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"Not just ladies that lunch": Hadassah and the formation of American Jewish identity

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"Not just ladies that lunch": Hadassah and the formation of American Jewish identity

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Content “NOT JUST LADIES THAT LUNCH”:
HADASSAH AND THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN JEWISH IDENTITY
Copyright 2005
by
Shirli Brautbar
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)
December 2005
Shirli Brautbar
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UMI Number: 3220087
Copyright 2005 by
Brautbar, Shirli
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As with most academic works, this dissertation has been the product of a
collective effort. I would like to thank the University of Southern California’s
History Department for supporting and nurturing my scholastic devolvement and
providing a supportive environment for my research both financially and otherwise.
In addition the Graduate School at the University of Southern California granted
several fellowships that supported my research. I am especially thankful to my
advisor Lois Banner at the University of Southern California History Department for
her unwavering support and guidance throughout the years and for the countless
times she read and edited the dissertation. I would also like to thank David Kaufman
at Hebrew University College for his advice and Carla Kaplan in the English
Department of the University of Southern California for her input on the dissertation.
Over the years Professor Terry Seip has aided in my academic development both in
my teaching and writing and in doing so has also assisted me in completing this
dissertation. Joe Styles I would like to thank for helping me to negotiate the
bureaucratic quagmire that is evident in any university and for always acting as my
advocate. The Casden Center for the Study of Jewish Life in America under the
directorship of Professor Barry Glassner also provided me generous support in the
form of the Winnik Family Fellowship.
This dissertation could not have been written without the skillful expertise of
Susan Woodland at the Hadassah Archive at the Center for Jewish History in New
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iii
York. She is a credit to her profession having organized the collection in such a way
that it is easily managed by scholars. More importantly she took the time to assist
me on this project at every step of the way. In addition, I also utilized the archives at
the Philadelphia Historical Society, the Bremen institute, and the Library of
Congress and would like to thank all the archivists at those collections that helped
along the way.
On a personal note, I would not have the academic curiosity that I have today
had my parents not raised me to always ask questions and to revere learning. They
have been there for me throughout this sometimes exhausting process. Most of all,
my husband, Pete La Chapelle has served as editor and cheer leader for the years it
has taken to write this dissertation. He is simply the best. I would also like to thank
Sigalit Klien, liana Fisher, Jaques Brautbar, Wilma Brokehusin, and Cathy Cook for
their support throughout the years. Lastly, but not least, our latest addition to the
family-our son Asher-brings a joy to my heart and inspires me to be the best I can be
in every way.
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iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract v
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 A State is Bom: Hadassah and the New State of Israel 27
Chapter 2 A “Bulwark Against Communism”: Hadassah’s Political
Activism in Foreign Policy and Domestic Issues 64
Chapter 3 “Ema” or “Conscious Jewess”: Jewish Matemalism,
Activism, and Gender Roles in the 1950s 117
Chapter 4 Hadassah Women on the American Scene
During the 1960s 160
Chapter 5 From the Six Day War to Nuclear Disarmament:
Hadassah and Foreign Policy in the 1960s 195
Conclusion 235
Bibliography 241
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ABSTRACT
My dissertation explores how Jewish women used the preeminent women’s
Zionist organization, Hadassah, during the post-World War II era as an avenue to
fashion a new vision of women’s roles within the Jewish community and to create a
place for women’s participation within Jewish political and philanthropic culture. I
argue that while confronting various social, cultural, and political forces, these
women challenged traditional social and gender roles. In doing so, they combined
their own sense of identity as women with certain important new notions of Jewish
identity and community.
Founded in 1912 by Henrietta Szold, Hadassah grew to become not only the
most influential women’s Zionist organization but also the largest Zionist
membership organization in the world. In 1968 Hadassah boasted the largest
membership of 300,000 people and by 1984 it had retained its status as the largest
Zionist organization with 385,000 members. While often dismissed in the
historiography as lacking in substance, this dissertation will argue that on the
contrary Hadassah served as a potent force on both the international and domestic
political scene. Hadassah women contributed to the development of an
“emancipated” Jewish American woman whose purpose in life extended well beyond
the confines of the domestic sphere into the arena of fund-raising, politics, education
and an over all sense of self importance. Jewish identity served as the basic
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language from which to build a new discourse on gender and culture. During the
post-world war II era, a period in American history which saw the rise of gender
conservatism, Hadassah provided an alternative avenue with which to challenge the
dominant historical trend of domesticity. At the same time Hadassah often
incorporated regressive gender roles such as matemalism and modified its essence in
order to expand matemalist sensibility beyond the domestic sphere.
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INTRODUCTION
1
My earliest memory of life in America is of my older sister wading in a pool
under the California sunshine and talking about missing home. Home, at that time,
meant Israel. Yardnu—the Hebrew term for leaving Israel— actually translates as
“going down.” In the Jewish imagination, one can only “go down” from a place as
holy as Israel. Two years before, we had left Israel and immigrated to the United
States, Los Angeles no less, so that my father could pursue his career in the medical
field. At the time, I remember having difficulties adjusting to life in America and
missing my grandparents and aunts, all of whom still lived in Israel. I grew up in a
family dedicated to Zionism—making my connection to Israel pre-determined. I
attended a Jewish day school. Surrounded by American bom Jews, I observed as
they also struggled to understand the place of Israel in their lives.
Like me, they too had to contend with the tenuous position of being both
American and having an Israeli heritage. Unlike my peers, however, mine was and
is a slow unfolding process of negotiation. I noticed extreme reactions among them.
Some embraced the concept of Israel so whole-heartedly that they neglected to
notice the reality of the existing Israeli people and nation. Others detested what they
felt was a phony and forced connection to a Jewish state that seemed not only foreign
but also politically problematic.
My interest in Zionism has existed all my life, and my work as a historian
reflects my personal questions about the negotiation of Jewish identity, especially the
issue of Zionism. I am also a feminist, and thus issues of gender politics also draw
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2
my attention. After writing college papers and a master’s degree on the role of
women in Zionist pursuits in Israel I became interested in women’s history. Melding
interests in women, history and Zionism, this dissertation is a historical study of the
most powerful women’s Zionist organization in history and arguably one o f the most
influential Jewish organizations in the world, Hadassah.
The balancing of Jewishness and Zionist identity is a relatively new
phenomenon in Jewish life. For the most part, it is a byproduct of the modem era
with its revolutionary emphasis on nationalism and rights. As a historian, the
question of how Zionism - at one time a marginal political ideology— evolved into
the dominant (and some might argue hegemonic) category of today’s Jewish identity
can be answered by looking at groups like Hadassah. In its case Zionism galvanized
a pool o f Jewish women waiting for the opportunity to contribute to Jewish causes.
That marriage of ideology and activity was transmitted through Hadassah to its over
300,000 members in the 1950s, and through them to their husbands and children.
Through Hadassah membership, generations of Jewish women and their families
adopted Zionism as a central aspect of American Jewish identity.
Simultaneously, the role of women within American and Jewish culture was
re-defined through the participation of women en masse in Hadassah. As this
dissertation will show, messages about Jewish identity were interrelated with
empowering and sometimes contradictory gender ideals. Although often portrayed
in the literature and the public imagination as a women’s social club of “ladies that
lunch,” the organization’s lobbying activity and philanthropic work often served
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explicitly political purposes and carried important political repercussions, even
influencing the shifting geopolitical realities of the Cold War. For too long
historians have depicted Hadassah as having little political or cultural significance,
dismissing it as a charitable women’s organization. The actual record of the
organization, however, suggests something very different. By engaging between
300,000 and 318,000 American Jewish women in the 1950s and 1960s in a campaign
to support the nascent state of Israel, Hadassah members forged a Jewish women’s
political consciousness focused on the Jewish state while simultaneously
constructing an American Jewish women’s identity based on political and social
action.
My dissertation explores how Jewish American women used Hadassah
during the post-World War II era as a site to fashion a new vision of women’s roles
within the Jewish community and to create a place for women’s participation within
Jewish political and philanthropic culture. Hadassah proved to be a central actor in
the shaping of policy in both Israel and the United States. It provided an avenue for
women to be active participants in the formation of a Jewish identity based not on
religion or culture, but on the pursuit of political goals and humanitarian aid. I argue
that while confronting various social, cultural, and political forces, these women
challenged traditional social and gender roles. In doing so, they combined their own
sense of identity as women with important new notions of Jewish identity and
community that became a model for Jewish American society as a whole as the post-
World War II era progressed. While social activities and networking played a part in
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Hadassah these endeavors often served other purposes; they challenged commonly
held notions about women’s and Jewish identity.
Hadassah activity and ideology evolved during the 1950s and 1960s,
responding to shifting historical trends. This dissertation addresses four major
themes: gender roles and the issue of Hadassah’s role in women’s empowerment or
dis-empowerment; Hadassah’s rhetoric on both domestic and foreign policy issues
during the cold war; Hadassah’s civil rights campaigns and domestic policy
campaigns; and, finally, images and policies relating to Arabs in Hadassah discourse.
The formation of Jewish American women’s identities and the evolving political,
cultural, and social ramifications of that undergirds all these themes. As Paula
Hyman has explained in her work on gender history and Jewish history, the use of
the plural descriptor, “identities”, more accurately reflects the fluid nature of
identity:
I use this plural form here because identity is inherently shifting
rather than stable; it derives from the interaction of individual
psychology and experience with prevailing social and cultural norms.
Living in many different political, class, and cultural contexts and
functioning as individuals as well as members of a self-defined and
other defined group, Jews constructed a variety of identities in the
modem period.1
While identities are constructed by the interactions of individual psychology with
social and cultural norms, they are also inscribed through actions or “performances”
that seek to maintain or reinvent identities. In this dissertation, I seek to understand
the ways in which Hadassah articulated a discourse on identity and how the
organization applied itself in the public sphere.2
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Hadassah provided Jewish middle and upper class women with an outlet for
fulfilling political, spiritual, and educational aspirations and encouraged women to
engage in political, civic, and communal growth. At the same time Hadassah
rhetoric and activities often utilized hegemonic gender ideals of domesticity and
feminine consumer practices, such as fashion, to legitimate the participation of
women in the non-traditional sphere of public action and education. The post-World
War II era saw significant changes in women’s history, and accordingly Hadassah’s
gendered language changed over time, balancing popular trends while at the same
time contesting gender roles.
Another key historical factor analyzed in this dissertation resides in
Hadassah’s negotiation with cold war rhetoric and policy. In this area as well,
Hadassah reflected complexities and contradictions: the organization both
championed Cold War rhetoric in foreign policy issues and combated
McCarthyism’s assault on civil liberties. The area of civil rights constituted one
arena where Hadassah policy and rhetoric presented a unified stance elevating civil
rights and locating the significance of civil rights activism in both American culture
and Jewish circles.
Hadassah engaged in other domestic policy issues as well. It strongly urged
women to exercise their right to vote, while presenting a decidedly progressive and
liberal stance on domestic issues. In foreign policy, however, Hadassah took a
conservative approach and championed hard-line anti-Soviet cold war rhetoric in
order to legitimate the importance of Israel to democracy. The most conflicted
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aspect of Hadassah ideology deals with the changing images and policies concerning
Arabs and Arab states. On the surface, Hadassah subscribed to cultural pluralism
and inclusion; for example Hadassah always opened its medical and social programs
to Arabs in Israel and beyond. However, simultaneously Hadassah rhetoric walked a
fine line, arguing that Hadassah and Israel benefited Arabs who were victims of their
own culture’s social and economic backwardness, while the organization cast
aspersions on other Arabs as terrorists, aggressors, and liars. Central to this
dissertation are several issues: what did Hadassah members learn from their
participation in Hadassah? What did they learn about what it means to be a woman?
What did they learn about what it means to be a Jew and an American? And how did
Hadassah members and leadership both produce and consume a variety of messages
about identities?
Volumes could be written about Hadassah’s history. This dissertation
focuses on the impact of Hadassah on American women and American policy,
leaving the study of the political, cultural, and financial relationship between
Hadassah and the State of Israel to other historians. In addition, this dissertation is
not an organizational study in the traditional sense. It does not detail organizational
nuances and biographical narratives in an attempt to construct an overarching
organizational narrative. Instead, it addresses specific thematic and historical
questions about gender and American policy.
Founded in 1912 by American social activist Henrietta Szold, Hadassah grew
to become not only the most influential women’s Zionist organization in America,
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but also the largest Zionist organization in the world. Hadassah women contributed
to the development of an “emancipated” Jewish American woman whose purpose in
life extended well beyond the confines of the domestic sphere into the arenas of
fund-raising, politics, education, and women’s social and cultural empowerment.
Jewish cultural references served as the basic language from which Hadassah
members built a new discourse on gender and culture that altered Jewish women’s
status from an identity based on child-rearing to one grounded in worldly pursuits.
This process however was complex. While challenging some aspects of the status
quo, Hadassah ladies adopted many accepted gender roles in an effort to normalize
their activities and place themselves within an accepted sphere of women’s behavior.
During the post-World War II era, a period in American history which saw
the rise of gender conservatism, Hadassah challenged the dominant ideology of
domesticity. Hadassah took domestic ideology and turned it on its head by
portraying motherhood as a political and cultural mandate. Hadassah women were
“mothers” not only to their children but to the Jewish people in America and to the
emergent country of Israel as well as all Jewish children in general. Therefore they
were impelled to act politically on their children’s behalf. During the 1950s and
1960s Hadassah successfully reacted to new trends within the American social
milieu and adapted them to its own purpose.
One note about methodology in this dissertation: I examine both the lived
experience of women and the construction of gender roles. I examine both tangible
social history -such as events and actions taken by women in Hadassah— but also
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the realm of discourse and ways Hadassah prescribed gender and Jewish identity and
concomitantly ways in which these identities were performed.
Contribution to the Fields
This dissertation relates to the historiography of several fields: women’s and
gender history, Jewish history, and organizational history. While several recent
works have explored the early years of Hadassah in the period between 1912 and
1935, this dissertation emphasizes the era between the birth of Israel in the late 1940s
and the major social shifts of the 1960s.3 The establishment of the State of Israel in
1948 brought about a major crisis in many Zionist American organizations. The
initial purpose of Zionism—the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—
had been accomplished. Hadassah, unlike many other Jewish organizations, had
devoted much time to working in the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine
before the State of Israel was formed. Hadassah quickly adapted to a post-statehood
world by channeling programs already in place in both America and in Israel into
new state-building directions.
Mary McCune provides a gendered argument about Hadassah in its formative
period. She argues that Hadassah members ascribed to a “gender consciousness” and
actively challenged men and institutions that belittled their work.4 June Sochen
further analyzes the work of Hadassah in Palestine during the 1920s, and Naomi
Lichtenberg has written a thorough analysis of Hadassah in the early period. In
“Hadassah’s Founders and Palestine, 1912-1925: A Quest for Meaning,” she echoes
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McCune's analysis by establishing the political significance and gender challenges
faced and successfully addressed by these founding members.5 Another dissertation
on Hadassah in the early period has been written by Sandra Berliant Kadosh,
“Ideology vs. Reality: Youth Aliyah and the Rescue of Jewish Children During the
Holocaust, 1933-1945.” This work explores Hadassah’s Youth Aliyah program.6
Yaffa Schlesinger analyzes Hadassah more from an organizational perspective,
arguing that the effective Hadassah structure and the efficiency of its operation
accounts for the successful growth of the organization.7 It Takes a Dream is an
organizational history written by a “friend of Hadassah” in a straight forward and
uncomplicated fashion. Other scholars have also written about this early period.
Several biographical accounts of Hadassah matriarch Henrietta Szold also contribute
to the historiography on Hadassah.9 Michael Brown argues that Szold brought an
Americanizing progressive sensibility to her work in Palestine that brought Jews in
Palestine and the emergent state the language of values of American progressive
principles.1 0
Some of Szold’s biographies devote much attention to her unrequited love
affair with Louis Ginzberg, a renowned Jewish scholar. Between 1903 and 1909
they both contributed to the Jewish intellectual movement, with Ginzberg a
professor at the newly reorganized Jewish theological Seminary, and Szold a literary
“secretary” or unofficial editor of the Jewish Publication Society. 1 1 Szold and
Ginzberg collaborated on many publications and also were seen by many in the
12
community as a couple, but Ginzberg eventually chose to marry another woman.
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Irving Fineman’s Woman o f Valor shows a gender bias in its treatment of Szold’s
biography, defining every turn of her life by her association, or lack of ties to, a male
figure. Fineman argues that Szold’s father dominated the first part of her life and that
her relationship with Ginzberg established the second phase. According to Fineman,
Szold’s foray into Zionist activism merely constituted an avenue to break from
Ginzberg, although as Balia Round Shargel argues, Fineman’s analysis assumes that
Szold abandoned the masculine world of letters to pursue the more gender
appropriate pursuit of medical and social welfare programs.1 3 What Fineman and
others have failed to comprehend is that Szold’s work— and Hadassah’s work—
actually challenged traditional gender norms. Had its emphasis on action both on a
political and philanthropic level been promoted by men, it would have more respect
from scholars.
In addition, the emphasis by some scholars on the fact that Szold was a
“spinster” also provides an unfair gendered focus, describing her unwed status in
negative and tragic terms. Shargel's analysis of the relationship with Ginzberg shows
that while it did impact Szold’s life, it did not create the impulse to spawn Hadassah.
In fact, she argues that throughout her discourse with Ginzberg on Jewish issues,
Szold challenged Ginzberg’s exclusionary approaches to women in Judaism and then
recast her assessment of women’s role with Judaism, arguing for more involvement
of women in Jewish public life.1 4
While interest in Hadassah during its early period is warranted, in 1925
Hadassah was a small but influential organization of 15,000 members. By the 1950s
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it had exploded into a popular group numbering in the three hundred thousands.1 5 As
of yet, no scholarship has focused on Hadassah in the post-war era or beyond.
Within the field of Jewish studies, women’s studies scholars in the 1990s
called for the incorporation of Jewish women and gender studies into the historical
narrative.1 6 Subsequently, Jewish women’s historians have analyzed the ways in
which Jewish women merged their Jewishness with womanhood and American
identity. These include the historical synthesis presented in the recent book Her
Works Praise Her: a History o f Jewish Women in America from Colonial times to
the Present.1 7 Paula Hyman, in her work, has shown that Jewish assimilation into
American society shifted gender dynamics within the family, with men losing
ground as the spiritual family caretakers and women assuming the moral superiority
in line with Victorian ideals about matemalism. Other studies have examined the
Jewish women’s immigrant experience in America, especially in terms of
consumption and labor activism.1 8 Relating to a now well established field of
study, this dissertation is situated primarily within that effort to locate the lives and
voices of Jewish women within history. In addition, it also relies upon gender theory
in an effort to understand the impact of gender prescriptions on women. Therefore
this dissertation fits thematically both in the field of women’s history and also the
more recent but also established field of gender history.
Women who participated in Hadassah have long been erased from the
historical and political analysis. Even Henrietta Szold, Hadassah’s founder often
receives a gender biased analysis of her work, while the rest of the organizations
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history often is ignored. When I began my research, I had no idea of the extent of
political activism and impact Hadassah had on the larger discourse on Zionism and
American life. Recently, I gave a paper at a Jewish historical conference. Several
audience members challenged my evidence because they could not believe the level
of Hadassah’s activism and the reach of their work. It is not surprising that this is
the case, since the existing historiography contains scant or no mention of many of
the themes examined by this dissertation.
Post-colonial studies of nationalist movements have shown that while women
may be absent from political narratives, gender often acts as a site of contestation of
nationalist ideologies. Women’s bodies often take on the symbols of the battle for
nationalism, and women often bear the brunt of anxieties about imperialism. Post
war America represents a time in American history fraught with gender convulsions,
pushing women away from the “Rosie the Riveter” wartime appreciation of working
women and pulling them into domestically bound notions of womanhood and then
beginning to explode the myth of domestic tranquility in the 1960s. The choice to
focus on the period from 1948 to 1970 was a deliberate one; this dissertation seeks to
understand how one group of Jewish women contended with the waves of change
surrounding them.
My dissertation also relates to the field of women’s history more generally.
Historian Elaine Tyler May has shown how traditional gender roles and a Cold War
mentality were inextricably linked and how they dominated the lives of white
middle-class women during the 1950s.1 9 I argue that while the Cold War did have
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an impact on the lives of members of Hadassah, they often manipulated Cold War
hysteria to serve their own ends. On the one hand, they borrowed from Cold War
rhetoric to support a pro-Israel stance; on the other hand, they opposed McCarthyism
and blacklisting. In many ways Hadassah serves as a case study for how a liberal
organization wrestled with the pressures of the Cold War in America.
In post-World War II America, after the age of Rosie the Riveter, a barrage
of messages about proper womanhood insured that working women would return
home. May shows how the domestic sphere became the sole focus for many middle-
class Protestant housewives. Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor have argued that while
the atmosphere of the 1950s worked to restrict women’s voice and confine women to
the private sphere, women did attempt to challenge those gender norms through
organizations designed at furthering women’s rights. This “elite sustained”
movement of women working towards specifically feminist goals organized women
9 f)
in a time period often deemed as the “bleak and lonely years.” Women also
engaged in other types of organizations and movements that sought to address issues
not specifically related to advancing women’s rights. Social movements like the
civil rights movement drew women’s attention in this period; in addition women
joined organizations during the 1950s that while not specifically women’s rights
groups, served to place women in the public sphere and often did address women’s
rights either directly or indirectly.2 1 While Hadassah may not have been primarily a
women’s rights organization it did provide women with a foray into the public and
political realm. Often Hadassah rhetoric and policy choices reflected a desire to
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improve women’s status. Susana Levine, in her study of the American association of
University Women in the post-war era, contends:
By most accounts, the women’s movement died during the
1950s. Described by some as ‘the doldrums’ and by others as an era
in which the search for security after two decades of depression and
war led American women to focus on family life to the exclusion of
public concerns, the 1950s suggests the need for reevaluation of
feminisms fate during that decade. Women’s organizations neither
disappeared nor remained silent about women’s rights during the
cold war years.2 2
The AAUW and other women’s organizations actually grew in membership during
the 1950s.2 3 In her study Levine finds that groups like the AAUW faced with anti
communist rhetoric that also targeted women’s groups along with liberal
organizations forced some women’s organizations to shy away from challenging
McCarthyism. In fact, Levine shows that some leaders in the AAUW backed
McCarthyist ideology while others derided it, and the split in the organization on the
issues of anti-communism threatened to tear it apart with local chapters divided on
the issues.2 4
Hadassah responded in a strikingly different way to the challenges o f the
Cold War assault on liberalism and feminism. Hadassah unequivocally denounced
McCarthyism and worked to defend American’s civil liberties; at the same time,
however, Hadassah used anti-communist rhetoric to argue that the United States
should support Israel as a defender of democracy in an increasingly Communist
leaning Middle East. Civil rights was another area that Levine argues challenged
many women’s organizations in the Cold War era, and tensions over civil rights
issues divided many women’s organizations. A re-examination of civil rights polices
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and the pressure to admit Blacks into the organizations also fragmented the
AAUW.2 5 Hadassah responded very differently, championing civil rights and
encouraging its members to work towards desegregation. A Jewish organization,
with a minute number of Black-American Jews, Hadassah never struggled with the
question of inclusion of African-Americans within its ranks.
