake of Selma, CA; Ray Frank, the “girl rabbi” of the West; labor organizer Rose Pesotta; San Francisco television cook Edith Green; and others.

Weiner, Hollace Ava. Jewish “Junior League”: the Rise and Demise of the Fort Worth Council of Jewish Women. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2008.
A history of the organization, from pioneer days through “triumphs beyond women’s traditional sphere,” and its demise, or “downside of success.”

Women of Reform Judaism (U.S.). In Pursuit of Justice: Resolutions and Policy Statements. New York: Women of Reform Judaism, The Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1998.
First published in 1988, this work collects the full texts of resolutions and policy statements by Women of Reform Judaism on issues that affected American society and Jewish life in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere since the founding of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods in 1913. The topics that recurred the most dealt with civil rights, Israel, or the United Nations. There was also a steady stream calling for women’s equality within the Reform Movement and in society at large. The resolutions include action components, such as getting the word out to appropriate officials and agencies, setting up study commissions, strengthening community services, etc.

Women of Valor: A Guide to Celebrating Jewish Women’s History. Brookline, MA: Jewish Women’s Archive and Ma’yan: the Jewish Women’s Project, a program of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side (Manhattan, New York), 1997-2002.
Series of annual packets issued in conjunction with posters of Jewish women designed to increase awareness of individual Jewish women who made a difference. The packets contain biographies, best practices, and other curricular suggestions. Three women were selected each of the six years. They are 1997: Glikl of Hameln, Rose Schneiderman, and Henrietta Szold; 1998: Rebecca Gratz, Lillian D. Wald, and Molly Picon; 1999: Emma Lazarus, Hannah Greenebaum Solomon, and Justine Wise Polier; 2000: Bella Abzug, Barbara Myerhoff, and Bobbie Rosenfeld; 2001: Beatrice Alexander, Gertrude Elion, and Ray Frank; 2002: Emma Goldman, Anna Sokolow, and Gertrude Weil. Exhibits about the women are mounted on the Jewish Women’s Archive website: http://www.jwa.org.