In American Beauty, historian Lois Banner has detailed the development of a
neo-Victorian regressive gender sensibility that appeared in the fifties within fashion
and popular culture that also provided regressive gender representations.2 6 Yet
Hadassah employed this sensibility in a manner that could be considered feminist. In
offering women a site from which to contest dominant models of domesticity
Hadassah often emphasized popular notions of beauty and fashion; for example, they
used activities like fashion shows to expand their membership. Moreover, I deal
with the debate centering on the questions of how women dealt with the images of
27
domesticity and whether women really ascribed to those ideals or challenged them.
Some historians have viewed the 1950s as a time completely dominated by gender
restrictions, while others contend that empowering messages about womanhood and
the real life experience of women challenged the restrictive images. I find that
while Hadassah women adopted domestic notions and ideals they also consciously
used those ideals to challenge the very same messages.
Women’s organizations have historically been a base from which women
have entered the public sphere. As feminist theorists have argued, the “public
sphere” has been both historically and academically defined as a space devoid of
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female actors. Participation in women’s associations, according to Anne Firor Scott,
“prepared women for politics, broadly defined. By finding a way to take up
democracy, first indirectly and then, in 1920 directly.”2 9 Hadassah, in the post-war
era actively engaged women in both the political process and in the Jewish
community building arena. In addition, as Scott points out, women as outsiders often
recognized communal issues and problems that the male dominated world neglected
to recognize. Hadassah members often viewed the mission of Zionism and their
American public policy from a different perspective than Jewish American men
might have. Hadassah focused on politics, but also practical applications to social
welfare issues in American and Israel.
Like their Christian contemporaries, Jewish women during the early
twentieth century started organizing. In 1893 the National Council of Jewish
Women was formed. It was followed by Hadassah in 1912, synagogue sisterhoods
in 1913, Pioneer Women, and Women’s American ORT 1927, to name a few. By
the 1960s Jewish women’s organizations boosted nearly one million members,
almost 20 percent of the American Jewish population. Over 30 percent of that 20
percent was Hadassah membership.3 0 Jewish women’s organizations in the United
States shaped women’s lives and identities both as Jews, women and Americans and
how that influenced over 300,000 Jewish women and their families sheds light on the
experience of Jewish women in America.
Jewish women’s historians have from various perspectives analyzed the
ways in which Jewish women merged their Jewishness with womanhood and
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17
American identity. Several general histories of the Jewish women’s experience in
America develop narratives of American Jewish history that not only include women
but often challenge the dominant paradigm accordingly/7 Paula Hyman has shown
that Jewish assimilation into American society shifted gender dynamics within the
family, with men losing ground as the spiritual family caretakers and women
assuming moral superiority in line with Victorian ideals about matemalism. Other
studies have examined the Jewish women’s immigrant experience in America from
various angles, including consumption and labor activism.
On Jewish women’s organizations the work most relevant to this dissertation
is Faith Rogow’s Gone To Another Meeting: The National Council O f Jewish
Women. Rogow describes the group and provides analysis about their activism. Bnai
Brith’s women’s group in 1947 had 90,000 members.3 2 The NCJW, Hadassah’s main
rival, had only 100,000 members at its height.3 3 Joyce Antler has studied the Emma
Lazarus group, a small leftist organization of approximately 5000 members. It had
similar pursuits to the more mainstream Hadassah such as civil rights, support of the
United Nations Treaty on Genocide, and anti-McCarthy ism activity.3 4
Within the field of Jewish history, one can argue that Jewish women’s voices
are still largely absent from the Jewish meta-narrative.3 5 Into that narrative this
dissertation interjects one addition, for Hadassah is important not only for what it
tells us about Jewish women but also for what it reveals about Jewish history and
politics, and Zionism in America. Hadassah wielded power in the halls of American
politics and in the minds of many Jews in the United States. To ignore the import of
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18
an organization the size and scope of Hadassah or to relegate it to a secondary status
due to the gender of its participants misses the point and denies the relevance of such
an organization to American Jewish history.
A study of Hadassah in post-war America supports Arthur Goren’s analysis
that Jews in that time period participated in a “functional consensus” engaged in two
primary public pursuits , “assuring Israel’s security and striving for a liberal America
(and by extension a liberal world order).”3 6 Old World Liberalism, as Naomi Cohen
defines, was “the creed of individualism that sought to eradicate discrimination of
the Old World.3 7 ” Liberalism in America served the same function to preserve
individualism, end discrimination, and insure Jewish acceptance in America.
Hadassah, like other Jewish groups and figures analyzed by Goren, defined Israel as
a democratic bulwark against communism and Arab aggression. The pursuit of
liberal values had defined Hadassah work from its inception but was more fully
articulated throughout the post-war era through participation in civil rights and civil
liberties activism and a variety of other policy stances that endorsed a liberal
worldview. Alongside liberalism, Zionists including Hadassah, adopted the ideology
of cultural pluralism.3 8 The one departure from the discourse on liberalism was a
“schizophrenic” discourse on Arabs that vacillated between demonization and
acceptance.
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19
Hadassah History
Henrietta Szold, described by renowned legalist and Zionist leader Louis
Brandeis as the “Jewish Jane Addams”, began her life as the daughter of Rabbi
Benjamin Szold, living in Baltimore among a community of German Jews. Szold
audited classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary and later became the literary
secretary for the Jewish Publication Society, and worked as the unofficial editor for
the society until 1916.3 9 In 1907 a Zionist Szold joined an existing Daughters of Zion
group in New York City already called the Hadassah Circle. It was a book club or
study circle where women discussed various issues important to Jewish spiritual and
intellectual life.4 0 In 1909, under the sponsorship of the Jewish Publication Society,
Szold, accompanied by her mother, traveled to Palestine. After viewing firsthand the
deplorable health conditions in Palestine, Szold returned to the United States with
new inspiration. Szold’s mother is said to have told Szold after seeing the lack of
medical assistance available in Palestine, “This is what your group ought to do.
What is the use of reading papers and arranging festivals? You should do practical
work in Palestine.”4 1
On the Jewish holiday of Purim on February 24, 1912— the Jewish festival
recounting the survival of the Jews from near genocide by the Persians and their
rescue due to heroine queen Esther, whose Hebrew equivalent is Hadassah— a group
of 38 women convened the first meeting of the national organization. Also adopted
at that time was Hadassah’s motto, taken from Jeremiah 8.22, at the suggestion of
rabbi Israel Friedlander, “the Healing of the Daughter of my People.42” With the
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sum of only $230 in their treasury, the women set about their first project to send
American nurses as medical emissaries to Palestine. By the end of the year,
Hadassah had accomplished its first goal by sending two nurses to Palestine via the
new organization. Szold traveled to speak in various cities. By 1913 she established
chapters in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Boston.4 3
By the 1950s Hadassah had grown into the largest Zionist organization in the
world and the largest Jewish women’s organization in America. Hadassah sponsored
Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel and a variety of social programs in Israel
and in the United States, with an emphasis on American politics and policy issues
and youth training in the United States.
How Hadassah Operated: The Organizational Structure
While this dissertation does not analyze issues of organizational structure, It
is necessary for me to provide a brief overview of the Hadassah structure so that my
arguments about gender and politics can be better understood. Hadassah members
constituted the base of Hadassah; the membership ranged between 300,000 to
350,000 in the 1950s and 1960s. After membership, the Hadassah chapter served as
the next link in the Hadassah chain. The national constitution allowed for one
chapter per city bearing the name of the city. Chapters with membership over 750
could be broken down into sections of the city, and these groups bore the names of
significant Jewish or Zionist activists. Each chapter and affiliated group retained
separate officers, chair people, programming and meeting locations. Groups and
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chapters fit into regional classifications with 28 regions in the United States.
Chapters paid dues to their respective regional headquarters. In addition, regions
held regular conferences and board meetings, with chapter presidents serving as
board members under the umbrella of a larger regional president and vice-president.
Local and regional presidents and officers were elected by the local chapter, group or
region. Each chapter had a constitution that fit the national model and elected a
president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. In addition various chairpeople
and officers that specialized in certain areas were appointed.4 4
The national board served as the central administrative organ of Hadassah for
the entire community, composed of regional presidents and presidents of chapters
with a membership of over 5000. The national president was also elected at the
national convention, and members elected at the National convention were also
members of the national board. At the national convention held every year—
Hadassah made decisions on policy matters and sealed these decisions in a series of
resolutions. Delegates decided on policy matters through a voting process - chapters
received slots for delegates a according to size -one attendee per 150 members. In
addition, the national board attended the national convention as did the vice
presidents of regions over 5000. An executive committee also existed which had the
authority to make decisions for the group in lieu of the convention. This was
composed o f national Hadassah officers and ten additional elected officials. 4 5
In 2004 the Unites States government views Israel as America’s special ally,
and a majority of Jews see their relationship to Israel as central to their sense of
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22
Jewishness. The organization women of Hadassah in large part contributed to both
American policy toward Israel and Jew’s warm perceptions about Israel. In a period
in American history, the post-World War II era, when Jewish male dominated
organizations found themselves in a state of disarray, Hadassah picked up and took
over 300,000 Jewish women in new directions.4 6 Hadassah Offered Hadassah
members both a new found Zionist ideology and a sense of empowerment as Jewish
women.
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NOTES
1 Paula Hyman, “Gender and the Shaping o f Modem Jewish Identities,” Jewish Social Studies 8, no.
2/3 (winter/spring 2002): 153.
2 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1999).
3 Yaffa Schlesinger, “Hadassah, the National W omen’s Zionist Organization o f America,”
Contemporary Jew ry 15, 121-139: Naomi Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders and Palestine, 1912-
1925: A Quest for Meaning and the Creation o f W omen’s Zionism,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana and
Hadassah, 1995); Marvin Levin, It Takes A Dream: The Story o f Hadassah (New York: Gefen
Publishing, 1997); Sandra Berliant Kadosh, “Ideology vs. Reality: Youth Aliyah and the Rescue o f
Jewish Children During the Holocaust, 1933-1945,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1995).
4 Mary McCune, “Social Workers in the Muskeljudentum: ‘Hadassah Ladies,’ ‘Manly M en’ and the
Significance o f Gender in the American Zionist movement 1912-1928,” American Jewish H istory 86,
no. 2 (June 1998): 135-165.
5 June Sochen, “Both the Dove and the Serpent: Hadassah’s Work in 1920s,” Judaism 52, no. 1/2
(winter 2003): 71-83; Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders and Palestine.”
6 Sandra Berliant Kadosh, “Ideology vs. Reality: Youth Aliyah and the Rescue o f Jewish Children
During the Holocaust, 1933-1945,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1995).
7Schlesinger, “Hadassah, The National W omen’s Zionist,”
8 Donald Miller, “A History o f Hadassah 1912-1935,” (Ph.D. dissertation, N ew York University,
1968). Balia Round Shargel, “American Jewish Women in Palestine: Bessie Gotsfeld, Henrietta
Szold, and the Zionist Enterprise,” American Jewish H istory 90 (June 2002): 141-161.
9 Roberta Hanfling Schwartz, “Henrietta Szold Meets Glukel o f Hamelm,” Judaism 51, no. 2 (spring
2002): 201-213
1 0 Michael Brown, “Henrietta Szold’s Progressive American Vision o f the Yishuv,” in Allon Gal,
editor, Envisioning Israel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996).
1 'Balia Round Shargel, Lost Love: the Untold Story o f Henrietta Szold Unpublished D iaries and
Letters (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 6.
1 2 Shargel, Lost, 14.
1 3 Shargel, Lost, 320.
1 4 Shargel, Lost 321.
1 5 Irving Fineman, Woman o f Valor: the Life o f Henrietta Szold (New York: Simon Schuster, 1961),
342.
1 6 Shulamit Magnus, “‘Out o f the Ghetto’: Integrating the Study o f Jewish Women into the Study o f
Jews,” Judaism 39, no. 1 (1990): 28-36; Susannah Heschel, “W omen’s Studies,” Modern Judaism 10
(1990): 243-258. For a more recent analysis see Robin Judd, “Religion, Agency and Power in Jewish
Gender Studies,” Journal o f Women’ s H istory 15 (spring 2003): 227.
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24
1 7 Hasia Diner and Beryl L ieff Benderly, H er Works Praise Her: A H istory o f Jewish Women in
America from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Basic Books 2002); Charolette Baum, Paula
Hyman, and Sonya Michael, The Jewish Woman in America (New York: N ew American Library
1975); June Sochen, Consecrate Every D ay the Public Lives o f Jewish American Women (Albany,
N.Y.: State University o f N ew York Press, 1981). For an oral history approach, see Joyce Antler,
The Journey Home: Jewish Women and the American Century (New York: Free Press, 1997); Paula
Hyman and Debra Dash Moore, Jewish Women in America: A H istorical Encyclopedia (New York:
Routledge, 1997). Jacob Marcus, The Jewish American Woman; 1654-1980 (New York: Ktav, 1981);
Karla Goldman, Beyond The Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place For Women in American Judaism
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). See also these collections o f essays: Jonathan Frankel,
ed., Jew s and Gender the Challenge to H ierarchy (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2000);
Pamela Nadell and Jonathan Sama, eds., Women and American Judaism: H istorical Perspectives
(Boston: Brandeis University Press, 2001).
1 8 Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and representations
o f Women (Seattle: University o f Washington Press, 1995). Other studies o f Jewish wom en’s
immigrant experience include: Susan A. Glenn, Daughters o f the Shetel: Life and Labor in the
Immigrant Generation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990); Sydney Stahl Weinberg, The
World o f Our Mothers: The Lives o f Jewish Immigrant Women (Chapel Hill: University o f North
Carolina Press, 1988)., Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land o f Dollars: Life and Culture
on the Low er East Side (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements:
Working Women and Leisure in Turn o f the Century N ew York (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1986); A lice Kessler Harris, “Organizing the Unorganizable: Three Jewish Women and Their
Union,” Labor H istory 17 (winter 1976): 5-23.
1 9 Elaine Tyler May, H om eward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic
Books, 1988).
2 0 Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums the American Women's Rights Movement,
1945 to the 1960s (New York, Oxford University Press, 1987), 6.
2 1 Rupp and Taylor, Survival in the D oldrum s, 7, 8.
2 2 Susan Levine, D egrees o f Equality (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 67.
2 3 Levine, D egrees, 67.
24 Levine, Degrees, 11.
2 5 Levine, Degrees.
26 Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983).
27 Joanne Meyerowitz, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment o f Post-War Mass Culture,
1946-1958” in Meyerowitz ed. Not June Cleaver; Women and Gender in Post-W ar America
(Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1994).
28Elaine Tyler May, Hom eward Bound: American Families on the Cold War(N ew York, Basic
Books, 1988); Meyerowitz, June Cleaver, Nancy Walker, “Humor and Gender Roles: the ‘Funny’
Feminism o f the Post-World War II Suburbs,” American Quarterly 37 (1985); 99-113; Wini Breines,
Young White and M iserable: Growing up Female in the Fifties (Boston 1992); Jessamyn Nuehaus
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25
“The W ay to a Mans Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks in the 1950s,” Journal
o f Social H istory (spring 19): 529-555; Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female
with the M ass M edia (New York: Times Books, 1994); Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis,
Boots o f Leather, Slippers o f Gold: A H istory o f a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993);
Lynn Spiegel, Welcome to the Dream House: Popular M edia and Postw ar Suburbs (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 2001).
29 Anne Frior Scott, Natural Allies: W omen’ s Associations in American H istory (Chicago: University
o f Illinois, 1991), 2. For more on wom en’s organizations see also Ruth Bordin Women and
Temperance: The Quest For Power and Liberty (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1990); Kenneth D. Rose, American Women and the Repeal o f Prohibition (New York: N ew York
University Press, 1996); Caryn Neumann, “The End o f Gender Solidarity: The History o f the
W omen’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform in the United States, 1929-1933,” Journal o f
Women’ s H istory 19, no. 2 (summer 1997): 31-51.
30 Jacob Marcus, The American Jewish Woman, 1654-1980 (New York: Ktav, 1981), 143.
3 1 Hasia Diner and Beryl L ieff Benderly, H er Works Praise Her: A H istory o f Jewish Women in
America from Colonial times to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Charlotte Baum, Paula
Hyman, and Sonya Michael The Jewish Woman in America (New York: New American Library,
1975); Sochen, Consecrate Every Day. For an oral history approach see Joyce Antler, The Journey
Home: Jewish Women and the American Century (New York: The Free Press, 1997); Hyman and
Moore, Jewish Women in Am erica; Marcus, Jewish American Woman.
3 2 Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council o f Jewish Women (Birmingham:
University o f Alabama Press, 1993); Deborah Dash Moore, B ’ nai B ’ rith and the Challenge o f Ethnic
Leadership (Albany: State University o f N ew York, 1981), 195.
3 3 Rogow, Gone. A lso on NCJW, see Seth Korelitz, ‘A Magnificent Piece o f Work’: The
Americanization Work o f the National Council o f Jewish Women,” American Jewish H istory 83
(1995): 177-203.
3 4 Joyce Antler, “Between Culture and Politics: The Emma Lazarus Federation o f Jewish W omen’s
Clubs and the Promulgation o f W omen’s History, 1944-1989,” in Vicki Ruiz and Ellen Carol Dubois,
editors, Unequal Sisters (third edition; N ew York: Routledge, 2000).
3 5 Hyman, “Gender and the Shaping.”
36 Arthur A. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture o f American Jews (Indiana University Press,
1999), 192
37 Naomi Cohen, “Zionism as Liberalism,” in Gal, Envisioning Israel, 320.
38 Cohen, “Zionism as Liberalism,’ 321.
39 Jerold Auerbach, Are We One? : Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 2001), 65; Marcus, American Jewish Woman, 92.
40 Gloria Golreich, The Hadassah Idea: H istory and Developm ent (New York: Hadassah, 1966), 13;
“History o f the Boston Hadassah Chapter,” 1, call no. 5, box 6, Hadassah Archives (hereafter HA),
Center for Jewish History, N ew York.
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26
4 1 As quoted in “History o f the Boston Hadassah Chapter,” 1, call no. 5, box 6, “Jubilee 25th” folder,
HA.
42 “History o f the Boston Hadassah Chapter,” 2; “The Chicago Chapter Silver Jubilee 25th Annual
Give and Get Luncheon,” program, 6, 13 May 1952, HA.
4 3 “History o f the Boston Hadassah Chapter,” 2; “The Chicago Chapter Silver Jubilee,” 6; Goldreich,
The Hadassah Idea, 13.
44 “Hadassah Manual 1957-1958,” 5, 12, HA.
4 5 “Hadassah Manual 1957-1958,” 6.
46 Charles Hoffman, The Smoke Screen (Eshel Books, 1989), 93.
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CHAPTER 1
A State is Bom: Hadassah and the New State of Israel
On November 29th, 1947, a milestone was reached in the history of
the world. In endorsing the plan to set up separate Jewish and Arab
States in Palestine, the United Nations has ended 2,000 years of
national homelessness for the Jewish people. The deep emotion
experienced by the Jews throughout the world cannot be conveyed in
words, for all the hopes and aspirations of Jewry, growing out of
centuries of persecution and humiliation, tried to express themselves
on this day of fulfillment.
-Reported in The Senior a Hadassah periodical1
In 1911, in New York City, a group of middle-class Jewish women formed
the kernel of what would become the largest Zionist organization in America,
Hadassah. This American Zionist women’s organization played a major role in the
development of a Jewish women’s identity centered on political Zionist action and
philanthropic work. By 1947, the date of the UN partition plan and the emergence of
a viable State of Israel, Hadassah membership totaled 250,000.
The establishment of the State of Israel brought about a major crisis in many
Zionist American organizations. The initial purpose of Zionism—the establishment
of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—had been accomplished. Hadassah, unlike many
other Zionist organizations, had devoted much time to working in the Yishuv, the
Jewish settlement in Palestine that pre-dated the establishment of the State of Israel.
In the post-state world, Hadassah channeled programs already in place in both
America and in Israel into new state building directions.
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The central argument in this chapter is that Hadassah should be understood
not only as a philanthropic organization but also as a political organization. Just as
Israel engaged in the War of Independence and the United States fought the Cold
War, members of Hadassah in the pre-state period of Israel were engaged in a war of
words, deeds, and money. Among Hadassah goals were ones to support the political
legitimacy of a state for the Jewish people and to develop social welfare programs to
assist in this project. Both Hadassah’s lobbying activity and philanthropic work
served explicitly political purposes and carried political repercussions. This chapter
outlines the beginnings of a political consciousness focused on the state of Israel and
also on the concomitant construction of an American Jewish women’s identity based
on political and social action.
Politics—understood as both formal political activities and as the creation of
identity and ideological positioning—played an important role in Hadassah. Indeed,
the creation of a Jewish State after thousands of years brought about substantial
ideological questions not only for all Jews but particularly for those engaged in
Zionist work. Increasingly Hadassah leaders harkened to a patriotic American
language in order to shelter themselves from accusations of a dual state allegiance
that made them insufficiently sensitive to the needs of the United States. In response
to these anxieties Hadassah merged notions of Zionism with a new found patriotic
fervor, in a sense wrapping themselves in the American flag. As Jerold Auerbach
has argued, once the state of Israel had been established it, “threatened the
comfortable terms of American acculturation Zionism was recast as Americanism,
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and Israel, in turn, became a miniature replica of the United States.”2 Auerbach
credits Szold, Judah Magnes, and progressive lawyer Louis Brandeis for the
American Jewish ideological merging of Zionism and Americanism with liberal
American values.3 Although Szold died in 1948, her liberal Americanized
worldview persisted in the organization and crystallized in the post-war era. Adding
to the mix of Zionism and Americanism, Hadassah used a decidedly gender specific
language. Jewish women, through Hadassah, gained access to the proper codes of a
new Jewish womanhood defined by civic responsibility and education.
One dimension that presented complexities for this combining of patriotism,
liberalism and Zionism in Hadassah rhetoric was the complicated issue of Arabs. In
the years immediately before and after the establishment of the State of Israel,
Hadassah struggled with many ideological questions. One aspect of that struggle,
Hadassah’s effort to define Arab-Jewish relations, became a significant area of
contestation. In its early period the leaders of Hadassah had adopted a culturally
pluralistic and some times radical approach to Arab-Jewish relations that promoted a
vision of Arab-Jewish co-existence.4 Over the years, however, a more complicated
discourse on Arabs surfaced that came to a head with the establishment of the state
of Israel and the subsequent War of Independence.
In both actions and words the leadership and rank and file of Hadassah
negotiated between a new hard-lined approach to Arabs and the original pluralistic
and inclusive paradigm that its founders had articulated. This dissertation will chart
the complex contestation of Jewish identity (as articulated by Hadassah), which
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increasingly became defined in contrast to the Arab Other. It is important for us to
point to a time when Arab-Jewish relations were not so fixed in a binary opposition
as they are today, but rather a fluid set of ideological and historical factors existed.
On all political levels Hadassah served as a central point from which a group of
Jewish women and in turn their family members defined themselves as Jews and
understood the changing world around them from this vantage point.
Although often dismissed in both the historical literature and by its male
contemporaries as “just” a charity or a women’s social club, Hadassah proved to be a
central actor in the shaping of health and education policy in both Israel and
domestic and foreign policy agendas in America.5 Hadassah provided an avenue for
women to legitimately be active participants in the formation of a Jewish identity
based not on religion or culture, but on the pursuit of political and humanitarian aid.
In 1915, responding to the criticism that Hadassah would become just another
charitable institution, Henrietta Szold, the group’s founder and matriarch,
argued:
Not charity, I deny it. We go to Palestine equipped, as American
Jewish women particularly are, with philanthropic and social work,
with the purposes of bringing to Palestine the results of American
healing art.6
From its inception Hadassah dealt with discrimination from its male peers. Historian
Mary McCune argues that Hadassah in its formative period struggled to be accepted
by a male dominated Jewish society engaged in a crusade to “overturn contemporary
stereotypical presentations of Jewish men as weak.7 ” As the Zionist movement
increasingly equated the salvation of the Jewish people and the establishment of a
state with the “New Jewish Man”, the women of Hadassah, McCune argues
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“exhibited a strong sense of gender consciousness, and they were, at the very least,
well aware of women’s subordinate position within the larger American Zionist
movement.8 ”
Several historians have researched and provided analysis on the early days of
Hadassah through World War II. This dissertation begins with the establishment of
the State of Israel and the political and ideological repercussions of that historical act
on Hadassah. This chapter will explore the political and ideological nature of
Hadassah as it took shape during this initial period of statehood while simultaneously
examining the historical forces that began to create a complex canvass upon which
Jewish women negotiated their identity.
Hadassah in its early period presented a progressive and sometimes radical
approach to the world, emphasizing cultural inclusiveness, class and gender
consciousness, and racial harmony between Arabs and Jews. By the early state
period, however, new and conflicting messages about identity, class, gender and race
come into conflict with earlier Hadassah ideological hallmarks.9
Historical Development.
The roles of Jewish women in America were different from those they had
played in their country of origin. The new land of America allowed for increased
Jewish women’s participation in public organizations. As Paula Hyman has argued
in Gender and Assimilation in Modem Jewish History: The Roles and
Representations o f Women, during the transition from working-class immigrants to
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middle-class “Americans,” Jewish immigrant women in America increasingly took
on the responsibilities of transmitting Jewish culture to the next generations— in
contrast to the generations of their parents and grandparents, which had placed the
father as primary authority in the transmission of Jewish education. The adoption of
a bourgeois domestic sphere ideology placed women in the role of both homemaker
and Jewish educator. Women now bore the responsibility for sustaining Jewish
identity within the home. As Paula Hyman explains:
Bourgeois culture thus expected women to be at least moderately
religious, certainly more religious then men, since they were deemed
inherently more spiritual. The bourgeois division of labor between the
sexes also conferred responsibility upon women for religiously based
‘good works,’ including the basic religious education of children.1 0
During the Progressive era, Jewish women, like their Christian counterparts,
extended this domestic privilege to the public sphere by forming Jewish
philanthropic organizations.1 1
Hadassah benefited from the movement of women into the public sphere
through their organizational work. Originally a primarily German-Jewish
organization, on February 24, 1912, on the eve of the Jewish festival of Purim— a
celebration of Jewish survival in Persia— several women gathered at Rabbi Judah
Magnes’ Temple Emanu-El in New York City to form a national organization
devoted to women’s Zionism. Originally conceived as a New York branch of the
Daughters of Zion, an informal network of Jewish women interested in Jewish study
and Zionism, the new group hoped to create a more organized and efficient national
organization.1 2 The branch took the title Hadassah, meaning “myrtle” in Hebrew.
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The term also made reference to the holiday’s strong female heroine, Queen Esther,
whose Hebrew equivalent is Hadassah.1 3 Queen Esther, according to the Jewish
tradition saved the Jewish people of Persia from near extinction by a tyrant Persian
politician and an incompetent King. Esther, a Jewish bride taken against her will to
marry the king due to her striking beauty, uses her close ties to the king to expose the
plans of Haman, the evil tyrant, and halts the slaughter of the Jews of Persia.
The new organization incorporated a verse from Jeremiah as its slogan.1 4
Members believed the verse was fitting, since medical attention was to become one
of the prominent issues of the organization:
“Behold the voice of the cry of my people from a land that is very far
off.... Is there no Balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why
then is not the healing of the daughter of my people accomplished?”1 5
This motto was inscribed on a Jewish Star of David seal with myrtle branches
surrounding the words.
In 1914 at the first national convention the name Hadassah was officially
adopted. Membership increasingly grew, and by the end of 1917, there were 47
chapters and 4000 members.1 6 In 1968, Hadassah boasted a membership of 300,000
people and by 1984 it had retained its status as the largest Zionist organization with
385,000 members. 1 7 Henrietta Szold, founder and revered matriarch of Hadassah,
understood that for Jewish women, Zionism provided a means to engage in a variety
of issues. Zionism served as a bridge between Judaism or Jewishness and politics.
In a letter she wrote on the subject of Zionism and Judaism, she stated:
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“We in New York haven’t a conception of Jewish laxity—the distance between the
Jews and Judaism. It is not a question of reform and orthodoxy— it is Judaism and
non-Judaism. Zionism is the only anchor in sight. Here is the problem in its
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nakedness. How is it to be solved? I say through Zionism”. Hadassah offered
Jewish women a way to be Jewish that drew on different strengths and interests than
traditional forms of Jewish participation.
World War II, the Holocaust, and the simultaneous legitimization of Zionist
causes provided Jewish women a new platform of public expression that stressed
political action, in addition to philanthropic work. Organizations such as Hadassah
could be counted among the most influential Jewish organizations of the 1940s and
1950s. 1 9
Although acceptance of Zionism stands today as a central ideological tenant
of many American Jews, Zionism has not always had the blanket acceptance of the
American Jewish community. In fact, in the early twentieth century the majority of
Jews would not have identified themselves as Zionists and many would have
challenged the concept completely, finding it threatening to their new-found identity
as Americans. While Zionist participation increased during the early part of the
twentieth century, most historians agree that the Holocaust greatly increased
American Jewish acceptance of Zionism. Aaron Berman has shown that during the
Depression Zionist groups found themselves in a crisis situation, as the economic
problems in the United States seemed to draw the attention of the Jews. However,
the Holocaust era brought Jews together. In particular, Zionist organizations and
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leaders once peripheral to the American Jewish community took center stage.
Israel gained popularity in a Jewish American community shocked and traumatized
by the murder of six million of its people. Increasingly, Zionist influence on the
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American Jewish community became almost “hegemonic.”
Many historians have criticized the American Jewish community for having
not done enough to save their fellow European Jews from the Nazis. The United
States had strict immigration quotas for Germany that only allowed entry to 25,957
Germans per year. In particular, many argue that the Jews of America did not fight
hard enough for the admission of more Jews into the United States. On the other
hand, Melvin Urofsky contends that leaders like Brandeis and Felix Franfiirter did
attempt to negotiate with Roosevelt over the immigration quota, but to no avail.
Other scholars maintain that American Jews feared that their allegiance to the United
States would be questioned if they pushed to change the restrictive quotas.2 3
Whatever the case may be, it is clear that when met with the crisis of the Holocaust
American Jews emphasized the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as
the antidote to anti-Semitic oppression.2 4
While most Zionist organizations focused on the establishment of the State of
Israel, Hadassah actually successfully rescued more than 50,000 Jewish children and
teenagers from Germany and Eastern Europe between 1934 and 1948 through a
program called Youth Aliyah. Scholar Aaron Berman argues that Hadassah was the
most successful American Jewish organization “at latching onto and exploiting
7 S
concern for Germany.” Youth Aliyah had been designed to supply Palestine with
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eager new halutzim, immigrants who would work the land and contribute to the
Jewish community.2 6 However, as events unfolded in Europe, the program shifted to
a rescue project. While some scholars, such as Sandra Berliant Kadosh, criticize
Youth Aliyah for not going far enough in its efforts, one cannot deny that this
program remains an example of one of the most successful efforts to save the Jews of
Europe.
In a pamphlet published during World War II entitled “Why I belong to
Hadassah,” the impact of the Holocaust was addressed, and a new discourse on
Zionism and Americanism came to the forefront:
I belong to Hadassah because I want to see Justice done to my people
as to all peoples o f the earth. The concentration camps, the murder
trains, the mass graves all over Europe-the thought often penetrates
everything I think of. Everyday that I enjoy the inalienable right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, millions of men, women and
children are tortured and slain because they are Jews, like me.2 7
The quintessential document o f American freedom, the Declaration o f Independence,
acted as a mirror for Jewish independence in a Jewish homeland where the “right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” would be granted. The pamphlet goes on
for several pages, arguing that “the dignity and worth of the Jews will be recognized
and respected only if Jewish People, like all peoples, have a homeland.”
The language of Americanism began to take hold in Hadassah in the World
War II era, and it remained dominant in Hadassah rhetoric through the fifties and
sixties. During World War II, Hadassah, in order to legitimate the notion that
democracy and American values like freedom and liberty should lead one to support
Jewish Palestine and later Israel, used Americanism and patriotism in its rhetoric.
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This began in the war as a way of capitalizing on American patriotism. Messages
like these were published in Hadassah brochures:
As an American Jew, surely you know that you cannot separate your
fight to safeguard a democratic America from your fight to create a
free world. In such a world there must and should be place for a
democratic Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. It is all one fight, for
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the same principle- liberty and justice for all. Help us win it.
The rhetoric of Americanism continued to remain useful as Jews sought to defend
their allegiance to both the newborn state of Israel and to the United States. Later
this same language would be used to shield Hadassah against any McCarthyite
charges of communism.
In order to understand the historical significance of Hadassah it is crucial to
place the American historical context against the backdrop of the dramatic historical
unfolding in the Middle East. While Hadassah was an American Zionist
organization, members were influenced by American cultural and historical changes
as well as by what they learned about the changes in Palestine. Since their primary
mission was the establishment and well being of a Jewish homeland in Palestine,
ideas and notions about the Middle East played a crucial role in the organization’s
political maneuverings and the lives of the rank and file. Therefore a brief summary
of the forces of change that swept through Palestine in this period provides a
necessary backdrop to the American scene.
On November 29, 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted to
accept the UN plan for the partition of Palestine by a vote of 33 to 13.3 0 After
months of lobbying on the part of Zionist organizations, the world Jewish
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community, the Arab community, and various economic and political actors, the vote
favored the establishment of a both a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine. As
envisioned under the partition plan, the Jewish state would be home to 538,000 Jews
and 397,000 Arabs on 5,500 square miles. The Jewish state was to include a large
portion of the southern tip of the desert or Negev, a narrow strip of the northwest
area including Haifa and Tel Aviv, and portions of the Northeast, including the cities
of Tiberias and Safed. The Arab State would have 4,500 square miles of land,
mostly in the center of the territory, with cities such as Nablus and Ramallah.
Approximately 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews could reside in this Arab portion.
The UN would establish an International zone around Jerusalem.3 1
Great Britain set the date of official withdrawal from the Palestine Mandate
as May 14, 1948. Rallying their opposition to the partition plan which they rejected,
Arab military and paramilitary forces descended upon Palestine, targeting Jerusalem
and several Kibbutzim (communal agricultural villages). With the tacit support of
the British, who needed Arab support in the Middle East for economic and political
reasons, these forces successfully laid siege to Jerusalem. Eventually, by late spring
1948 the Jews fought back with a new offensive strategy, and the tide began to turn
in their favor. On May 14 the British finally fully withdrew, and David Ben-Gurion,
a future prime minister, declared the birth of the State of Israel. Shortly afterwards
President Truman decreed U.S. support for Israel.3 2
On May 15, 1948, one day after the official declaration of the Jewish state’s
existence, several Arab armies— Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq— came together to
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attack Israel from all sides- this began the Israeli War of Independence. In the spring
and summer o f 1949, several Armistice agreements were brokered between Israel
and the Arab countries. These agreements ended the violence for the time being but
in no way secured long-term peace for the region. During the War, Israel lost 6,000
lives out of a population of 600,000 and spent over 500 million dollars. The events
that unfolded during this time had a great impact on the Jewish community in the
United States and in particular on an organization like Hadassah that was so involved
with the Yishuv (Jewish community of Palestine).
Politics
The types of philanthropic work that Hadassah focused on reflected political
agendas and had political consequences. As the largest Zionist membership
organization for the greater part of the twentieth century, Hadassah served as a site
from which to construct new forms of Jewish identity and to challenge certain
traditional gender norms while simultaneously reinforcing other gender norms.
The “Jewish State is Bom!” exclaimed the Hadassah Headlines in their
December 1947 issue. Responding to the historic passage of the UN Partition Plan,
Hadassah leaders hurried to circulate the news via telegram to all chapter presidents:
In this hour o f triumph for justice and right we join the Jews
of Palestine in their jubilation and vibrate to the joy of Europe’s
many thousands who are ready to pour from the dismissal camps to
the welcoming gates of the Jewish state.3 3
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As Hadassah and other Zionist organizations had hoped and worked for, a
new Jewish land would finally be the savior of the Jews of Europe.
However, the Hadassah leadership recognized that the drive for the political
and economic success of the state had to continue and that in many ways the
battle had just begun.3 4
In November 1947 Hadassah held its 33 rd annual convention. Rather than a
social gathering, the event had a substantial political component. As often was the
case, several prominent political leaders gave speeches and held roundtables during
the five day convention. The speakers included leaders such as Zionist activist and
future president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann; chairman of the American branch of the
Jewish Agency executive and prominent Zionist figure, Abba Hillel Silver; a
representative from the UN and Ambassador to Guatemala, Dr. Granados; and Mrs.
Rose Halprin, the newly elected president of Hadassah, the only women to sit on the
American branch of the Jewish Agency Executive committee.3 5
Various issues were stressed at this meeting, including medical advancements
needed to ensure the health and security of the emergent state. With a great sense of
urgency, the necessity of land acquisition in Palestine took top priority at the
convention. Judge Morris Rothenberg, president of the Jewish National Fund,
argued, ‘“ Even if a state is created, the land will still belong to Jews and Arabs who
are citizens of Palestine; and every inch needed for expansion of Jewish Settlement
will have to be bought and paid for from the rightful owners.””3 6 The philanthropic
work done by Hadassah was political in nature. Land development in particular
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remained a central cause of Hadassah in the pre-state and early state period. Land
purchase was a political process, although it entailed fund raising, because it paved
the way for Jews to claim ownership of land in Israel.3 7
Hadassah’s budget was spent on not just charity but also on politics. The way
in which monies were collected and delegated displayed the political nature of
Hadassah fund raising efforts. The budget approved for 1947 was $4,720,000. O f
that money $1,750,000 went to the Hadassah medical organization in Palestine,
which served as the medical backbone of operations to Jewish fighters in battles over
Jerusalem and during the independence war. Youth Aliyah, the program which
transplanted youth from abroad to Palestine, received $1,700,000. Another $650,000
was directed to the Jewish National Fund for its “land purchase and restoration
fund.” $120,000 provided funds for “Zionist Youth activities” in the United States
and $500,000 to child welfare and vocational education.3 8 Nearly all of this
philanthropic aid served political as well as humanitarian goals. In addition, the
money was not simply distributed to other organizations. All of these programs, with
the exception of land purchase, were Hadassah initiatives and run by Hadassah with
help from the Yishuv.
Hadassah leaders realized that in addition to all of the efforts listed above,
political pressure and education of the American public- both Jewish and non-
Jewish— would play a central role in the outcome of the tensions over Israel. By
putting pressure on the American government and the United Nations, Hadassah
hoped to guarantee support for the Jews of Palestine. “We are entitled to claim from
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the United Nations financial and military assistance to enable us to stand on our feet
properly.”3 9
Among the efforts to educate and lobby, Hadassah’s leadership produced
political “kits” for “letters and speeches” to be used to “arm speakers” in the war of
public relations.
“We cannot repeat too often the need to create a climate o f public
opinion favorable to the Israeli cause. Every political chairman who
has taken it upon herself to disseminate the facts behind the
distortions .. ..does a service not only to Israel but to Democracy.”4 0
The “political line” emphasized by the leadership stressed the failure of the world to
enforce the UN partition plan and stem Arab assaults on Jewish targets and the
apparent collusion of the British. “With the passive, and some say even overt aid of
the British government in Palestine, the Arab league is getting bolder in its attempts
to blackmail the UN. This is an attempt by violence to render impotent the first great
decision o f the UN. "4I (original italics)
United States policy and inaction, the kits argued, “has not been blameless
either.” The failure of the U.S. to support an initiative to bring an “International
Police force to the Area” coupled with the U.S. ban on the “shipment of firearms to
the Middle East” proved a source for great criticism. Hadassah encouraged its
members to critique current policies and failure and to lobby for U.S. aid to the
Yishuv 4 2 Hadassah speakers were encouraged to “seize every opportunity that
presents itself’ to spread the word. Outside groups like “church groups, the League
of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, are just a few of
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the channels.” Even speaking engagements in “hotel resorts” are described as
offering “an opportunity to show Arab aggression up in a proper light.”4 3
As a political organization, Hadassah’s membership experienced tremendous
growth. By 1948 it totaled 250,000, which included 977 chapters and groups within
the United States, extending throughout every state in the union 44 During the early
conflict over Palestine and the War of Independence in 1948 Hadassah provided
medical aid and support to the Haganah, the precursor to the Israeli military called
IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Particularly in Jerusalem, Hadassah served as the
backbone for the Jewish community in Palestine during these extremely difficult
times. While many in the first wave of Hadassah leaders immigrated to Palestine in
the 1920s, by 1947 most Hadassah members had never set foot in Palestine.4 5 They
were, however, keenly aware o f the support given to the effort in Palestine and the
political nature of this aid 4 6 As Mrs. David B. Greenberg, Chair of the 34th national
gathering and Mrs. David Stein of Philadelphia, who was co-chair, stated in a press
release1 :
In the crucial battle around Jerusalem, where the bitterest fighting
took place, every Jewish soldier who went into the field was armed
with the knowledge that Hadassah doctors and nurses were standing
by, ready to help and heal. The Hadassah hospital at Mt. Scopus did
not surrender-neither British pressure nor Arab Ambushes and shell
fire prevented its gallant staff from carrying on its jo b .... Shells are
still falling around the Hadassah hospital in the holy city.”4 7
At the annual conference held in November 1948 in Atlantic City, 5,000 delegates
and guests met to discuss the future of the state of Israel and the ways in which
1 Hadassah members used their Husbands names at this point in Hadassah history. That started to
change in the 1960s, when Hadassah members started to use their own first names.
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Hadassah could be an active participant in its building.4 8 Several resolutions were
adopted at the convention that reflected the political nature of the organization.
Support of the State of Israel remained a central theme in the resolutions adopted.
“Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, in convention assembled
for their first time since the establishment of the State of Israel.. ..Pledges its
continued support to the end that Israel shall be a nation of peace and security among
the nations of the world.”4 9 In addition, Hadassah pronounced its approval of David
Ben Gurion as the “first Prime Minister of the provisional government of Israel.”5 0
In its self proclaimed “Political” resolution, Hadassah urged the United
States to support the establishment of Israel. The “responsibility” of the United
States to broker a peaceful resolution to the conflict was stressed. “Flagrant acts of
aggression” on the part of Arabs were described as “a threat to world peace.”5 1
Appealing to the U. S. government not only on behalf of Hadassah members but also
on behalf of “American citizens and men of goodwill everywhere,” the resolution
chastised the United Nations because it “has taken no action demanding the
withdrawal from Israel of the invading armies of six Arab states.”5 2
Not just Jews but “American Citizens,” the resolution stated, are
“disillusioned” by the failure of the United States to secure support for
Israel from the UN:
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Hadassah. .. Respectfully
urge the President of the United States to instruct the United
Nations to sponsor direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab
States, with a view to securing a stable peace.”5 3
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This emphasis on “Americanism” in Hadassah rhetoric had originated in World War
II, when patriotism to the nation dominated political and cultural discourse
throughout the United States. Over time, this harkening to American values as
justification for support of Israel and Zionism varied according to the historical
circumstance. In the period of state development, the language of Americanism
responded to the tremendous Jewish anxiety over the possible accusation that dual
allegiance to America and Israel made Jews untrustworthy citizens of the United
States. Rather than leaving American Zionists open to such criticism, Hadassah
merged American values with Zionism. With the emergence of the Cold War the use
of American values and American language also served to place Zionist discourse
squarely in the interest of democratic preservation.5 4
Hadassah membership drives and advertisements increasingly relied on
American values to appeal to their target audience of past and potential members.
These ads, representative of the many produced by Hadassah and placed in Hadassah
papers and brochures, strove to align core American values such as democracy and
freedom with both Hadassah and Israel. One full page advertisement aimed at raising
funds for the Jewish defense forces in Palestine (the Haganah). It’s caption read
“Mobilize for the Jewish State through Hadassah.” The advertisement urged readers
to “pay your dues” and bring in new members to support the establishment of the
state of Israel. Acknowledging the UN partition plan as the first step, the ad further
stated: “But, if we Americans really want to see democracy established in Palestine,
we must act!”5 5
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Other advertisements that were aimed at attracting new members and
revitalizing the old members took a more gendered approach, one that was based on
an appeal to motherhood. “Because we are women of Hadassah we know nothing is
ever bom without pain.” Along with this caption was a picture of a woman holding
up a baby (a more comprehensive gender analysis will follow in Chapter 2 ).5 6 The
ad then invoked the language of Americanism: “Because we are Americans we of
Hadassah know the new State of Israel, founded on democratic principles, must be
assisted to become one of the family of nations. Only then can there be a true birth
of freedom....”5 7
Convention speeches, resolutions, newspaper coverage, and local meetings
all relied heavily on American patriotism to insure support of Israel and to defend
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against the accusation that Jews had a double allegiance to two countries. A wall
display published in the fall of 1948 by the publicity department of Hadassah, along
with a brochure entitled “Because we are Americans,” served to outline the need for
American support of Israel in patriotic language.5 9 Israel would preserve key
democratic principles for the free world. A “proud” American heritage served as the
backdrop to support the goal of the “citizen builders” of Israel engaged in a struggle
for “liberty and Justice for all”. In order to secure Israel’s positions to “international
peace and security” Hadassah would, among other actions, provide support in the
areas of social welfare, health projects and “land purchase.”6 0
Due to the fact that Hadassah placed so much emphasis on American values
and Americanism, Hadassah could support the relocation of young American adults
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and youth in Israel, or haluziut, as a viable option without facing accusations of dual
allegiance. The first wave of Hadassah leaders subscribed heavily to the notion that
the best way to aid the Jews of Palestine was to actually move to the Yishuv. Unlike
many of the male dominated Zionist organizations, Hadassah firmly encouraged this
movement to Israel as a means of political and personal fulfillment. Most of the
halutzim (men and women pioneers) had been either Eastern European or Sephardic
Jews already living in parts of the Middle East. With the formation of Hadassah,
middle-class American Jewish women like Alice Seligsberg and Henrietta Szold
moved to Palestine.6 1 As Szold explained “not all the haluzot (female pioneers)
come from Eastern Europe. Some come from America, and they are haluzot even if
they can dance.. .and do all sorts of society stunts.”6 2 Here Szold tried to break the
gender and class stereotypes about pioneers, that suggested that female pioneers
lacked culture and social etiquette. Instead, Szold argued, American sophisticated
women could participate in the pioneer movement without having to compromise
their social standing.
As time went on the organization continued to sponsor movement to Israel,
but aliyah became a less central aspect of Hadassah work due to an expansion of
membership into a more mainstream population. With the establishment of the State
of Israel, Hadassah “intensified” its program of halutziut and shifted the focus away
from the leadership and to the youth:
Hadassah understands the importance of an alert, intelligent
and informed Zionist youth. We endorse the principle of halutziut,
which trains young American Jews who wish to make their future in
the Jewish State. We know that our youth has technical skills, moral
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courage, physical strength and high idealism, qualities which should
be of inestimable service to the Jewish State.6 3
This encouragement of youth to move to Palestine did not “represent a new
departure. Throughout its history Hadassah had a program of practical work in
Palestine.... We are geared to intensify our activities until such a time as the Zionist
objective is fully realized.”6 4
Idealized in the 1920s as communing and working the land in the Jewish
peoples ancestral home, halutziut was respected by Szold and her contemporary
Lotta Levansohn.6 5 The myth of the Halutz popularized though the film Exodus,
poetry, folksongs, and other cultural texts, captured the imagination of the youth
involved in Hadassah in the co-ed youth program Young Judea, which Hadassah
sponsored beginning in the 1930s. During the War for Independence, halutzim
volunteered in droves and assisted in the defense of the new nation. In the post-state
era between 1946 and 1952 halutziut reached its zenith of popularity and former
participants of Young Judea and of the Hadassah program for young women Junior
Hadassah, volunteered for service.6 6
In 1949 at its thirty fifth annual convention held in San Francisco, Hadassah
adopted a resolution which described Hadassah’s support of Halutziut. The wording
of this resolution relied heavily on the language of Americanism and contained much
defensive language that preempted any accusations of double allegiance. The
resolution stated that some Americans Jews “will be moved to pioneer in the
tradition of America,” and these youngsters will “provide American know-how” to
the “world’s youngest democracy.”6 7 Again patriotic language remained a constant
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avenue from which to counter criticism and to assert an allegiance to both Israel and
America.
The pioneer, idealized in the Jewish community as a hero of conscience and
strength, often was juxtaposed with a less than glorified picture of an incompetent
/"O
Arab seeking the help of Jewish know how. The legacy of that darker side of the
halutz image as the up lifter o f the helpless Arab remained in place long after the
emphasis on Haluziut lost its glamour. Hadassah periodicals stressed the dangerous
nature of Arabs and also pictured them as victims of their own ignorance who were
waiting for social uplift from the Jews.
Jewish-Arab Relations
As a result of the UN resolution and the ensuing battles and eventual
establishment of the State of Israel, the Hadassah attitude towards Arabs gradually
shifted. Hadassah in many ways became a more conservative organization over time
regarding this issue. One area in which this was apparent was in the representations
and analysis of Arabs and Arab states within the ranks of Hadassah.
Hadassah’s portrayals and coverage of Arab-Jewish relations provide further
evidence of the highly political nature of the organization. Hadassah was political in
the traditional sense of lobbying, as well as by supporting activities in Palestine. It
was also political in creating and defining images of Arabs and the Arab world to a
generation of Jewish women and their friends and families.
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Henrietta Szold, the founder and revered matriarch of Hadassah, believed that
Arabs and Jews could live side by side in a bi-national state. A progressive at heart,
Szold ideologically aligned herself with the school of cultural pluralism and had
great affinity for historical abolitionists who had fought against slavery in the United
States before the Civil War. She strongly believed in securing expanded rights for
minority and immigrant groups in America.6 9 As historian Marc Brown argues,
Szold transferred these world views to Arab-Jewish relations when she moved to
Palestine. Alongside American Jewish leaders like Martin Buber and Judah Magnes,
Szold served on the executive committee of Ihud, a political organization founded
with the goal of establishing a bi-national state in Palestine. Szold drew a parallel
between black-white issues in the United States and Arab-Jewish problems. She saw
the animosity between Jews and Arabs in racial terms and worried that Jews would
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develop racist attitudes towards Arabs and vice versa.
Naomi Lichtenberg contends that the early Hadassah leaders pushed beyond
the boundaries of Progressivism. Unlike their Progressive contemporary, the
National Council of Jewish Women, which took a judgmental tone towards the
poorer Eastern European immigrant Jews, Hadassah, which was also a German
Jewish middle-class organization, had great respect for the immigrant populations
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and in part left New York to rejection of the limitations of Progressive attitudes.
Hadassah leaders provided a critical approach to class dynamics that would have
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been “several shades too ‘red’ for America in general” argues Lichtenberg. Thus
Hadassah leaders pushed the boundaries of a Progressive ideology incorporating
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aspects o f the cultural pluralism and social welfare attitudes of the movement, and
adding a Socialist class-oriented analysis and a desire to break the mold of genteel
society. This also allowed for a more radical approach towards Arabs. Elements of
Hadassah ideology, in particular the emphasis on racial equality and cultural
pluralism, formed in this early period would resonate with Hadassah members
throughout the post- World War II era.
As Naomi Lichtenberg eloquently proves, Henrietta Szold and her
contemporaries wanted to live in peace with their Arab “cousins” and welcomed
“diversity in Palestine that did not exclude Arabs.”7 3 Hadassah leadership viewed
racism towards Arabs as a disease:
our history and the history of our Arab cousins show that we have too
many spiritual and intellectual points of contact with each other.. .On
this we build our hopes— on this and on the determination to remove
from our national aspirations every possible admixture of injustice. If
our course is just, wholly just, and righteous, we are bound to find
just and righteous and peaceful means of conciliation. We shall ally
ourselves with the best of our Arab fellows, to cure what is diseased
in us and in them.7 4
This approach to Arab-Jewish relations was shared by most of the Hadassah
leadership during the 1920s and into the 1930s.
Over time, as hostilities became more apparent and as the struggle for land
came to a boiling point in the early state period, Hadassah negotiated between the
adoption of a more hawkish approach to Arab-Jewish relations and the incorporation
of the early values of acceptance and harmony. When the UN partition plan failed to
be recognized by Palestinian Arabs and other Arab States alike, the rhetoric of
Hadassah became more complex. On the one hand, Hadassah portrayed Arabs as the
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enemy; on the other hand, compassion for Arabs by Jews was consistently stressed.
Here we see the conflict between a new, more hawkish approach, to Arabs existing
alongside the older cultural pluralist viewpoint.
Although a bi-national plan may seem unimaginable to many in the current
situation, at the time of the passage of the UN Partition Plan in 1947 many American
Jews felt that Arabs would welcome the opportunity to live with Jews. The
Hadassah Newsletter coverage of the event claimed that: “A growing number of
Arabs in Palestine want to live in peace with their Jewish neighbors. They see in the
decision a definitive solution, which, if accepted by both parties, can end the political
turmoil of the last decade.”7 5
Although Hadassah was incorporating a more hawkish approach to Arabs,
they did not go as far as to support the Irgun, a group of radical Jewish paramilitary
fighters that enacted terrorist attacks against the British as part of their political
platform. The next month, in January 1948, as hostilities came to the forefront, the
Hadassah Newsletter reported: “In the midst of rejoicing over the U.N. decision to
create a Jewish State in Palestine, the Yishuv has had to beat off a concerted attack
by Arab gunmen on Jewish transport in several isolated communities.”7 6 The article
goes on to report on the death of an official in Hadassah’s Youth Aliyah program.
Arabs and British are portrayed in the article as working together. This was a fairly
accurate appraisal of the situation. However, the article goes on to chastise the
Jewish terrorists, “whose reprisals against innocent Arab pedestrians and market
crowds have provoked many normally peaceful Arabs to murderous frenzy.”7 7
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Hadassah adamantly criticized the Israeli right-wing terrorist group, the Irgun. In
this article we can see the conflicting images o f Arabs. In one way they are
“murderous” and dangerous, but they are also depicted as desperate and helpless
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victims.
As the hostilities increased, depictions of the Arab threat grew more vivid
and frightening. Several Hadassah magazines ran an ad that was used by Hadassah
to raise funds and membership showing. The advertisement shows a “Jewish doctor
shot in the back” with his blood spilling on the ground. Based on actual events, the
ad explains how Dr. Hugo Lehrs of Hadassah, “a man who refused to desert his Arab
patients,” was shot after “two Arab colleagues walking with him stepped aside when
the murder asked ‘which is the Jew.’”8 0 Here we see the betrayal of a Jewish man
who faithfully extended his services to Arabs free of charge. This theme o f betrayal
would become a dominant one.
By viewing Arab hostilities as a betrayal of Jewish kindness, Hadassah
struggled to maintain a balance between its newfound hawkishness and its historical
cultural pluralism. By describing the violence as a betrayal, Hadassah maintained its
image as a healer of all peoples in the face of the violence. The ad went on to
describe the murder of Nurse Hanna Gardi, “a refugee from a concentration camp, a
girl who had come to Palestine to succor the sick no matter what their race or
creed.”8 1 Again, Hadassah’s pluralism is juxtaposed with the viciousness of Arab
brutality and betrayal. The Hadassah Newsletter ran this ad along with two cover
stories that read “Arabs Attack Hospital” and “Arabs Still Come for Treatment.”
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54
Again, the violence of Arabs provides a context from which to view Hadassah’s
treatment of Arab patients as extremely open minded in the face of Arab hostilities.
Even worse than the Arabs, the British are depicted as the two-faced force
providing Arabs with the necessary tools for victory and as using “neutrality” as a
shield to assist the Arab assault. The cartoon showed a menacing Arab figure in
traditional garb holding a gun and a sword, and it reads “British ‘neutrality’ pulls the
strings”8 2 In April 1948 the worst possible scenario was reported at the Western
Wall: “Judaism’s holiest shrine has been occupied by Arab invaders without the
opposition of the so-called security forces of the British. Above a young Iraqi,
armed with a machine gun, a soldier stands guard while in the background a
Palestinian policeman looks on unconcernedly.”8 3
As conditions worsened on the ground, Hadassah’s language became more
militaristic in tone. Captions like “Mobilize for the Jewish State” underscored the
sense of urgency and responsibility that Hadassah felt with regard to its fledgling
state. For the first time the Arabs were described as being engaged in a “Holy
War.” Such language is common today, but it was only beginning to come into use at
O f
that point. Even a set of Jewish New Year greeting cards put out by Hadassah
reflected the new militarism. The cards designed as a fundraising series included a
box o f twelve Rosh Hashanah cards at the price of $ 1.00 per box. The cards featured
Israeli art— with one card showing an Israeli fighter holding a military rifle, with a
caption underneath reading Happy New Year in Hebrew.8 6 Indeed, the Israeli
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55
pioneer that had been represented in the past primarily as an agricultural worker
87
increasingly was associated with “defense. ”
At the same time, while hostilities and bloodshed escalated, Hadassah
members continued to point to the group’s open and accepting policies toward
Arabs. In keeping with its roots of inclusion and equal opportunity, Hadassah
allowed Arabs access to Hadassah resources in Palestine. While becoming more
hawkish in its political assessment of Arabs and Arab states, Hadassah maintained
this inclusive approach and argued that the new State of Israel ameliorated the
situation of Arabs. Among the many advantages to Arabs in Israel, Hadassah
reported that Arab children “benefit” from a higher standard of education in State-
sponsored Arab public schools. Children learned Hebrew and English as second
languages in a free public school system. Israel, we are assured, would not abandon
Q Q t
its Arab brethren. By extension, Hadassah’s support and involvement in Israel was
seen as in line with American liberal principles.
Future Prime Minister of Israel and at the time Minster of Labour, Golda
Myerson, worked to support the establishment of an Arab Collective village and the
OQ
vocational training of and employment of Arab women in particular. Arab farmers
also benefited from Israel’s programs and loans. Israel, Hadassah Headlines
reported, wanted to uplift the Arab population: “As long as this large minority
remains economically and socially retarded, the entire nation’s well being is
prejudiced.”9 0
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56
Baltimore Radio talk show host Ian Macfarlane and his wife reported to
Hadassah after a trip to Europe visiting the Displaced Person camps of Holocaust
survivors and the extermination camps Austerwitz and Chelmne. They concluded
the trip by visiting Israel and Hadassah Medical Center. In contrast to the sites of
genocide they had witnessed in Europe, of Hadassah Medical Center they wrote,
“there is no discrimination of any kind in this house of healing.”9 1 He and his wife
were impressed that Arabs, Christians and Jews were equally treated well at the
hospital. The Wynnewood Pennsylvania chapter reminded its members that
Q9
Hadassah medical facilities cared “for all-Jews and Arabs alike. ”
Every month Hadassah Newsletter ran a column entitled “Diary of a
Jerusalem Housewife.” It provided full detailed diary like coverage of Jerusalem
under siege. Since most Hadassah members never went to Palestine, unlike in the
early days, columns such as these brought the halutz experience home to America.
Molly, the author, a wife and mother o f three, wrote candidly and vividly about day-
to-day life in Palestine, bringing a personal eye witness account of many aspects of
life, including Arab-Jewish relations. Describing a recent siege in Jerusalem, Molly
explained how she cried alone when no one was looking, and she thought, “how we
went out in the shelling day after day to get our bucket of water and 140 grammes of
bread.. .how concerts were held for the boys as the bombs fell about.”9 3 Molly’s
personal accounts detailed the difficulties and joys of life in Jerusalem. Much of her
coverage dealt with her perceptions and anger towards Arabs. These emotions were
transmitted to Hadassah readers.
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Hadassah leadership and its publications endorsed a contradictory approach
towards Arabs. The cultural pluralism adopted by Hadassah’s founders remained a
central tenant of Hadassah ideology, and Arabs always received access to social and
medical programs in Israel. Hadassah members learned of the benefits Arabs
received under the Israeli government. These conclusions, of course, contradict
many Palestinian accounts of the impact of the War of Independence on their lives,
for this is a history that is highly contested. However, significant scholarship points
to the hardships incurred by many Palestinians after the War, to evidence of Jewish
violence against Arabs, and to Arabs being forced out of their land— among the
major disturbing and un-agreed upon aspects of the history. Whatever historical
narrative one accepts, it is clear that Arabs in Israel and Arab refugees encountered
many negative repercussions after the war and that the picture painted by Hadassah
beginning in 1947 and continuing on until the present day neglects the dark aspects
of that portion of Israeli history.9 4
While Hadassah made great efforts to ensure that an open door policy existed
towards the Arab population, tensions in the Middle East shifted the way in which
Hadassah portrayed Arabs. The discourse on Palestinians and Arab states became
more catastrophic as the decades progressed, and a complex picture of good, bad,
and indifferent Arab characters surfaced in Hadassah literature.
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58
Conclusion
In the period before and immediately after the establishment of the State of
Israel, Hadassah engaged in political activities and shaped the way in which many
Jewish women and their families viewed their identity as Jews and Americans.
Rather than distancing itself from activities in Israel once statehood was granted,
Hadassah strengthened its political and humanitarian efforts for Israel.
While they worked to help others, the women of Hadassah also struggled to
understand their roles as women and as Jewish Americans. At the same time that
Hadassah worked to politicize Jewish women it also held on to certain traditional
gender norms. As the 1950s approached, the era of June Cleaver and McCarthy,
notions about gender and identity became more complicated. During the 1950s in
America, not just Jewish women but women in America struggled to understand
their true place in society and within the family structure. At the same time,
American liberalism itself came under fire as anti-communist hysteria led many to
distance themselves from any activity that could be misconstrued as “communist.”
For Hadassah “ladies” these issues would play themselves out in complicated and
often conflicting ways.
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NOTES
1 “A N ew Judea is Bom: Jews are Jubilant - Arabs Threaten Peace Haganah Called Into Action,” The
Senior January 1948, p. 1, located in call no. 17, Hadassah Archives (HA), Center for Jewish History,
N ew York.
2 Jerold Auerbach, Are We One? : Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel (New Brunswick,
Rutgers University Press, 2001), 52. On liberalism also see Arthur Goren the Politics and Public
Culture o f American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
3 Auerbach, 82.
4 Michael Brown, The Israeli American Connection: Its Roots in the Yishuv 1914-1945, (Detriot:
Wayne State University Press, 1996); Naomi Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders and Palestine, 1912-
1925: A Quest for Meaning and the Creation o f W omen’s Zionism,” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University,
1995).
5 The term Palestine connotes the pre-state period and was the wording used by members o f
Hadassah. Later after statehood, the term Israel is used.
6Henrietta Szold, 1915, as quoted in Donald H. Miller, “A History o f Hadassah, 1912-1935” (Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 1969), 52.
7 Mary McCune, “Social Workers in the Muskeljudentum: ‘Hadassah Ladies,’ ‘Manly M en’ and the
Significance o f Gender in the American Zionist movement 1912-1928,” American Jewish History 86,
no. 2 (June 1998): 135.
8 McCune, “Social Workers,” 138.
9 In addition, the focus o f this dissertation will be on the activities and cultural images and perceptions
o f the American population. While Hadassah had great political and philanthropic impact in Palestine
several historians have already provided great insight to that.
1 0 Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations
o f Women (University o f Washington Press, 1995), 26.
1 1 Herbert Biskla Morris, “A History o f the Jewish Centers Association o f Los Angeles with Special
Reference To Jewish Identity,” (master’s thesis, University Southern California, 1972); Eveyln
Bodek, “Making Do: Jewish Women and Philanthropy,” in Jewish Life in Philadelphia (ISHI
Publications: 1983); Anne Baude, “Jewish Women in the Twentieth Century Building a Life in
America,” in Rosemary Reuther and Rosemary Skinner Keller, editors, Women and Religion in
America, vol. 3, (Harper and Row, 1986); Faith Rogow, Gone To Another M eeting (University o f
Alabama Press, 1993); June Sochen, Consecrate Every Day: The Public Lives o f Everyday Women
(State University o f N ew York Press, 1981).
1 2 Donald Miller, “A History o f Hadassah 1912-1935,” (New York University, 1968), 42; Rose C
Jacobs, “Beginnings o f Hadassah,” in Isadore S. Meyer, ed., Early H istory o f Zionism in America
(New York: Am o Press, 1977).
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60
1 3 Marvin Levin, It Takes A Dream (Geffen Publishing, 1997), 38.
1 4 Miller, “A History o f Hadassah,” 54; Levin, It Takes A Dream (Geffen Publishing, 1997), 39;
McCune, “Social Workers.”
1 5 Jeremiah 8: 19, 22, in Tanakh: A New Translation o f the H oly Scriptures According to the
Traditional H ebrew Text, (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985).
1 6 Marlin Lowenthal, Henritta Szold Life and Letters (Viking Press, 1942).
1 7 Yaffa Schlesinger, “Hadassah, The National W omen’s Zionist Organization o f America,”
Contemporary Jew ry 15: 1.
1 8 Henrietta Szold letter to Elvira Solis, January 18, 1918, in Marlin Lowenthal, Henrietta Szold Life
and Letters (New York: Viking Press, 1942), 102.
1 9 Aaron Berman, Nazism, the Jews and American Zionism 1933-1945 (Wayne State University Press,
1990), 35.
20 Berman, Nazism, 11.
2 1 Berman, Nazism, 12.
2 2 Melvin Urofsky, American Zionism from H erzl to the Holocaust (Lincoln, University o f Nebraska
Press, 1995), 21.
2 3 Berman, Nazism, 120; Penkower, The H olocaust and Israel Reborn, (University o f Illinois Press,
1994), 12.
24 Berman, Nazism', Penkower, The Holocaust, 12
2 5 Berman, Nazism, 34.
26 Sandra Berliant Kadosh, “Ideology vs. Reality: Youth Aliyah and the Rescue o f Jewish Children
During the Holocaust, 1933-1945” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995), 5.
27 “Why I Belong to Hadassah,” brochure, 1, in call no. 17, box 8, “ 1940s” folder, HA.
2 8 “Why I Belong to Hadassah,” 2.
29 “I am a Neighbor o f Yours: May I Come In,” brochure, call no. 17, box no. 8, “ 1940s” folder, HA.
30 Levin, It Takes a Dream, 230; “UN Votes Jewish State,” Hadassah Newsletter, December 1947,
p.l.
3 1 “UN Votes Jewish State,” 1; Howard M. Sachar, A H istory o f Israel: From the Rise o f Zionism to
Our Time (Alfred Knopf, 1996), 292, 293.
3 2 Sachar, A History, 312.
3 3 “Jewish State is B om ,” Hadassah Headlines, December 1947, p. 1.
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61
34 Moshe Shertok, “Statehood Needed for Further Growth,” Hadassah Newsletter, December 1947, p.
8.
3 5 “5000 at Hadassah Convention Pledge Support for Jewish State” Hadassah Newsletter, Dec 1947,
p.l.
36 “5000 at Hadassah Convention,” p. 1.
3 7 “M obilize For the Jewish State Through Hadassah” Hadassah Headlines, February 1948, p. 6.
3 8 “5000 at Hadassah Convention,” p. 1.
3 9 Shertok, “Statehood Needed for Future Growth,” p. 8.
40“Political Kits Merit Widest Circulation: Public Relations Drive Must be Intensified,” Hadassah
Headlines, August 1948, p. 6.
4 1 “Political Line Must also Talk Emergency,” Hadassah Headlines, February 1948, p. 8.
42 “Political Line Must,” p. 8.
4 3 “Political Kits Merit,” p. 6.
44 Hadassah, “Hadassah to ‘Hold Largest Convention in its History,” press release, 14 October 1948,
in call no. 3, box 14, folder 3, HA.
45 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders.”
46 “Hadassah Rallies for Security,” Hadassah Newsletter, Jan 1948, p. 1; “National Board M obilizes
for Medical Defense,” Hadassah Newsletter, January 1948, p. 1.
47 “Hadassah to ‘Hold Largest Convention,”’ press release.
4 8 “Hadassah to ‘Hold Largest Convention,”’ press release.
49 “Resolutions Adopted by the Thirty-fourth Annual Convention o f Hadassah, the W omen’s Zionist
Organization o f America,” 5-9 November 1948, 1, in call no. 3, box no. 14, folder no. 4, HA.
5 0 “Resolutions Adopted,” 3.
5 1 “Resolutions Adopted,” 19.
5 2 “Resolutions Adopted,” 19.
5 3 “Resolutions Adopted,” 19; “Political Session, 34th Annual Hadassah Convention,” press release, 7
November 1948, in call no. 3, box 14, folder 3, HA; “Excerpts From the Remarks o f Mrs. David
Greenberg at the Friday Evening Session o f Hadassah,” 5 November 1948, call no. 3, box 14, folder
6, HA.
5 4 We will explore issues o f McCarthyism and the Cold War more fully in later chapter.
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5 5 Hadassah Headlines, February 1948, p. 6.
5 6 Chapter two will be fully devoted to a gender analysis o f Hadassah.
5 7 Hadassah Newsletter, September 1948, p. 9.
5 8 On dual allegiance, see Aurebach, Are We One.
5 9 “Our Six Paneled Exhibit Tells Hadassah Story: Can be used for Chapters and Communities,”
Hadassah Headlines, November 1948, p. 1.
60 “Our Six Paneled Exhibit,” p. 1.
6 1 See Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” for a-full treatment o f this issue.
6 2 Henrietta Szold, letter to Bertha Landsman, 28 August 1923, in Associate Correspondence Series,
HA, as quoted in Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 69.
6 3 “The Jewish State and Hadassah,” Hadassah Newsletter, January 1948, p. 2.
64 “The Jewish State and Hadassah, p. 2.
6 5 Goren, The Politics, 172.
66 Goren, The Politics, 182.
6 7 “1949 Resolutions adopted,”5, in call no. 3, box 15, folder 5, HA.
6 8 Goren, The Politics, 178
6 9 Brown, The Israeli American, 134-135.
70 Brown, The Israeli American, 139.
7 1 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 41, 42.
7 2 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 76.
7 3 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 47.
74 Henrietta Szold, letter to Mrs. Rebekah Schweitzer, April 14, 1921, in Associate Correspondence
Series, HA, as quoted in Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 47.
7 5“UN Votes Jewish State,” p. 1.
7 6 “Arab Gunmen Unhampered by British Forces,” Hadassah Newsletter, January 1948, p. 1.
7 7 “Arab Gunmen,” p. 1.
7 8 “Irgun Bombs Break Good Arab Relations in Haifa,” Hadassah Newsletter, January 1948, p. 9.
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7 9 “Arab Gunmen,” p. 1; “Irgun Bombs,” p. 9.
8 0 Found both in Hadassah Headlines March 1948, p. 5, and Hadassah New sletter March 1948, p. 1.
8 1 Found both in Hadassah Headlines March 1948, p. 5, and Hadassah N ew sletter March 1948, p. 1.
8 2 Hadassah Newsletter, April 1948, p. 2.
8 3 Hadassah Newsletter, April 1948, p. 2.
84 “M obilize for the Jewish State Through Hadassah,” Hadassah Headlines, February 1948, p. 6.
8 5 “M obilize for the Jewish State,” p. 6.
86 “These Rosh Hashanah Cards Commemorate Jewish State,” Hadassah Headlines, June 1949, p. 6
8 7 A more extensive analysis o f images o f Israeli settlers will appear in Chapter 2.
8 8 “Hadassah Serves Arab Children,” Hadassah Newsletter, November 1949, p. 4.
8 9 “Israel Aiding Arab Women,” Hadassah Newsletter, March 1950, n.p.
9 0 “Fair Deal for Arabs in Israel’s Program,” Hadassah Newsletter, February 1950, p. 10.
9 1 Ian Ross MacFarlane, dispatch, 4 March 1947, in “Arabs treated at Hadassah HMO” folder, HA.
92 Hadassah Mainline 1, no. 1 (February 1949): n.p.
9 3 “Diary o f a Jerusalem Housewife,” Hadassah Newsletter, September 1948, p. 5.
94 Benny Morris, The Birth o f the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
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CHAPTER 2
A “Bulwark Against Communism”: Hadassah’s Political Activism
in Foreign Policy and Domestic Issues
At 8:45 am August 6, 1945, the sun was shining and the people in Hiroshima
were busy preparing for the routines of daily life. Little did they know that at that
moment was flying through the clear blue sky an American weapon of mass
destruction. Named after a mother of one of the pilots, the Enola Gay B-29 bomber
had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 100,000 people in an instant, and
sickening and killing thousands afterward.1 The awesome power of this new
American invention changed the world political landscape and American’s
perceptions of their place in the world.2
As World War II ended, a new war based on suspicion, fear, and international
dominance called the Cold War emerged. The battle between the forces of
democracy and communism soon played out across the world map, even as it
infiltrated the American psyche. Anti-communist hysteria destroyed lives in more
ways than one. Soldiers and civilians died in wars fought over power in America,
and people’s economic and social standing eroded due to suspicions of communist
affiliations. In this climate, the new state of Israel emerged as a pawn in the game of
geo-politics. As the Cold War descended upon the Middle East, Hadassah sought to
secure Israel’s position as an American ally by aligning Israel with American
interests. On the domestic scene, however, Hadassah worked to oppose
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McCarthyite witch-hunts, and it supported an expansion of civil rights. Playing both
sides of the Cold War coin, Hadassah utilized anti-communist rhetoric in order to
ensure American political and economic support for Israel while at the same time
fighting for the liberal democratic ideals that had been part and parcel of Hadassah’s
philosophy since its progressive inception.
As Sylvie Murray has argued in her study of suburbanite women in Queens
New York in the post-war era, the political history of women in the post-war era
“has been ignored, in fact, denigrated to serve as a foil for a renewed feminist
movement.”3 Murray shows how women involved in women’s organizations and
networks participated in political culture in non-traditional ways. Murray explained
that her book served as an attempt to “recapture this lost past.” This chapter also
seeks to recapture the lost past of a group of Jewish women’s political actions that
have been hereto ignored by most historians.
Hadassah in the 1950s and 1960s: An Overview
Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, Hadassah’s
primary investment, housed several medical institutions. These institutions included
the hospital, the Kiryat Hayovel family and community center, and the Nathan and
Lina Strauss Health center. Hadassah also sponsored vocational projects in Israel,
such as the Brandeis Vocational Training Center, the Hadassah Vocational Guidance
Institute and Hadassah Neurim Vocational Training Center of Youth Aliyah, and the
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Henrietta Szold School of Nursing. Hadassah also served as the largest single
contributor to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organization that was responsible
for purchasing land for Jewish development. From its founding to 1968 Hadassah
donated, through JNF, 83 million trees and “reclaimed” 625,000 dunams of land.4
Youth Aliyah was and still remains a major aspect of Hadassah
programming. The term Aliyah has several meanings in Judaism. At the most basic
level it means to rise up. In addition it is the term used when someone goes up to the
Torah in a prayer service. Lastly it also connotes a person moving to Israel, because
moving to the Holy Land implies a figurative ascension. Originally meant to bring
in new vitality and youth to Israel, Youth Aliyah was founded in 1934. It was the
brainchild of a German Jewish woman, Recha Freier, who sensed the urgency of the
mission with the accession to power of Adolph Hitler in 1933. Henrietta Szold,
founder of Hadassah, served as the first director of the project. Early on Hadassah
adopted the Youth Aliyah program, and Szold was named the primary organization
in charge of Youth Aliyah, a position Szold held until her death in 1945.
In 1934, Szold greeted 63 youths and brought them to the Galilean settlement
of Ein Harod. During the Holocaust years up until 1950 Hadassah rescued fifty
thousand children.5 In 1956, Youth Aliyah cared for 14,000 youth wards and by
1968 62,000 Youth Aliyah children.6 In 1953, 13,500 youngsters were involved in
the program. Seven thousand of them lived in 270 Youth Aliyah settlements, 6000 in
educational places and 500 in homes. Working along side Israeli government
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Hadassah was the largest contributor to Youth Aliyah between 1936 and when
Hadassah named official representative of Youth Aliyah to 1953 raised
approximately 22 million dollars and raised over 2 million dollars in 1953 alone. By
1966, Hadassah along with the Jewish Agency for Israel, aided in the immigration,
relocation, and/or rehabilitation of over 130,000 Jewish youth from all over the
world. Hadassah provided nearly 40 percent of the funding for this program
(working with Israeli government agencies).7
Hadassah also offered in Israel several vocational training schools and
programs. Some were housed at the Brandeis Center in Jerusalem— such as the
Alice 1 . Seligsberg vocational high school, which taught students to become
dressmakers, fashion designers, cooks, secretaries and provided “domestic
citizenship and post-graduate vocational training.8 The Brandeis Center in Romema
housed Hadassah’s Fine Mechanics and Instruments School and the Printing School.9
In 1950 Hadassah opened a hotel school in cooperation with the Israeli government
that offered a two year course in hotel management. In addition, a variety of rural
education programs were offered at the Hadassah-Neurim site.1 0
Hadassah maintained several programs geared at their work in the United States
including American Affairs, Zionist Affairs, leadership training seminars, study
circles, educational programs and more. Hadassah strongly supported the United
Nations and in 1953 sent 5000 women to the UN, more women than any other non
governmental organization.1 1 Hadassah also had several departments, including a
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publicity department. The New School for Social Research evaluated the Hadassah
promotional materials department: “Probably no other non-profit organization in the
country can match the effectiveness and scope of Hadassah’s literature. The folders
appeal to the eye and they go straight to the point with essential facts.” In 1953
alone, 1,683,000 copies of 41 different pamphlets were distributed by the Hadassah
promotions department.1 2
Several publications including Hadassah Magazine and Hadassah
Newsletter (as it was formerly called) were sent to over 350,000 members. They
constituted the “largest single subscription group of any Anglo-Jewish publication in
the world.”1 3 Hadassah Magazine which replaced Hadassah Newsletter in 1960
boasted a readership of over one million. In addition, Hadassah circulated to its
members and potential members, hundreds of thousands of pamphlets, brochures,
and kits. Hadassah also produced histories, videos, and cookbooks. In 1956 alone,
Hadassah affiliated researches published 1,300 papers.1 4 In the fiscal year of 1969
Hadassah’s total budget (funds raised) amounted to a whopping $12,381,017; of that
over 50 percent went to the Hadassah Medical Organization, 18 percent to Youth
Aliyah , 6 percent to the Jewish national fund, 1 percent to youth activities and 5
percent to Israel education.1 5
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The Geo-Politics of the Cold War and Hadassah
After having accomplished its original goal of the establishment of a state for
the Jews in Palestine in 1948, Hadassah shifted its emphasis to state building and
continued fundraising for programs already in place. It also sought to ensure that
both the leaders within the United States government and the business sector as well
as the American--and specifically the Jewish— public continued to support the
nascent state both politically and financially. Amid the complicated political
landscape of the 1950s, Hadassah leadership worked to lobby various groups to
support Israel and to ensure that Israel emerged as a close ally of the United States.
However, this alliance between Israel and the United States resulted from pressure
by groups like Hadassah that both worked to cement the political ties between the
two countries and to instill in Jewish people a sense of obligation and pride in
support of Israel. The aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust greatly
increased the popularity of Zionism within the Jewish community in America.
However, the challenge of merging an American Jewish identity with support of
Israel often brought accusations of dual allegiance. By focusing on Americanism
during World War II, Hadassah drew connections between Israel and the United
States.
The political diplomacy of World War II carried within it the seeds of a much
different kind of a war. The Cold War would be fought on the land of peripheral
nations across the world, while it infused fear of the “Red Menace” into the hearts
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and minds of Americans. The Iron Curtain, a term Winston Churchill coined in
1945, had been drawn, and the USSR soon engulfed much of Eastern Europe.1 6 To a
world struggling to grasp the consequences of atomic power, which seemed to have
swiftly brought to an end years of hostility and held out the hope of an end to
international conflict, President Truman in September of 1949 announced that the
Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb.1 7
A strategic game of Cold War chess was played out by the USSR and the
United States upon the map of the world, while the American consciousness adapted
to a Cold War mindset. In July 1947, George F. Kennan, the director of the State
Department Policy Planning Staff, writing under the pseudonym Mr. “x”, published
an article in Foreign Policy detailing a new theory of Cold War politics: he summed
up this new theory in the title “containment”.1 8 He argued that the Soviet character
and its Communist ideology had a proclivity to desire world domination and that the
United States role as a democratic world power was to stem the tide of Soviet
aggression through policies of containment that supported democratic leaning
political forces in the world and fought pro-Communist forces.1 9
This widely circulated article served as the basis for Truman’s Cold War
foreign policy, articulated in the what came to be called the Truman doctrine. The
Truman doctrine served as one of the central tenants of Cold War foreign policy.
Truman argued that, “it must be the policy of the United States to support free
peoples who resist attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside forces.”2 0
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United States foreign policy interest in the Mediterranean area increased as a result
of post-war tensions and U.S. intervention in Turkey and Greece. The Palestine
question also captured the interest of foreign policy experts in the post-war era. The
movement for the establishment of a new state for the Jews gained new ground in
light of new evidence of Holocaust atrocities. Truman chose to side with the Jews in
the debate, realizing that his political popularity might benefit from Jewish support
votes. In contrast, he explained, “I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs
21
among my constituents.” In part, Truman’s awareness of the American Jewish
community’s desire for a state resulted in part from Hadassah’s political efforts and
lobbying.
Into this mix of containment, which began to play out across far away nations
such as Greece, the Middle East started to engage increasingly in the Cold War chess
game with the United States and Russia, both superpowers using their money and
military might to hold influence over territories. In the 1950s, Hadassah expanded on
the rhetoric of Americanization employed during World War II by using foreign
policy Cold War rhetoric that contended that Soviet aggression threatened to overrun
entire geographical regions and that the United States needed to contain Communism
by supporting regimes that supported democratic values in the face of this threat.
The red menace, according to this theory, had reared its ugly head and was
threatening to destroy Eastern Europe and Asia, and, as Hadassah stressed, the
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Middle East. Hadassah argued that Israel could “help defend the Middle East”
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against “Soviet objectives in the Middle East.”
As the 1950s progressed, expanding fears about Soviet domination in the
Middle East played into Hadassah’s desire to see Israel as a strong ally of the United
States, and to secure its position vis-a-vis financial aid programs and political
support by the American government. Indeed, Cold War tensions swept into the
Middle East, further dividing Arab nations from Israel. These tensions eventually
solidified the economic and military ascendancy of Israel, while they fueled the
military aspirations of neighboring countries like Egypt. The United States would
eventually champion Israel, while the USSR would support Syria and Egypt.
Hadassah seized the moment to argue that Israel held one solution to possible Soviet
world domination, in order to argue for the necessity of United States financial and
political support of Israel. In an article entitled “Sputnik and Other Russian Gains
Place New Demand for Positive US Program in the Middle East,” Hadassah’s
Zionist Affairs chair Mrs. Halprin explained that “Russia’s recent and spectacular
gains in the scientific, political and propaganda fields have jolted American citizens
into a new awareness of the seriousness of the global threat between Communism
and the free world.”2 3 Halprin further explained that “Arab propagandists” often
attempted to deflect the issue of the USSR’s involvement by reframing friction as a
“local” conflict. However, “this is a tactic to obscure the real issue, namely, that the
ominous tension in the Middle East is only one manifestation of the conflict between
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democracy and communism, and a strategic battlefield in the cold war between
Russia and the United States.”2 4
From the Arms Race to Suez: Hadassah Responds
As American Cold War rhetoric painted the conflicts in the Middle East as a
battle between the forces of Americanism and Communism, Israel struggled to
solidify ties with the United States. Much of the Arab world, on the other hand,
turned to the USSR for financial backing. Consequently, “the Arab,” already seen as
the aggressor in the Middle East by many organizations or political figures, was
depicted in even more threatening tones. For Israel, the uneasy relationship to its
neighboring Arab nations for the most part became increasingly tenuous during the
1950s.
Israeli leadership and Hadassah alike portrayed Israel as a “bulwark”of
democracy and anti-communism in an increasingly Soviet dominated map of the
Middle East. And, geopolitics drastically changed after Abdul Jamal Nasser rose to
power in Egypt in the coup of 1952. A strident Arab nationalist with major political
ambitions, Nasser purchased $320 million weapons from Czechoslovakia in 1955.2 5
Syria also purchased weapons from the Eastern Bloc.2 6 At the same time that Arab
nations strengthened ties with the Soviets, Israelis feared that United States might
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enter into its own weapons deals with the Arab world in an effort to stem the tide.
Threatened by the accumulation of weaponry by Arab nations, Israel reached out to
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the American government for further arms assistance. After the Eisenhower
government failed to supply Israel with necessary weaponry, France became Israel’s
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weaponry supplier.
In 1954, in response to Nasser’s efforts to rid his country of British
imperialism, the British finally decided to remove their presence from Egypt. As the
British moved out, tensions and small scale fighting increased along the border
between Israel and Egypt. By 1955 Nasser had an audacious plan. Much to the
chagrin of Western powers such as France and the United Kingdom who were
shareholders in the Suez Canal Company, he sought to nationalize the Suez Canal.
The day after Nasser announced his intentions, the French contacted Ben-Gurion,
then prime minister of Israel, with a tri-national plan involving Israel, France and
Great Britain, to attack Egypt, with the main goal being the re-establishment of
European dominance over the canal. Earlier, Israeli leaders had expressed a desire to
remove Nasser from power as he threatened Israel stability, but to no avail. Now
with their own incentives, the European powers sought Israel’s assistance in writing
the wrong that they perceived had been done to them by Nasser’s actions with the
Suez Canal.2 9
On October 29, 1956, Israel embarked on “Operation Kadesh” with the aim
of destabilizing the Egyptian power structure. This involved aiding the European
superpowers in re-establishing control over the Suez and securing its borders from
further incursions of fedayeen forces from Egypt. In order to create the element of
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surprise, Israel purposefully led both the Jordanian and the American governments to
believe that Israel was amassing soldiers for an attack Jordan. While the rest of the
world grew pre-occupied with the Hungarian revolutions, Israel turned its efforts to
Suez.
Two months after Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal and after the
Egyptian arms deal with the USSR, Rose L. Halprin, former president of Hadassah
and current member of the Jewish Agency Executive, reported on a recent trip to
Israel in the current events section of the Hadassah Newsletter:
Since the Soviet Arms deal with Egypt a year ago, Israel and
her friends have been exerting Herculean efforts to correct the
imbalance of arms as a deterrent to Egyptian aggression.. .Israel
could never afford to equal in quantity Egypt’s bargain price goods
from the Soviets. Israel seeks a qualitative equality, based on a
limited number of modem defense weapons in the hands of its
devoted soldiers.3 0
In addition, she informed Hadassah members that retaliation to attacks from
Egyptians served as a “defense measure.”3 1
The cover of the November edition of Hadassah Newsletter read, “Israel
Strike to End Arab Belligerence: Seek Permanent Peace.” “Menaced by the
tightening noose of Soviet-armed Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian troops under a
joint command and goaded beyond endurance by the murderous forays of Egyptian
fedayeen marauders, the Israel defense Army went into action. The announced
objective was to destroy the bases of the fedayeen in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza
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strip.” The article went on to defend Israel’s actions in terms of a defensive act of
reprisal, and it gave a detailed summary of the campaign.
Most of the world, including Hadassah, was in the dark about the fact that
the Israeli government had been waiting for the right moment to attack Egypt, a
country which they saw as a security threat, and the complex of world superpowers
whose forces were involved in the Suez region. The Israeli government had for
some time been planning a way to bring down Nasser’s regime, which it perceived as
a threat to Israeli security and survival. Without American or European support,
Israel feared any military action. The pretense of working on behalf of the European
community to remedy the Suez Canal situation gave Israel the legitimacy and
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political support to act.
The November edition of the Hadassah Newsletter, which came out after the
Suez campaign had begun, contained an article entitled “Eyewitness Report From
Israel.” Written by Joan Comay, the article was constructed like a journal, with
several dated entries. The author offered the interested readers in America an
“eyewitness” play by play account of what it felt like to be on the ground in Israel
during such an undertaking. (The article was similar to the monthly entries of “the
Diary of a Jerusalem Housewife,” written as a first person account of life in Israel
meant to allow Hadassah members to feel connected to the struggle in Israel.) While
some members visited Israel frequently, many members no longer visited or lived in
Israel, as the founders of Hadassah had. Instead, these news articles written by lay
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women served to give members the vicarious experience of life in Israel. On
November 2, the article reported “Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, woke up last
Monday morning to a world without transport.” Comay reported how the city
residents felt during wartime, she described how “older men were dressed in Khakis”
as they begun guard duty and how women participated by preparing the houses for
blackouts. Comay conveyed the mood of angst and preparation of a people
operating like a well-oiled machine, who were painfully accustomed to the wartime
activities.3 4
Comay reported the triumph of Israel over its enemies with equally dramatic
flare by harkening back to the biblical battle between Jews and Egyptians:
.. .we Israelis had fought a valiant fight against our ancient enemy,
the Egyptians. Israelis had died once more for their right to be a free
people, to cultivate their gardens in peace without fear of
molestation. I looked up at the blue and white flag flying clear
against the stars and I thought of the ancient biblical story of exodus
and how G-d saved Israel as it crossed the Sinai dessert on the way
to the promised land. Dare one new hope that once more Israel will
be firmly established in its land-its integrity guaranteed by
international law and its safety secured by the courage of its
people.3 5
While Hadassah members learned through their leaders and their organization’s
literature about the political reasons that Israel engaging in the Suez Canal struggle
in terms of geo-politics and the USSR, articles like this brought home the “defense
strategy” that lay at the heart of Israel’s involvement in Suez. In addition, by
allowing Hadassah members to participate vicariously in the war through eyewitness
reporting by a woman, Hadassah continued a literary technique employed in the
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Independence War. The eyewitness coverage by a woman of the Suez crisis impact
on the Israeli community, on herself, and on her family brought to life the dangers
faced by the Israelis and served to rally Hadassah women in the United States to the
cause of defending Israel.
This perceived “triumph” proved to be short lived. Although Israel, France,
and the British made great strides towards capturing the Canal in October and
November of 1956, American resistance backed by the United Nations halted their
efforts. A dispute between Washington and Nasser had precipitated the
nationalizing of the Suez Canal; the tripartite attack on Egypt had not included the
United States, which had already voiced concern over military measures to quell the
crisis. The USSR threatened to besiege Britain with atomic weapons if they did not
retreat.3 6 Eisenhower, furious over the “double-crossing” behavior of Israel, France,
and Britain, applied diplomatic and economic pressure, going to the United Nations
and withholding economic aid.3 7 Israel finally removed its troops from the Suez
Canal in March of 1957, and the United Nations then turned over the canal to the
Egyptians.
Judith Epstein, Hadassah President from 1956 to 1960, reflected on her
experience with the Suez crisis. “When I became president in November of 1956,
we were suddenly shaken by the fact of the Sinai invasion.” With hindsight she
believed that if Britain had “moved faster” on the Suez crisis the Suez and Sinai
would be under European and Israeli control, and “the world situation today would
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have been entirely different in regard to the Middle East.” While Hadassah played a
role in the Sinai war through its medical efforts and political lobbying, Epstein
believes that, “the major thrust of Hadassah at the time (although we had our
political connections) as the powerful American Jewish women’s organization
played a real part in making the American public understand why Israel had gone to
Sinai.”3 8 As a result of the Sinai invasion and the increased awareness of Israel’s
precarious position in the Middle East, Hadassah gained an additional 18,000
members.3 9
The Continued Push for U.S. Support of Israel
The Suez crisis somewhat damaged the relationship between Israel and the
United States, but the continued image of Israel as a “bulwark against communism”
served to remedy the discord. Hadassah continued to stress the importance of Israel
for the balance of power in the Middle East, and their efforts appeared successful
when the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine solidified America’s interventionist position
with regard to the Middle East. The Doctrine stated that the United States would
offer aid to any country threatened by a Communist revolution. This did not signify
a change in America’s politics in the Middle East but rather further reinforced
America’s efforts to contain Communist and Soviet expansion in the Middle East.4 0
On October 3, 1955, Hadassah dedicated its new national headquarters in
New York. Mayor Wagner proclaimed the week of October 10 to 17 as Hadassah
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week in the metropolitan area. At the event onlookers watched as national president
Rebecca Shulman presented a $ 7,000,000 check to the wife of the Israeli
Ambassador Abba Eban, reaching to a total fundraising mark of 100,000,000 dollars
raised since the organization’s founding in 1912.4 1 The featured speaker at the event
was Jacob K Javits, former Republican congressman and member of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee. Javits, a long time supporter of Israel, titled his talk
“Israel; A Bulwark Against Communism” and explained why the $250 million in
grant monies given to Israel by the United States since 1950 served the purposes of
both nation building in Israel but, most importantly, helped maintain the balance of
power in the Middle East. The “Soviet arms race” in the Middle East could be
thwarted by the maintenance of a democratic presence in Israel.4 2
In combination with stressing Israel’s significance in establishing a pro-
Western democracy in the Middle East, Hadassah leadership and its literature
focused their attention on building solidarity among the Jewish people. Although the
popularity o f Zionism in the United States among the Jewish community increased
dramatically in response to World War II and the Holocaust, once the State of Israel
was established it was not a necessary conclusion that American Jews would see
themselves as responsible for Israel’s success. Therefore, in addition to lobbying
political officials and influential people within the non-Jewish community, Hadassah
worked hard to convince American Jews that their connection to Israel remained
vital. A significant part of this approach emphasized the democratic values and
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principles of Israel. Israel was depicted as a democracy not too different from the
United States.
Hadassah leaders and its literature argued that Israel’s importance lay not
only as a haven for the world’s Jews but also as the harbinger o f democratic and
American values in the Middle East. For Hadassah members, support for Israel went
beyond Jewish identity and affiliation and extended into the vary safeguarding of
Americanism in the world. Hadassah leaders and its literature also stressed the
amount of danger faced by the Israeli population. At the Hadassah Midwinter
Conference held in February 1955 Rose Halprin spoke of her recent trip to Israel and
the amount of “soul-searching” that her fellow Hadassah regional presidents had
experienced as a result of this trip. Halprin explained that Israel “is not alone,”
because Hadassah members stood with Israel to provide support. In Israel, Halprin
said, “there is a deep feeling of aloneness and isolation. One feels humble in the
presence of these people.. .in fact one even feels a little ashamed.” At the same time,
Halprin pleaded with the American Jewish community to heed the call of Israel for
aid. “The American Jewish community does not yet understand the danger that
threatens Israel.”4 3
Hadassah publications, such as Hadassah Newsletter and Hadassah
Headlines, encouraged members and their families to spread the word about the
necessity of American political and economic support of Israel and the key role that
American Jews were playing in insuring the existence of Israel. Through their
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involvement in Hadassah, members received an education in foreign policy,
American politics, and Jewishness. Hadassah indeed began to play a major role in
constructing a new Cold War Jewish American women’s identity that stressed the
responsibility of American Jews to Israel in a Cold War context. In the 1950s, the
notion that Israel should play a central role in the lives of American Jews, although
gaining acceptance among the Jewish community, had not yet been solidified.
Hadassah’s work in educating and supplying Jewish women and their families with a
new form of Jewish identity involved an emphasis on cultural and political
affiliation.
Articles written by United States and Israeli political officials in both the U.S.
and Israel filled the pages of Hadassah Newsletter and Hadassah Headlines. While
Hadassah members penned much of the material dealing with Jewish education,
Hadassah functions, and membership drives, many of the articles dealing with
foreign policy or domestic issues were educational and informative in nature, often
written by men in positions of power. As might be expected, Hadassah leaders
carefully selected what political positions to champion in their literature.4 4
Hadassah’s rhetoric about Israel as a bulwark of democracy in the Middle
East aligned Israel with the goals of the United States. Hadassah members had to
answer allegations of possible conflicting allegiances to both Israel and the United
States. In 1956 as Hadassah honored former Supreme court justice and Zionist
activist Louis Brandeis and published this quote in its various local newsletters to
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convey to its members that although “Ideals concerning Americanism, Zionism, and
Patriotism are slightly confusing”:
Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with
Patriotism.. .Every Irish American who contributed towards
advancing home rule was a better man and a better American for the
sacrifice he made. Every American Jew who aids in advancing the
Jewish settlement in Palestine.. .will likewise be a better man and a
better American for doing so. There is no inconsistency between
loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry.. .4 5
The newly established Sarah Kuzzy Hadassah chapter in Newark, New Jersey,
appealed to Jewish women to get involved in Hadassah. In the local newsletter the
group published a list of questions and answers about Hadassah membership. One
question posed was “I am an American My Loyalty is here, Zionism means nothing
to me.” The answer to this question was that Hadassah member’s loyalty as Zionists
and Americans “makes us more patriotic because it makes us better citizens.” The
writer further argued that supporting a flourishing democracy like Israel in the
Middle East was American.4 6
Continued support and activism in the United Nations remained a central
aspect of Hadassah’s political philosophy. Hadassah representatives served as
liaisons to the United Nations, along with representatives from other non
governmental organizations. Members worked to strengthen United Nations foreign
aid programs. Local chapters, such as the one in Portland, Oregon, organized
public meetings with congressmen involved in the United Nations who spoke to
members about the importance of United Nations work.4 7
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Images of Arabs and Arab Governments in an Era of Increasing Hostility
As tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors rose, Arab nations,
according to Hadassah leaders, bore the brunt of the blame for conflict in the Middle
East and possible Soviet infiltration. Given Hadassah’s history of seeking to
maintain a culturally pluralistic society with equal rights for Arab citizens, Hadassah
literature and rhetoric walked a fine line. On the one hand, it demonized Arab
nations and their leaders, and on the other hand, depicted Arabs living in Israel in
more positive terms: All the while it maintained that Arabs within Israel benefited
from Israeli policy.
Hadassah’s bifurcated views about Arab nations that depicted them as
aggressors and the Arab population within Israel as worthy of rescue continued into
the 1950s. Hadassah retained a largely progressive approach to the Arabs within
Israel which reflected a multicultural approach that had been adopted by Szold and
other founders of the organization. However, at the same time a hawkish and critical
ideology about the Arab nations emerged. It associated the Arab world with
communist aggression and idealized Israel as the bastion of democratic ideals, a
helpless victim in need of protection.
Hadassah leaders continued to assure the membership that Arabs living in
Israel would receive complete civil rights and would benefit from the new nation.
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An article published in the December 1950 issue o f Hadassah Newsletter entitled
“No ‘Jim Crow’ in Israel: Arabs Enjoy Full Equality,” briefed Hadassah members
on the positive steps being taken to secure the success of Arabs in Israel: “Israel’s
Arab population is a prime concern of all government bureaus. The Israel Arab
receives almost the same pay as his Jewish fellow worker and derives all the social
benefits of the highly-developed Israeli society.” The article went on to appeal to
Hadassah’s emphasis on child rescue by explaining that “thousands of illiterate Arab
children went to school for the first time this year in compliance with the recently
enacted Compulsory Education Act.”4 8 Arab children under the care of the Israeli
government, the article argued, received training in programs such as literacy
“unheard of in the feudal societies of Israel’s neighbors.”4 9 In line with the liberal
multi-cultural view of Hadassah leaders, their approach assured its members that not
only would Arabs be protected from discrimination in Israel, but they would actually
have more promising futures.
Scores of articles published by Hadassah in the 1950s argued that Arabs
thrived in Israel, even though their Arab brethren elsewhere attacked the sovereignty
of Israel. If a member had read all the articles dealing with Arabs in Israel in
Hadassah publications in the 1950s, what they would have learned is that all possible
measures were being taken to ensure Arab success in Israel. Arab and Jewish
farmers worked together hand in hand; Arab women received vocational training;
and the government even established an Arab kibbutz. Local newsletters, Hadassah
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meetings, and bulletins also provided information on Hadassah’s equal treatment of
Arab patients.5 0
The Israeli government, according to Hadassah publications, even went as
far as to find homes for the many Arab refugees who had “lost their homes during
the war.”5 1 Israeli Arabs, one article informed Hadassah members, also received a
college education. According to another article, the issue o f the success of Arabs
within Israel should retain significance for the Jewish community the world over.
“The question of the Arab minority in Israel touches on a tender nerve in the
consciousness not only of Israel itself but of Jews the world over.” The article,
however, dissuaded Jews from drawing a parallel between the Jews of the Diasporic
Jewish experience with anti-Semitism and the Arab situation in Israel. Instead, it
suggested that the Arabs in Israel experienced an almost familial program of cultural
uplift. Jewish suffering, the author argued, stemmed from Christian anti-Semitism,
“a social and mental aberration of the gentile world.” Through their anti-Semitism
gentiles blocked Jews from having access to their institutions. But “Jews always
maintained a high level of culture and social adaptability.” Jews thus bore the brunt
of anti-Semitism in spite of their advanced cultural and economic status. Arabs in
Israel, the author contended, “have a population with a much lower economic and
social standard than those of the majority of the state, a population which is part of
the Arab peoples of the Middle East.5 2 ” The article goes on to explain how the
economic and social standards of the Arab population needed to be “raised” to that
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of the Jewish population. The piece reflected a dichotomy between the desire of
Hadassah members to safeguard the rights of Arabs in Israel and Hadassah’s
tendency to view Arabs as a lesser people in need of Westernization, Jewish charity,
and social uplift.
Much like the Progressive activists of the 1910s and 1920s in the United
States who sought to assist working-class immigrant communities in America and
often viewed them through a lens of cultural superiority, Hadassah leaders and
members wanted to believe that Arabs in Israel were better off in Israel than within
an Arab community or nation. This tension between a liberal progressive attitude of
benevolence towards Arabs in Israel and the belief that Israel could raise Arabs to
Western standards permeated Hadassah literature and ideology. Again, this did not
stem from a malicious intent but rather from a cultural notion of superiority and
assistance that plagued many progressive United States benevolent organizations
throughout the twentieth century. This point of view assumed that Arabs should be
happy to be living in Israel and benefiting from Israeli aid and assimilating into
Israeli culture. In reality, however, although some Arab Israelis did attain some
measure of economic success within Israel, the experience for many Arabs there
remained tense and difficult.
Hadassah information on the issue of Arabs in Israel often mirrored the
public relations material published by the Israeli government. In a 1955 publication
entitled “The Arabs in Israel,” the Israeli government detailed how Arabs in Israel
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maintained a better standard of living and had more economic and educational
opportunities in Israel than in the past or in any contemporary Arab country: “The
standard of living of the Arab peasants in the country is today higher than at any
previous time and in any other Middle Eastern country.”5 3 This 92-page publication
provides a glowing report on the fair and equal treatment of Arabs in Israel and on
their successful acculturation. Hadassah literature often repeated the findings of the
Israeli government, about the high standard of living Arabs in the Middle East in
comparison with the rest o f the Arab world and the fact that more than 80% of Arab
farmers living in Israel worked and owned their own land.5 4 Hadassah also pointed
out to its members that Israel, unlike other Arab nations, granted Arab women in
Israel full suffrage and that Arabs had representation in the Israeli Knesset
(parliament).5 5 Hadassah literature continued to inform its members that Arabs
received equal access to medical service even during times of warfare such as the
Suez crisis when, “arrangements were made for a sick Arab girl to cross the Israel-
Jordan frontier in order to obtain Hadassah’s medical help.5 6 ”
Much of the Hadassah literature and “line” borrowed from the Israeli
government portrayal of the situation. However, just as the American government
sought to portray itself in the best light by downplaying any racial tensions and the
issue of segregation, the Israeli government remained firmly in denial of the negative
ways in which Arab life in Israel. Hadassah members, however, received only a
biased— if not faulty— picture of the life o f Arabs within Israel. This laid the
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groundwork for future misunderstanding. When Palestinians or Arabs within Israel
publicized grievances, Hadassah members often discounted them, for the image of
Arabs in Israel as happy and protected was engrained in the minds of many Hadassah
members and leaders.
To further complicate matters, Hadassah members were constantly reminded
of the security threat that Arabs in Israel posed to the young country. Whether these
accounts were correct or not, the belief that a people is violent by nature and has a
secret desire to “drive Jews into the sea” produces bitterness. By the 1960s and
1970s, Hadassah members heard less and less about the efforts to accommodate
Arabs in Israel and more and more about the threats to Israeli security from them.
Exodus
In 1958 Leon Uris’ epic novel about the establishment of Israel took the
American-Jewish community by storm. The book’s enormous length, 626 pages, did
not deter readers from purchasing this novel. Exodus weaves the stories of Jewish
refugees from the Holocaust who make Aliyah to Palestine in 1947. The American
heroine, Kitty Freemont, was a character the American audience could identify with.
Exodus has often described as a popular version of “muscular Zionism,” a form of
Zionism that sought not only to establish the state of Israel but to identify Jewish
men in Israel with masculine traits such as militarism and aggressiveness. The
project of Zionism to a large part was to rescue the image of Jewish men from the
feminization that had been the stereotype of much of Europe.5 7 Exodus also painted
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a very simplistic portrait of Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine. Jewish men take up
arms, in this novel, to protect the new Jewish homeland. According to the novel,
these aren’t your stereotypical “Jew boys” emasculated by the tragedy of the
holocaust. As Kitty says of the protagonist Ben Canaan (played by Paul Newman in
the popular film version) ‘ “Well, I’ll say one thing. This Ben Canaan doesn’t act
like any Jew I’ve ever met. You know what I mean. You don’t particularly think of
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them in a capacity like his.. .or fighters.. .things of that sort.” The triumph of
Exodus is the triumph of the Jews over the British and the Arabs; more than that it is
the triumph of Jewish men over the stereotypes of their own perceived inadequacies.
The book had particular significance for Hadassah members because one of
the central characters, the young holocaust refugee Karen, lives in Gan Dafna, a
Youth Aliyah camp. The novel reads as historical fiction with history playing a
central character. The whole of Arab history is described in about four pages,
according to Uris, as centuries of military battle: “the Arabs so exhausted themselves
in ten decades of fighting that their once mighty cities were decimated and a dry rot
fell on the flowering oases.. ..The Arabs turned more and more against themselves
and a bitter and desperate struggle ensued in which blood feuds pitted brother against
brother.”5 9 The Arab propensity for violence eventually became part of the Arab
character. “In this atmosphere of cunning, treachery, murder, feuds, and jealousies
became a way of life. The cruel realities that had gone into forming the Arab
character puzzled the outsider.”6 0 As Sylvia Barak-Fishman argues, Exodus presented
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a romanticized picture of the founding of the state of Israel and painted Arab as bad
and Jews as good.6 1 The Mufti of Jerusalem was depicted as the main antagonist
who easily manipulated “dirty” and “illiterate” Arabs into “hysteria” and violence.
Many Hadassah members read this book. On the one hand, it legitimated their work
in Palestine; on the other hand, it showcased Gan Dafna as the haven that it was for
Jewish youth. At the same time Exodus further helped to draw a line in the sand
between Jew and Arab, for it presented a simplistic rendition of a very complicated
set of historical facts.
In 1960 the film Exodus was released and became very popular. While
omitting much that was in the novel, the film, which starred Paul Newman and Eva
Marie Saint, borrowed heavily from it. Gan Dafna was prominent in the narrative,
and, Arabs were largely portrayed as evil or ignorant. Even the most radical Jewish
groups such as the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist cell that operated in Palestine and among
other activities blew up a wing of the King David Hotel, which housed British
officials in 1947, were portrayed in a positive light. The film Exodus takes pains to
paint a picture of a unified Jewish voice, and it did not fully problematize the work
of the Irgun.6 2 In contrast, Hadassah had always denounced the actions of the Irgun.
Muscular Zionism, as portrayed in the film and the book Exodus, painted a much
simpler picture of Arab-Jewish relations then the one Hadassah portrayed.
Hadassah’s discourse on Arabs might have glossed over many aspects of the conflict,
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but it offered a much more nuanced and complicated version o f the issues than that
provided either in the novel or the film Exodus.
The Cold War at Home: Hadassah Rejects Domestic Hysteria
While Hadassah foreign policy used Cold War politics to bolster the position
of Israel vis-a-vis the free world, this stance did not entirely extend to domestic
politics. In the post-war era a constant barrage of Cold War rhetoric warned
Americans of the danger of the nuclear threat. In this rhetoric, the Communists
threatened not only American dominance on the geo-political level but also the very
fabric of American society. At any moment the Soviets could launch a nuclear
attack, creating a proliferation not only of weapons by the superpower governments,
but also of bomb shelters and school drills in Middle America. Anxiety over the
Soviets reached extreme proportions and in part created an atmosphere of hysteria
which lent itself to the devastating politics of accusations and personal destruction
called McCarthyism.
Anti-communism in American history certainly pre-dated the 1950s. The red
scare of the World War I era foreshadowed much the political rancor that manifested
itself more vehemently in the 1950s. McCarthy himself cannot be credited entirely
with the tactics so often associated with his name; in fact in 1947 attacks on
Hollywood had already surfaced with the Hollywood Ten called before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, and the infamous blacklist began.6 3 Into this
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atmosphere ripe with fear and hate entered Joseph McCarthy, elected to the Senate in
1946 on an anti-communist platform. The political ideology of McCarthyism and its
supporters— a term created by the cartoonist Herblock— sought to identify and
destroy communism and communist sympathizers in America.6 4 McCarthy himself
often named names based on hunches and mere innuendo, destroying people lives.
As a result of this approach, at the State Department alone 273 people resigned
between 1953 and 1955.6 5 McCarthyite activity derived its legal and political
legitimacy from the 1940 peacetime Sedition Act, which the Truman administration
used as the basis of its Communist witch hunt. The FBI served as the major enforcer
of Truman’s policy, and McCarthy popularized and branded this politics of fear.6 6
Communists and anyone associated with Red tendencies remained possible targets
during the purge.
Many liberal organizations worried about the targeting of liberal leaning
groups as Communist and about the solvency of their own organizations. Women’s
organizations in particular were targeted by McCarthyism, and organizations like the
AAUW almost disintegrated because of divisions within the organization on the
issue.6 7 An acceptable response to the anti-communist agenda lay in the use of the
patriotic language of “Americanism” to challenge communism. Liberals often clung
to notions of legal rights as an avenue from which to argue against the Anti
communist barrage.6 8 Hadassah had already incorporated an emphasis on
Americanism during the war years in order to assure that their alliance with Palestine
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did not detract from their patriotism. This language of Americanism adopted in
World War II served them well during the fifties as a buffer to any possible
allegations of left leaning tendencies.
In its attempt to assure support for Israel by the United States, Hadassah
leaders utilized a Cold War geo-political argument that demonized communism and
lent itself to the hysteria of the times. At the same time, their domestic rhetoric often
challenged the anti-communist mentality by arguing against McCarthyism either
openly or subtly and by aligning themselves with liberal causes, such as the civil
rights movement, that were often associated with Un-Americanism by anti
communist ideologues.
The American Affairs group of Hadassah was specifically devoted to
addressing domestic political issues. The American Affairs Committee and local
chapter members engaged in American Affairs projects, which included efforts to
educate members and the community on the importance of voting and educating
members about the UN. They saw this as a matter for the American Affairs
Committee, because as Americans it was their responsibility to represent American
Jewish women’s voices in the UN— and various other domestic activities. At
Hadassah’s annual convention in San Francisco in 1950 American Affairs included
in its mandate the “education and dissemination of information on such matters as
civil liberties.”6 9 Articles and speeches published by Hadassah dealt with freedom of
speech or civil liberties by explicitly or implicitly alluding to the McCarthyite purge.
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At the 37th Annual Hadassah Convention in 1951 at Atlantic City, Columbia
University history professor Henry Steele Commager spoke of the dangers of
McCarthyism. He argued that the United States must “vindicate its newfound
position” of world dominance due to the victory in Korea by “destroying
McCarthyism and all that it symbolizes” on the domestic front.7 0 In addition,
Commager enunciated that the United States must align itself with the United
Nations and act within the international community. Referring to both McCarthyism
and Cold War politics abroad, Commager stated, “we must set our own house in
order and see to it that we, who preach democracy and equality and justice and
tolerance, practice these things at home and abroad.7 1 ”
Howard Mumford pointed out to Hadassah members valid reasons for fearing
that “bigotry” threatened America in the form of McCarthyite rhetoric and actions:
Such reasons might be found in any newspaper or radio or
television program.. ..We are all too familiar with the behavior of
Congressional committees ; with the way persons have been dropped
from the nation’s services-civil or military-on the suspicion of being
under suspicion.7 2
Mumford explained that communists in fact only made up “less than one-fifteenth”
of the U.S. population and that the “hysteria” was a vast overreaction. He also
contended that the psychology of fear that had emerged form the “bigotry” of the
Red Purge weakened the nation.7 3
While Hadassah argued against Cold War McCarthyite rhetoric on the
domestic front, in foreign relations the organization continued to champion a Cold
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War geo-politics. In 1954, Hadassah passed a resolution proposed by the American
Affairs Committee that further stressed the organizations’ objections to McCarthyist
rhetoric. Again the language referred to civil liberties and the constitution. After
acknowledging the dangerous threats of the times, such as “Atomic warfare,” the
resolution stated that Hadassah “records its deep concern at the growing tendency to
meet these dangers in a climate of fear and hysteria,”
To equate nonconformity with disloyalty; to whittle away the
inalienable rights guaranteed to all Americans by their constitution
in the name of defending that instrument; to bar the concept of free
enterprise from the realm of ideas is to betray our past and endanger
our future. Freedom to pursue the truth, to exchange ideas, and to
disagree with accepted opinion are the freedoms which have made
America great and represent its proudest possession. The American
tradition of freedom is also the Jewish tradition. In these days of
understandable anxiety, we, as Americans and as Jews, must reforge
the links which bind us to the great ideals of freedom bequeathed to
us by our forbearers. Civil Liberties are the foundation of this
freedom and constitute the most powerful weapon against
totalitarianism and tyranny.7 4
Throughout 1954 and after, Hadassah Newsletter many instructional articles
published explained to members the history and importance of civil liberties. These
articles explicitly attacked the Red Purge mentality as hurtful to American freedom
and ideals. In January 1954, an article entitled “Anatomy of the Fifth Amendment”
painted a hypothetical scenario where a “liberal professor” accused of “being a
communist” refuses to answer on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment so as to not
incriminate himself. The article proceeded to instruct readers on the history of the
constitution and the importance of the Fifth Amendment. After reading this article,
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Hadassah members gained a fuller understanding of the legal, political, and personal
reasons one might use the Fifth Amendment and therefore did not automatically
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assume that its use assumed guilt.
Hadassah supported its stance on civil liberties by publishing articles and
promoting prominent political figures who challenged McCarthyism. Significant
actors within the liberal community, such as the executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union, wrote articles in Hadassah publications condemning “Joseph
McCarthy and his followers” and arguing that they threatened national security by
“casting a blight on freedom of inquiry and communication” and creating a culture of
fear that limited the capacity of the “Secretary of State to receive competent and
honest reports.”7 6 The article provided a detailed outline of the various ways
censorship had curtailed freedom of speech within the movie industry.
Often Hadassah employed the rhetoric of politicians to bolster their policy
choices. This was true both in their domestic stand against Cold War scapegoating
and in their efforts to depict Israel within a Cold War geo-political context. These
two simultaneously borrowed from Cold War rhetoric in foreign policy issues and
challenged it. Hadassah supporter and Republican congressman Jacob Javits also
subscribed to a similar political approach, and Hadassah often utilized articles
written by him and speeches he gave to legitimate their political choices. In 1954
Javits penned an article published in Hadassah publications titled “a Congressman
looks at Congressional Investigations.” In it he argued that, “The methods being
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currently used by some congressional committees greatly trouble millions of
Americans who are sensible of our historic traditions of jurisprudence and who are
concerned at the growing threat to our civil liberties.”7 7 He further criticized the way
that, “Some Congressional investigations of subversive activities and Communists
have turned, in effect, into prosecutions and penalties incurred— in a practical, if not
in a legal, way—by those named in such investigations. These include the real
78??
possibility of loss of reputation, livelihood and standing in the community. ” The
next year Javits gave a speech at a Hadassah fund-raiser warning of the dangers of
communism and the Middle East and the necessity of maintaining positive relations
with Israel.7 9 This is a good example of the type of policy Hadassah employed: on
the foreign affairs front they pushed for Jews and the American public to associate
Israel with a pro-democracy stance in a bifurcated world. On the domestic scene,
however, their American affairs committee, Hadassah leaders, and publications
challenged McCarthyism and affiliated the organization with progressive agendas.
McCarthy’s challenge to the United States Army in the McCarthy-Army
hearings started a chain of events that led to the end of McCarthy’s power. During
the spring of 1954 America watched as television broadcast the hearings that made
public McCarthy’s attempt to weed out Communists within the Army. This action
seemed unwarranted in the eyes of many Americans. Now many politicians,
particularly Republican moderates, began to criticize the participation of their party
in “witch-hunts” and attacks on civil-liberties.8 0 Building on this weakness within
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McCarthy’s support in the Senate, Senator Ralph Flanders, a Republican Senator
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from Vermont, led a successful campaign to censure McCarthy in 1954.
The cover of Hadassah Newsletter’ s November 1954 edition hailed the
weakening of the politics of fear associated with McCarthy. “During the year, there
has been growing public recognition of the abuses of the abuses of congressional
investigating committees.” Even Robert Oppenheimer, the famed scientist, lost his
“security clearance,” and this event had a shattering impact on the morale of
scientists across the nation. “One important gain has been recorded. For the first
o 9
time in several years, McCarthy and his methods have been seriously challenged.”
Although McCarthy himself lost power after the censure, McCarthy-like tactics and
ideology still remained prominent in the United States.
Hadassah leaders recognized the need to be vigilant on the issue of civil
liberties. At the 41st annual convention held in Chicago on November 2, 1955,
concerns about censorship and McCarthy-like tactics still existed. Although
McCarthy himself had lost power within the government by that point, Hadassah
members and leaders remained wary that the ideology of McCarthy continued to
pose a threat to “democracy”. In a speech given at that conference, Buell G.
Gallagher, president of the City College of New York, urged Hadassah members to
accept that this was not “the time to relax.” Gallagher argued that although some
may think that “the victory for democracy within the United States” had been won,
he was not so certain. He feared that with the demise of McCarthy’s power, “the
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first phase of hurricane zealot has passed over us, that we are presently in the calm of
the eye of the storm.” It was possible, in his opinion, that more incursions on civil
liberties would follow. Indeed freedom of speech and civil liberties remained an
issue of interest to Hadassah throughout the 1950s, although the sense of urgency on
the matter waned.8 3
Immigration
In addition to championing civil liberties through the work of its American Affairs
Committee, Hadassah also worked to liberalize immigration quotas. Restricted
immigration, resulting from the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, was one of the political
issues that Hadassah choose to contest during the 1950s. An overhaul of the
immigration system, the McCarran-Walter Act expanded the racist policy of relying
on a national origins hierarchy in immigration laws. Immigrants hailing from
northwestern Europe remained privileged, the act also introduced a Cold War
element to immigration law. Applicants would have to prove that they had no
affiliation with any radical organizations. This requirement extended to naturalized
citizens, who could be deported at any time if they were found to have suspicious
associations.8 4 Although Truman vetoed the law it went into effect on December 24
1952, the McCarran-Walter Act had anti-Semitic and anti-Asian overtones, since it
privileged Northwestern European immigrants and barred entry to many Jews from
Eastern Europe or anyone presumed to have radical affiliations at a time when Jews
had been associated with leftist political movements. In addition, it continued a
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history of anti-Asian sentiment that were in place, beginning with the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882. Liberal Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee
and the American Jewish Congress, sought to ameliorate the situation. Hadassah also
worked through educating its membership and applying political pressure to repeal
the Act.8 5 In a December 1954 edition of the Hadassah Newsletter an article written
by an “Immigration Specialist” named Ann Petluck argued for the repeal of the law.
“What are the serious defects in the 1952 law? It is generally agreed among
individuals and organizations working in the field of immigration that in many area,
contrary to American tradition, the law is not only decidedly illiberal but actually
discriminatory against certain foreign national groups.8 6 ” Petluck argued for
acceptance of increased immigration as a positive asset to the American economy
and outlined the limitations of the Act. She also contended that “Deportation should
be forbidden,” in all forms.8 7
Hadassah’s attack on the McCarran-Walter Act also reflected its anti-
McCarthyist agenda. Senator Hubert. H. Humphrey wrote an analysis of the status
of liberalism in Hadassah Newsletter’ s March 1953 edition entitled “The Crisis in
Liberalism.” Humphrey delineated an anti-McCarthy approach combined with severe
criticism of immigration laws. Humphrey pointed to the contradictory policy of on
the one hand fighting for freedom in the “Iron Curtain” while simultaneously
blocking entry to the United States of foreign nationals from those areas. Senator
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Herbert H. Lehman warned Hadassah members of the “discriminatory” nature of the
McCarran Act:
We should recognize, then, that our own immigration policy is a
fundamental part of our international policy.. ..while America has
poured out billions of dollars in an effort to rebuild the free world
and has sacrificed thousands of its sons on the battlefield in order to
check Soviet aggression, we have affronted both our national
heritage and the dignity of other peoples by the adoption of a
o o
discriminatory immigration law- the McCarran Act.
Although President Truman vetoed the Act, it still passed by a house override of the
veto. At that point Truman established a commission on immigration and
naturalization law. Hadassah representatives testified before that committee, arguing
for an overhaul of the immigration policy that would allow more access tio
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immigration and eradicate the Cold War overtones of the act.
In August 1953, the Eisenhower administration passed the Refugee Relief
Act. It paid lip service to the criticisms of all the groups pushing for change within
the system but failed to modify the existing laws in any significant way.9 0 Herbert
H. Lehman sought to implement his own immigration act and publicized his disdain
for the McCaran -W alter Act in articles written in Hadassah Newsletter. Although
Lehman sought to expand immigration to peoples of Asia and Eastern Europe, he
strongly objected to the illegal immigration of Mexican nationals into America. This
bias against Mexican and Latino immigration in favor of other groups, however, was
not attacked by Hadassah which remained focused on Eastern European and Asian
immigration.9 1 Hadassah continued to fight for expanded immigration and to
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educate its membership about the “unjust” nature of the McCarran-Walter Act
throughout the 1950s.9 2
Civil Rights
Jews and African Americans, longtime allies and enemies, swung the
pendulum toward the side of camaraderie during the 1950s. Jews had a history of
supporting organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League through
substantial financial support and legal leadership. Among the forty five members of
the NAACP’s first general Committee, seven members were Jews.9 3 Historic ties
between the Jewish and Black communities strengthened dramatically in the Post-
World War II era and during the early civil rights movement. The aftermath of
World War II brought to light the plight of both Jews and blacks as targets for
violence and extermination. Both communities understood the possibility that the
virulence of hatred espoused by Nazis, could easily transition into American culture.
Many Black soldiers rescued Jews from concentration camps in Europe, and both
Black and Jewish soldiers worked toward the same cause of emancipation in WWII.
In the aftermath of the war, it became increasingly clear that both anti-Semitism and
racism remained problems within the United States.9 4 Jews and Blacks formed a
loosely knit alliance to protect civil rights and ethnic understanding within the
United States. Cultural pluralism, already part of Hadassah ideology from its
inception in the teens, now gained widespread acceptance among most Jewish
groups, as well as Black organizations and many other liberal organizations.9 5
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In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown versus the Board o f Education of
Topeka, Kansas , that both segregated schools and the doctrine of “separate but
equal,” the legal justification for segregation which was enunciated in Plessey versus
Ferguson in 1898, was unconstitutional. Many conservative groups and individuals
challenged the legitimacy of the Supreme Court ruling and chose to ignore the
mandate or fight against it. In this atmosphere, Hadassah’s 40th annual convention
meeting in 1954 adopted this resolution:
Hadassah , The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, together
with men and women everywhere who believe that democracy rests
on basic truths— that among these truths is the doctrine of the
equality of all men—hereby acclaims the decision of the supreme
court of the United States banning racial segregation in public
schools in America; and goes on record as welcoming this decision
as evidence of the vitality of democracy in America and of the
identification between democratic theory and practice.
THERFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Hadassah endorse every
effort to implement this great judicial decision to the end that it shall
be practiced in the day to day life of American people.9 6
None could doubt that Hadassah stood squarely in favor of desegregation.
Hadassah’s long history o f incorporating cultural pluralism and multicultural
acceptance had established an attitude towards racism that only strengthened
throughout the 1950s to lead Hadassah to align itself with the Civil Rights
movement.
Hadassah incorporated the emphasis on Civil Rights into its American
Affairs program and also ran informative articles in support of the issue of de-
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segregation. In June 1954, one month after the Supreme Court decision on school
desegregation was passed in May, the Hadassah Newsletter ran an article by
Channing H. Tobias, then chairman of the board of directors of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a former United States
delegate to the U.N. The article ran on the cover page, with an accompanying photo
of a white and black girl facing each other holding hands. The title of the article was
“United We Stand; Supreme Court Ends School Segregation.”9 7
Hadassah members read that this decision “was the most important single
step forward for the Negro-American since the ratification, in 1870, of the Fifteenth
Amendment, which removed the color ban from the ballot.”9 8 Channing, in effect,
extended an invitation for Hadassah members to participate more fully in the smooth
implementation of desegregation and of other efforts of the NAACP. While
explaining the impact and history of segregation on American citizens, Channing
also outlined ways in which “law abiding citizens who are anxious to translate this
decision into a program to eradicate racial segregation in public schools” could
participate in the acceleration and successful implementation of the ruling by
lobbying their “local school boards” and school officials." He emphasized that all
Americans “who value our Hebraic-Christian heritage of human brotherhood” and
who wished to maintain American’s position as the leader of the “free world” should
celebrate the victory gained by the Supreme Court decision.1 0 0
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Civil Rights remained an issue of importance from the American Affairs
Committee and the greater Hadassah leadership through the 1950s. The American
Affairs Committee continued to stress civil rights in its Annual Report from
September 1955-September 1956. The Chairman, Mrs. Epstein, wrote: “The
American Affairs Committee of Hadassah was increasingly concerned during the
past year with those problems of which all freedom-loving Americans are conscious.
The change in the climate with respect to Civil Rights has not dulled the alertness of
groups and agencies organized for the purpose of preserving American freedoms.”
The report goes on to note that the Supreme Court judgment on desegregation had
been met with tremendous opposition in the South and that Hadassah supported the
Supreme Court Judgment as “the law of the land.”1 0 1 Several articles charted
advancements and struggles facing Civil Rights legislation, while American Affairs
literature kept members informed of developments.1 0 2 Local chapters held
information sessions about civil rights issues.1 0 3 Hadassah chapters in the South
learned that American Affairs projects “relates to three main areas— civil rights and
civil liberties, American foreign relations and the United Nations.1 0 4 ”
In 1958, with Hadassah’s membership at 315,000 members, at a convention,
at which prime minister of Israel Golda Meir spoke, Hadassah adopted an additional
Civil Rights resolution. This resolution challenged members to commit themselves,
“through a program of positive education to the endeavors of dispelling fear and hate
from our midst, preventing subterfuges and evasions which lead to the disobedience
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107
of the law of the land and of counteracting violence by obedience to the laws of our
country.” The resolution further reiterated recognition of the Supreme Court
decisions on Civil Rights matters as “the final authority in the interpretation of the
constitution.” While all people have the right to criticize the Supreme Court,
according to the resolution, “that right of criticism does not carry within it
disobedience to or circumvention of the law.” Lastly, the resolution stated that
Hadassah members believe that most Americans “recognize and hold these
principles to be ethically and morally sound.”1 0 5
American Affairs literature and activities also encouraged Hadassah members
to register and vote for both local and national elections. In some cases this need to
vote was directly tied to the civil rights issue. Belle C. Davis, chair of the Mount
Vernon chapter o f Hadassah American Affairs in New York, organized a Hadassah
event where Republican and Democratic candidates for the 26th congressional district
outlined their platform on what she considered were the two key issues for Hadassah
members’ national foreign policy and civil rights. Members were encouraged to
bring their husbands and friends to this event to get the word out about the vote.1 0 6
Belle Davis wrote an article pleading with Hadassah members to vote to influence
the major issues of day, including desegregation, by the “intelligent use of our
personal vote.1 0 7 ” Hadassah chapters competed with one another to see how many
voters they could register. The Hadassah Shoreline chapter in Chicago pledged 450
members to participate in a voter registration drive for 100 percent voter registration,
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“in order to beat the claim of Wausau, Wisconsin of being the first in nation to reach
this goal.1 0 8 ”
In the South, Jews position as outsiders and targets for anti-Semitic hostility,
as witnessed in the lynching of Jews, placed Jews in a precarious position. Many
shied away from participating in civil rights action because of this tension, while
some tried to make gestures towards the Black community by serving Black clients
and occasionally hiring black workers. Some Jews did make public their support for
civil rights and became activists and later targets for hostility. A wave of bombings
directed at Jewish community supporters of civil rights swept the South between
1954 and 1959. Referring to the bombing of a synagogue in Atlanta, Hadassah
passed a resolution condemning these “acts of intimidation” designed to silence the
“vast majority of law-abiding Americans.” The dynamite planted at these centers,
according to the resolution, was aimed not only at destroying buildings but also at
the destruction of “the moral and ethical principles which emanate from these
centers, and therefore, at the basis of our democracy.” The resolution further urged
that “no effort be spared” in the investigation in order to find who was responsible
for these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.1 0 9
In an article entitled “the Crisis in Liberalism” published in the Hadassah
Newsletter in March of 1953, Hubert N Humphrey senator argued “The cause of
human rights must be advanced in our own backyard. Today the question is no
longer one of whether to do something about civil rights but how much and in what
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form.1 1 0 ” While Hadassah foreign policy stressed the importance of Israel as a force
for democracy (versus communism) in the Middle East and borrowed strongly from
Cold War rhetoric to boost the importance of American support for Israel, the
American Affairs committee struggled to combat the sense of dread gripping much
of the nation in the post-war era. The use of the atomic bomb in World War II and
the subsequent arms race with the Soviet Union created a culture of fear and anxiety
in the United States. Historian Margot Hendrickson argues that, “two contrasting and
conflicting ‘revolutions’ occurred” in the post-war era. The first response, the
“culture of consensus,” accepted America’s new role as a world superpower,
replacing a once isolationist approach to American foreign policy with an aggressive
interventionist position. The United States, according to this perspective, now acted
as the chief international “provider of security and safety”. Simultaneously, a
“culture of dissent” emerged to challenge the “culture of consensus” bringing light to
the severity and horrifying nature of atomic weapons.1 1 1
In many ways Hadassah ascribed to both forms of this cultural ideology.
On the one hand, Hadassah championed the prominence o f the United States as a
super power and argued for support for Israel based on Cold War geo-politics. In
contrast, the American Affairs committee began organizing a campaign against the
use of nuclear weapons.
Perhaps the chief concern of the committee during the past
year has been in the sphere of disarmament. In this ever shrinking
world, the frantic race for the development fever more destructive
weapons has reached terrifying proportions. The world’s leaders are
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110
reluctantly realizing that an atomic arms race is overwhelmingly
costly and suicidal. All of us are aware of the dangers of unilateral
disarmament, yet we realize the enormous benefits which would
accrue to all mankind from total world disarmament and the
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cessation of production of war material!
The committee circulated two kits (to Hadassah members) devoted to the issue of
disarmament that year. An emphasis on peaceful resolution of world tensions and the
push for nuclear disarmament which began in the fifties were further articulated
through the 1960s and 1970s.
As the 1950s drew to a close, the United States stood poised to enter the
1960s as a world superpower engaged in interventionist Cold War politics.
Simultaneously, domestic issues of racial inequality, women’s subjugation, and a
general questioning of once held assumptions about the American government boiled
up to the surface, dramatically changing notions of acceptability and political action
for people throughout America. Through Hadassah, Jewish women tackled the
shifting sands of the 1960s social revolution by once again adapting their message
and action towards new trends.
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I l l
NOTES
1 Fred Inglis, The Cruel Peace: Everyday Life in the Cold War, (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 42.
2 Margot Henriksen, D octor Strangelove’ s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkley:
University o f California Press, 1997).
3 Sylvie Murray, The Progressive Housewife: Community Activism in Suburban Queens (Univ. o f
Pennsylvania, 2003) 2.
4 Gloria Goldreich Horowitz, The Hadassah Idea: History and Development, booklet, (New York:
Hadassah, 1968); “ 1968 1969 Annual Report,” 19, in call no. 3, box 28, folder 2, Hadassah Archive
(HA), Center for Jewish History, N ew York.
5 Horowitz, Hadassah Idea, 31; “Hadassah Chicago Silver Jubilee Chapter Give and Get,” luncheon
program, 13 May 1952, HA.
6 “Facts About Hadassah,” 1956, call no. 17, box 10, HA.
7 “Facts About Hadassah.” 1966
8 Hadassah, Face Toward the Future, booklet (New York: Hadassah, October 1953), 14
9 “Facts about Hadassah.” 1966.
1 0 Hadassah, Face Toward the Future, 18; “Facts about Hadassah,” 1966
1 1 Hadassah, Face Toward the Future, 25
1 2 Hadassah, Face Toward the Future, 26
1 3 “Hadassah 1968-1969 Annual Report,” call no. 3, box 28, folder 2, HA.
1 4 “Facts about Hadassah,” 1956, call no. 17, box 10, HA.
1 5 “Hadassah 1968-1969 Annual Report.”
1 6 Inglis, Cruel Peace, 34.
1 7 Stephen Whitfield, The Culture o f the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996), 5.
1 8 Thomas Patterson, J. Garry Clifford and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Relations : A H istory
Since 1945 (Lexington, Massachusetts: DC Heath and Company, 1995).
1 9 Inglis, The Cruel, 51.
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20 As quoted in Patterson, Clifford and Hagan, American Foreign, 287.
2 1 As quoted in Patterson, Clifford and Hagan, American Foreign, 289.
2 2 Jon Kimche, “Can Israel Help Defend the Middle East,” Hadassah Headlines, February 1951, 5.
2 3 Kimche, “Can Israel,” 5; “Sputnik and Other Russia Gains Place New Demand for Positive US
Program in the Mid-East,” Hadassah Headlines, Nov, 1957, 2.
24 “Sputnik and Other,” 2.
25Howard M. Sachar, The H istory o f Israel from the Rise o f Zionism to Our Time (New Y ork: Alfred
Knopf, 1996), 474.
2 6 Sachar, History o f Israel, 475.
2 7 Sachar, H istory o f Israel, 474.
2 8 Avi Shalim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, ( N ew York, W.W. Norton & Company,
200') 162; Sachar, The H istory, 482.
2 9 Shalim, Iron Wall, 166-167.
3 0 Rose 1 . Halprin, “Suez Debate is Test o f Allied Unity,” Hadassah Newsletter, October 1956, p. 1.
3 1 Halprin, “Suez Debate,” p. 1.
3 2 Hadassah Newsletter, November 1956, n.p.
33 Sachar, H istory o f Israel.
3 4 Joan Comay, “Eyewitness Report from Israel,” Hadassah Newsletter, November 1956), 5.
3 5 Comay, “Eyewitness Report from Israel,” p. 5.
3 6 Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection ( N.J.: North American, 1982), 537.
3 7 Patterson, Clifford and Hagan, American Foreign, 357.
3 8 Judith Epstein, interview by Miriam Freund, 3-4, in call no. 20, box 9, folder 5, HA.
3 9 Epstein interview.
40 Patterson, Clifford and Hagan, American Foreign, 332.
4 1 “Hadassah a Bulwark Against Communism,” Hadassah Newsletter, October 1955, p. 2.
4 2 “Hadassah a Bulwark,” p. 2.
4 3 Faye Scenck, “Israel is Not Alone,” Hadassah Newsletter, November 1956, p. 9; Lilienthal, Zionist
Connection, 535.
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113
44 The same thing could be said for Jewish cultural issues. Many o f the most prominent names in the
Jewish community both spoke at functions and published articles through Hadassah.
45 Shoreline N ewsletter 3, no. 4, December 1956, p. 3, in HA.
46 Sarah Kuzzy Group Founding Newsletter, 1953, in call no. 15, box 9, HA.
4 7 “Chapters Back A A UN Tour o f Congressman Giving UN Data,” Hadassah Headlines, April 1958,
n.p.
48 “N o ‘Jim Crow’ in Israel Arabs Enjoy Full Equality,” Hadassah Newsletter, December 1950, p. 7.
4 9 “N o ‘Jim Crow’,” 7.
5 0 “Bulletin,” Hadassah Shoreline 1, no. 6, February 1955, p. 2.
5 1 “Homes for Arab Nomads,” Hadassah Newsletter, June 1955, p. 15.
5 2 Mishna Cohen, “The Arab Minority in Israel,” Hadassah Newsletter, July 1959, p. 5.
5 3 State o f Israel, The Arabs in Israel (n.p.: Israel Government, 1955), 22.
5 4 “Oh You Know That,” Hadassah Shoreline 3, no. 3, November 1956, p. 2.
5 5 “Oh You Know That,” p. 2.
5 6 Hadassah Shoreline 3, no. 9, May 1957, n.p.
5 7 Michael Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the first World War ("Chapel
Hill, the University o f North Carolina Press, 1993).
5 8 Leon Uris, Exodus (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958), 55.
5 9 Uris, Exodus, 237.
6 0 Uris, Exodus, 238.
6 1 Sylvia Barak-Fishman, “Israeli and Jewish Identity in American Fiction,” in Envisioning Israel,
Allon Gal, editor, (Magnes Press, 1996), 279.
6 2 Stephen J. Whitfield, “The Depictions o f Israel in American Films,” in Envisioning Israel, 293-
316.
63Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring o f American Culture in the Twentieth Century.
(London: Verso, 1996).
6 4 Whitfield, Culture o f Cold War, 38.
6 5 Fred Inglis, The Cruel Peace, 125
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114
6 6 Whitfield, Culture o f Cold War, 46
6 7 Levine, D egrees o f Equality.
6 8 Whitfield, Culture o f Cold War, 53.
6 9 “American Affairs Policy Adopted at Conference,” Hadassah Headlines, January 1950, p. 7.
7 0 “US Must Destroy McCarthyism At Home And Work in Concert with Free Nations Abroad to
Justify Position O f Supremacy,” press release, 18 September 1951, 1, in call no. 3, box 16, folder 5,
HA.
7 1 “US Must Destroy McCarthyism,” 1.
7 2 Howard Mumford Jones, “American Democratic Tradition,” Hadassah Newsletter, Nov 1953, p. 4.
7 3 Howard Mumford Jones, “American Democratic Tradition,” Hadassah Newsletter, N ov 1953, p. 4.
7 4 “Minutes from Conference 1954,” Call no. 3, box 18, folder 4, HA.
7 5 Osmond K. Franekel, “The Anatomy o f the Fifth Amendment,” Hadassah Newsletter, January
1954, p. 2.
7 6 Patrick Murphy Malin, “Let’s Look At the First Amendment,” Hadassah Newsletter, January 1954,
p. 1.
7 7 Jacob Javits, “A Congressman Looks at Congressional Investigation,” Hadassah Newsletter, March
1954, 1.
7 8 Javits, “A Congressman Looks,” 1.
7 9 “Hadassah a Bulwark,” p. 2.
8 0 Robert Griffith, The Politics O f Fear: Joseph M cCarthy and the Senate (Amherst: University o f
Massachusetts Press, 1987), 262.
8 1 Griffith, Politics o f Fear, 271.
82David Petegorsky, “Our Civil Liberties in 1954,” Hadassah Newsletter, November 1954, p. 1.
8 3 “In Defense o f Democracy,” speech script, call no. 3, box 18, folder 14, HA.
8 4 Howard Sachar, The H istory o f the Jews in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 622.
8 5 Sachar, H istory o f the Jews, 622.
8 6 Ann Petluck, Hadassah Newsletter, December 1952, p. 2.
8 7 Petluck, p. 2.
8 8 Hubert Humphery, “The Crisis in Liberalism,” Hadassah Newsletter, March 1953, p. 2
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115
8 9 Herbert H. Lehman, “For a Fair and Just Immigration Policy,” Hadassah New letter, April 1954. p.
3.
90 Sachar, H istory o f the Jews, 622
9 1 Lehman, “For a Fair and Just,” Hadassah Newsletter, April 1954, p. 4.
9 2 Harry N. Rosenfeld, “Basic issues in Immigration Policy,” Hadassah Newsletter, March 1957, n.p.
9 3 Nancy J. W eiss, “Long Distance Runners o f the Civil Rights Movement,” in Struggles in the
Prom ised Land: Toward a H istory o f Black-Jewish Relations in the United States, Jack Salzman and
Cornel West, editors, (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130.
9 4 Murray Friedman, What Went Wrong: The Creation and Collapse o f a Black-Jewish Alliance, (N Y :
The Free Press, 1995), 105.
9 5 Cheryl Greenberg, “Negotiating Coalition: Black and Jewish Civil Rights” in Struggles in the
Prom ised Land, 160.
96 “Supreme Court Decision Banning Segregation,’’ N ew York 1954, call no. 3, box 18, folder 8, HA.
9 7 Channing H. Tobias, “United We Stand: Supreme Court Ends School Segregation,” Hadassah
Newsletter, June 1954, p. 1.
9 8 Tobias, “United We Stand,” p. 1.
99 Tobias, “United We Stand,” p. 2.
1 0 0 Tobias, “United We Stand,” p. 2.
1 0 1 “American Affairs Annual Report,” September 1955-1956, 35, in box 19 folder 3, HA.
1 0 2 John J. Gunther, “Civil Rights Act,” Hadassah Newsletter, September 1957, n.p.; “Highlights o f
American Affairs-UN Activity,” Hadassah Headlines, Dec 1957, p. 6.
1 0 3 “Clippings 1958/59” scrapbook, HA.
1 0 4 “Austin Yearbook,” 1957, foreword, in call no. 15, box 17, HA.
1 0 5 “Press Release,” 22-23 October 1958, 3, call no. 3, box 19, folder 10, HA.
1 0 6 M ount Vernon Chapter o f Hadassah 3, October 1956, p. 1.
1 0 7 Mount Vernon Chapter o f Hadassah 3, October 1956, p. 2.
1 0 8 Hadassah Shoreline 3, no. 2, October 1956, p. 1, in call no. 15, box 5, “newsletter shoreline”
folder, HA.
1 0 9 “Press Release,” 22-23 October 1958, 3, call no. 3, box 19, folder 10, HA
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116
1 1 0 Humphrey, “The Crisis In Liberalism,” 2.
1 1 1 Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America, xx.
1 1 2 “American Affairs Annual Report,” September 1956-1957, 41, in call no. 3, box 19, folder 7, HA.
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CHAPTER 3
“Ema” or “Conscious Jewess”: Jewish Matemalism, Activism, and
Gender Roles in the 1950s
Hadassah members engaged in a variety of political activities in the 1950s.
These activities ranged from anti-McCarthy civil liberties action to the promotion of
civil rights and the support of anti-segregation legislation to lobbying and education
efforts on behalf of Israel to ensure the new state’s status as the major ally of the
United States in the Middle East. This political activity required women to be active
in the political arena at a time when the gender proscriptions dictated that they
remain at home and tend to their families. In order to meet this challenge, Hadassah
orchestrated a rhetorical campaign to legitimate women’s politicization that
simultaneously encouraged women to be active while incorporating aspects of the
mainstream American focus on domesticity and a new matemalist discourse that had
arisen during the post-war era.
Hadassah members participated in traditionally feminine activities such as
organizationally-sponsored shopping trips, fashion shows, and sewing circles, but
during the 1950s Hadassah transformed these once restrictive rituals of beauty and
consumption into acts that blurred binary gender roles and provided Jewish women a
unified voice in support of the Zionist cause. Building on Victorian domestic
notions of Jewish women’s primary role as mothers, Hadassah expanded maternal
roles to include group membership in a Jewish women’s organization that
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encouraged women to engage in political activities and spend large amounts of time
and energy outside the home.
A History of Jewish Women’s Activism in American Life
In order to understand the developments of gender roles for Jewish women
within Hadassah in the 1950s it is crucial to appreciate the historical precedent that
led up to this phenomenon. American Jewish women shook the foundations of
Jewish religious and social life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by
introducing new innovations, such as mixed gender seating in synagogues, the
feminization of synagogue membership, women as the central Jewish educators
within the home, and the growth and increasing dominance of Jewish women-run
charities and philanthropies.1 Central to this new approach were shifting notions of
gender and Jewish identity. The adoption by Jewish men and women of a Victorian
ideal of female gentility and the moral superiority of women as mothers ironically
acted as the catalyst for more women to participate in public discourse. Mainstream
Victorian notions of womanhood merged with a traditional Jewish emphasis on the
family and new expressions of the Judaic religious tenant of tzedekah, or righteous
acts, to create new conceptions of Jewish womanhood.
“German” middle-class Jewish women provided much of the impetus for the
shifting gender norms in American Jewish culture. Spurred by the immigration of
European Jews seeking to improve their situation economically, the number of Jews
in America grew dramatically from 3,000 in 1820 to 240,000 in 1880.3 Although
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traditionally thought of as primarily German emigres, in reality these Jewish
immigrants also hailed from Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Alsace, Russia and
Lithuania.4 The majority of these new “German” immigrants adapted well to life in
America and attained the pecuniary advancements that had fed the mass migration.
While poverty existed among the ranks of these early Jewish immigrants, as a whole
they moved relatively quickly into a middle-class status.5
As Jews moved up the economic ladder, they sought to emulate a set of
Victorian ideals that included proscribed roles for men and women. Following their
Christian neighbors, Jews elevated women’s domesticity and their purportedly
maternal nature to a new pinnacle. Within the realm of this new Jewish motherhood,
women were ascribed new power as moral superiors. While this stance allowed
women a voice within the community as esteemed mothers and wives, it negated the
more traditional ideal of the Jewish woman as an economic participant within the
family, who worked outside or inside the home so that her husband might study
Torah.6
Mirroring genteel Gentile society, Jewish women used volunteerism as an
avenue through which to maintain the Victorian gender ideal of domesticity while at
the same time creating novel avenues for public female participation. In an action
virtually unheard of in Jewish history, in the mid-nineteenth century in the United
States Jewish women began organizing women’s groups devoted to serious
communal issues.7 While men had been organizing in fraternal orders based on
regional affiliation or synagogue issues, Jewish women gathered together for the first
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time to confront the serious social needs that had begun to emerge within the Jewish
community.8 Rebecca Gratz founded the first of these organizations, the Female
Hebrew Benevolent Society, in Philadelphia in 1819, and by the mid-nineteenth
century similar women’s Jewish organizations gained popularity across the country.9
The bloodshed of the Civil War brought even more Jewish and non-Jewish women
into the world of volunteerism as they worked to ameliorate the aftermath and
harrowing conditions of battle through philanthropic and medical endeavors.1 0
While Jewish women were becoming well established in caretaker and
charity roles, Jewish women also began to subscribe to precepts of the Victorian
domestic model that stressed the importance of female education and women’s role
in spiritual life. In order for women to be true mothers capable of educating their
children and uplifting the nation, they would have to be cultured and educated
themselves.1 1 In addition, Jewish women and men were aware of the feminization of
Christian evangelical churches and sought to allow women more participation in a
12
synagogue sphere that had previously been dominated by men. Mixed gender
seating in non-Orthodox synagogues, as opposed to segregated seating, marked a
significant departure from previous gender roles. Increasingly, Jewish women
would come to dominate synagogue life, just as Protestant women were coming to
dominate the church.1 3 As the binary Victorian division of labor—women as the
homemakers and men as the breadwinners— took hold within the Jewish community,
women gained the responsibility for children’s education in Judaism and Jewishness,
an obligation once within the father’s domain. As a result, Jewish education for
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women gained acceptance, and in 1838 Rebecca Gratz opened a Sunday school with
an all women staff that strove to educate Jewish girls, along with boys, in Jewish
beliefs, scholarship, and traditions.1 4
By the late nineteenth century, many central European Jewish immigrants
successfully advanced into the ranks of the middle class and beyond. In New York
in 1890, for example, approximately forty percent of Jews reported having a
domestic servant and nearly ten percent had several servants.1 5
At the same time that these Central European Jewish immigrants were
experiencing high levels of social mobility, a new wave of nearly two million less
advantaged Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe made their way to American
shores, arriving between 1880 and 1914. O f the new population that emigrated from
Galicia, Romania, and Russia, almost half were women.1 6 The majority o f these
Eastern European women entered the ranks of the working class and created a
culture of leisure and social exchange through dance hall attendance, movie going,
and engagements with the new American consumer culture.1 7 The new arrivals
brought with them many cultural nuances that contributed to the Jewish community.
Chief among those was an avid political activism and acceptance of Zionism that had
been largely shunned by previous generations of American Jews.
Jewish women volunteered to aid the Eastern European newcomers and often
worked to “uplift” their status.1 8 Educated middle- and upper-class women were
greatly influenced by the Progressive movement’s emphasis on social service work
and moral and economic uplift. In the early twentieth century, in addition to Jewish
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communal work, two new avenues for volunteerism captured the imaginations of
Jewish volunteers: aid to immigrants and Zionism.1 9
In 1893, Hannah Solomon founded the first major Jewish women’s
organization, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). The new organization
provided middle to upper class Jewish women with a distinctively Jewish women’s
club that tackled Progressive reform issues such as social services for Eastern
European immigrants, aid to the impoverished, and a campaign to abolish Jewish
prostitution.2 0 Relying heavily on a domestic ideology, the NCJW stressed the
importance of women as mothers and celebrated the idea of a separate, maternal
women’s sphere as “divinely designed.” Historian Faith Rogow has argued that
while the NCJW provided women an avenue to voice their concerns, their
acceptance of an ideology of domesticity “reaffirmed men’s power rather than
challenged it.”2 1 As with many women’s clubs, NCJW followed a “pattern of
conservatism”.2 2
NCJW matemalism served as an important and high profile model for Jewish
womanhood, but its message nevertheless did not resonate with many women active
in the Jewish community. While the NCJW held great clout and remained quite
visible as an actor in American Jewish history, the organization’s membership at its
height in 1950 of 100,000. This figure was dwarfed by the younger, more political
23
Hadassah, which had a membership in 1950 of nearly triple that amount.
While the NCJW promoted a conservative approach to gender roles by
emphasizing motherhood, Hadassah, founded in 1913 by Henrietta Szold, a single
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woman who never married, offered a challenge to traditional gender roles. As
historian Naomi Lichtenberg suggests, early Hadassah challenged class and gender
limitations. Unlike their male contemporaries, Hadassah leaders actually uprooted
themselves from their comfortable privileged lifestyle and moved or lived in
Palestine for a period o f time.2 4 In contrast, Louis Brandeis, the most prominent
•JC
promoter of Zionism of the day, only visited Palestine once for a brief visit. As
Lichtenberg argues, Hadassah members were aware that their activism served to “to
widen their own sphere of experience.”2 6
A major component of NCJW’s work reflected the Progressive movement’s
efforts to Americanize Eastern European Jewish immigrants. In a sometimes
paternalistic manner, NCJW and non-Jewish progressives sought to assimilate the
immigrant population into proper American culture. In contrast, Hadassah leaders
such as Henrietta Szold actually admired the Eastern European immigrants, who had
27
introduced her and other “German” Jews to Zionism.
Searching for a meaningful way to be active, Jewish women turned to
Hadassah as an avenue to express their identity as women and Jews without fitting
into the mold designed by NCJW or the Progressive movement. The actual exodus of
Hadassah leaders and nurses to Palestine, according to Lichtenberg, should be
“understood as a tool and a catalyst for Hadassah’s leaders. Palestine enabled these
women to achieve their most cherished goals; personal fulfillment in a community of
28
supportive women and historically important work.” The move to Palestine
provided a drastic departure from the domestic middle-class women’s existence in
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the United States. No longer confined to the domestic sphere, these women found
that Palestine was a new landscape devoid of many traditional gender limitations. In
fact, most emigrating Hadassah leaders remained unmarried and lived among other
women in communal arrangements.2 9
Not all Hadassah members went to Palestine. Through correspondence and
coverage of their leaders’ work in Palestine through Hadassah’s publications,
however, most members not only learned of their leaders’ activities in Palestine, but
were also introduced to new role models of female behavior that challenged gender
norms. In a 1923 letter published in the Hadassah Newsletter, Szold pointed to the
extent to which Hadassah leaders and members in the US and Palestine interacted
and influenced, each other:
How often it happened that a need made itself apparent to me, and it was
flashed across the ocean, and the response came almost before I had the
realization of the fact that you understood the need. Your national board was
the only live wire through which I could communicate with 15,000 women,
and instantaneously they gave of their substance, their time, their energy and
their heart.3 0
From the inception of Hadassah, its leaders sought consciously to carve out a space
for Jewish women to participate in the male dominated sphere of Zionism. In doing
so they developed in organization that emphasized practical work in Palestine as an
avenue for American Jewish women to expand their sphere o f influence and to grow
as individuals.3 1
Hadassah leaders encountered great hostility and criticism from the male
leadership of the Zionist movement in the United States. Zionism, a political
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125
ideology often associated with masculinity and the formation of what Michael
Berkowitz has called the “new Jewish man,” left little room for women as equal
participants in its ranks. Zionist leaders like Louis Lipsky embraced the marriage of
masculinity and Zionism. An organization like Hadassah that was led by women
challenged the importance of Zionism in his eyes and threatened to weaken the
Zionist movement. Hadassah leaders fought to counter a myriad of criticism that
they received from male dominated Zionist groups and individuals who felt that
Hadassah distracted from men’s legitimate Zionist efforts. In doing so they exhibited
32
what McCune has dubbed a “gender consciousness.”
Borrowing from matemalist ideology, Hadassah leaders contended that,
rather than engaging in ideological debates that produced little in the way of concrete
assistance for Palestine, Jewish women possessed a unique drive to nurture that
would be better expressed in practical ways.3 3 In effect, Hadassah’s top leadership
was arguing that women as nurturers were actually doers and should emphasize this
aspect of their personalities in their advocacy of the Zionist cause. Employing this
rhetoric, Hadassah leaders constructed an ideology that allowed them to use ideals
of matemalism to challenge gender norms. Women, they argued, were actually
superior to men as Zionists because they cared more for the social welfare in
Palestine and focused on the needs of the population rather than on political
matters.3 4 Eventually male leaders such as Louis Brandeis would concur, and see
the value of Jewish women’s participation in the movement. In time, Hadassah
would emerge as not only the largest Jewish women’s organization in the world but
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126
also the largest American Zionist organization, the undisputed leader of American
Zionism.
Hadassah maintained this leading role despite the challenges presented by
competitors and by the Great Depression. By the 1930s, Jewish women looked to a
variety of religious, charitable, or Zionist organizations— in addition to Hadassah
and the NCJW— to which to volunteer their services and some in Hadassah feared
that the new clubs might siphon off their membership. Groups such as the
Organization for the Rehabilitation through Training (ORT), which worked to
provide vocational education for Jews, greatly expanded. Local temple sisterhoods
joined forces to create the national Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, which by 1928
had 55,000 members from over 300 synagogues.3 5 Economic devastation also posed
challenges to the extent to which women could or would volunteer their time. Many
Jewish women took on additional economic responsibilities as they worked to reduce
the impact of the economic downturn on their lives.3 6 Although Zionism took a back
seat during the economic crisis, Hadassah maintained its appeal. By 1934 it still had
50,000 members.3 7
During the 1940s and 1950s the Jewish community in America experienced a
period of complex socio-economic, demographic, and ideological transformation.
Although the psychological impact of the Holocaust had a major effect on the Jewish
community, other factors also worked to change the environment for American Jews.
Jewish earnings increased substantially due in part to post-war G.I. benefits (allotted
to Jewish men who served in record numbers in World War II) and expanded
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127
educational opportunities, moving many working-class Jews, especially members of
and descendants of the second generation of immigration, into a middle-class
category.3 8 As Karen Brodkin has argued, “Sons of working class Jews now went to
college and became professionals themselves. . . .”3 9 The wives of these sons also
moved up in economic status. The post-war era also saw a dramatic increase in
suburbanization among Jews. With home mortgages more easily accessible, more
Jews moved out of the cities into the suburbs to own their own homes.4 0
Gender in the June Cleaver Era: Matemalism, Hadassah and Jewish Identity
By the 1950s, Jews as a group had metamorphosed from an immigrant
outsider community into a segment of mainstream suburban America. So too had
Zionism and Hadassah. At its inception, when the goals of Zionism had not yet been
fixed and women traveled to Palestine and sometimes moved there, Hadassah
sometimes offered a radical approach to gender roles. Hadassah exalted women as
“pioneers”, and encouraged women to go to Palestine, while the organization
lionized single women such as founder Henrietta Szold. By the 1950s, a time when
Zionism had finally gained widespread appeal throughout the Jewish community,
Hadassah secured its new popularity by assimilating mainstream ideologies such as
women’s domesticity and an ardent Americanism. With over 300,000 members,
Hadassah had become the largest Jewish women’s organization and the largest
Zionist organization in the United States. Hadassah’s appropriation of Americanism
and the domestic ideal was in actuality part of an effort to cater to this wider array of
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128
members. However, domesticity and patriotism simultaneously and often ironically
served to empower women who sought to challenge traditional gender roles and
broaden their self-awareness. In many ways the women of Hadassah encountered
and created a complicated ideology that often stressed contradictory messages about
the future of Jewish womanhood.
On the surface, Hadassah appears to have adopted many facets of the 1950s
maternal-domestic ideology that scholars have linked to the growth of suburbia in
this period. In her study of middle-class white Protestant women in the 1950s,
historian Elaine Tyler May showed how an ideology of “domestic containment”
emerged in response to the Cold War and growing suburbanization in the post-war
era. The home served as a bulwark against Communism and a perceived decay of
American society. The family unit, with women as the domestic nucleus, would
sustain the culture of the United States against an onslaught of immorality.
Consumerism and a happy family life incorporating “traditional gender roles” would
provide the “good life.” May argues that this ideology stressed the family as the
central political unit: “The familial ideology that took shape in these years helps
explain the apolitical tenor of middle-class post-war life.” Women were encouraged
to embrace their roles as wife, mother, and homemaker and reject any overt
challenge to the status quo.4 1
Hadassah incorporated much of this language of domesticity. Although not
often directly tied to Cold War politics or anti-Communism, the idea that women as
mothers and wives could safeguard the nation emerged. However, unlike the
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Protestant women whom May analyzed, Jewish women knew that they were
different from women of Protestant descent in the mainstream culture in many ways.
Hadassah encouraged Jewish women to strengthen their identity as Jews. Although
it stressed women’s roles as homemakers, mothers, and wives, it simultaneously
encouraged women to engage in political discourse and to challenge their husbands
by devoting their time and energy to the cause, and to educate themselves. While
May’s subjects emphasized woman’s roles as helpmate and housekeeper, this did not
carry the same weight within the Jewish community that surrounded Hadassah.
Instead, it was women’s roles as mothers and the bearers of the cultural tradition of
the Jewish people that Hadassah leadership and its members stressed.
Many Jewish women in suburban post-war Jewish culture embraced the
synagogue as the major source of their identity. However, much of the involvement
of women in the temple sisterhood lacked the political and educational emphasis of
an organization like Hadassah.4 2 Women who joined groups such as Hadassah often
were seeking ways in which to understand their place in the world as Jews, women,
and Americans. Hadassah provided Jewish women with a voice of their own and
empowered “Hadassah ladies” to work outside of the home by stressing their
importance to political discourse in Israel and the United States, the Jewish
community, and American democracy.
Messages that encouraged women to develop their minds and challenge
husbands who would have rather had their wives at home were coupled with ones
that stressed the domestic concepts of womanhood so prominent in the 1950s. In
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“This is Your Life,” a brochure designed to inspire current members and recruit new
members to Hadassah, the writer emphasized a restrictive suburbia-bound maternal
role for women by stressing the essential contribution Jewish women made in
transmitting Jewish culture to their children: “AS A JEW you have this duty: to
safeguard the cultural and religious treasures of your people. This is part of your life
in Hadassah.” Hadassah backed up this call to Jewish mothers throughout its
literature from this era by promising to educate women and provide them the
essential tools needed for them and their children to embrace their Jewish heritage.
Within the same brochure, however, women were urged to safeguard their liberties
as educated American women and mothers and to keep in mind that their
foremothers had historically lacked access to a Jewish education, let alone the right
to serve as bearers of the cultural heritage:
There have been times when men questioned your right to live by the
teachings of your Jewish past. But in the United States, where strands
from every comer o f the earth are woven to make a democracy, your
right is also your responsibility.4 3
The argument made in much of Hadassah’s literature was that Jewish women had
been given an opportunity to educate themselves and their fellow Jews on Jewish
cultural history and proper forms o f Jewish identity and that through Hadassah they
could accomplish this goal and in the process become good American mothers.
Zionism also served as an avenue for an individual to express her mastery of
Jewish heritage and identity and to connect to the generations of struggle in the past
and the existing struggle in Israel. Hadassah offered women a message of
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131
empowerment: Women— not m en- had the power and the responsibility to educate
themselves and others. This responsibility granted them the extension into the public
sphere and also served to legitimate Jewish women’s public and political expressions
of their identity. However, these messages of empowerment often were coupled
with more traditional notions of women’s gender roles.
Jewish women’s importance as maternal and cultural care takers served as a
legitimating principle for much of Hadassah rhetoric in the 1950s. An educated and
active Jewish woman, Hadassah ideology expounded, could provide the proper
education to her children. As neo-Victorian and new suburban notions of
domesticity emerged during the 1950s, so too did the idea that Jewish mothers bore
the responsibility to assure that Jewish cultural dissemination continued to be
transmitted to future generations through children’s education.
What happens when you join Hadassah?... YOU BECOME A
BETTER JEW .. .Examining your Jewish heritage, you learn your
peoples glorious heritage. You understand current problems better.
You get a ‘perspective.’ Education through Hadassah gives you the
basic certainties you need to live constructively and to guide your
family toward a richer Jewish life.4 4
Through Hadassah, women could find a place for themselves within the Jewish
community and create importance to their lives and that of their families. Indeed,
Hadassah “Makes You Important” was a major slogan of the period. Brochures with
a “June Cleaver” look alike on the cover advertised that Hadassah offered more
meaning to the life of the average housewife. Hadassah would make Jewish women
important,
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IMPORTANT BECAUSE...AS JEWS..Hadassah members declare,
“we must safeguard the cultural and religious treasures of our people.
Since this activity is intrinsic to Hadassah, we attract women of all
ages themselves to be, and to make their children better Jews.”4 5
Hadassah activism was thus legitimated by the fact that it helped to create better
educated mothers with a strong sense of Jewish identity that could “Safeguard the
cultural and religious treasures of our people.” While men were expected to be the
breadwinners of the family, Jewish women’s roles as Jewish educators, protectors,
and mothers served as an excuse for women to leave the private sphere and engage in
a range of political, social and economic activities that ironically worked to
challenge the domestic ideology of women’s role within the home.
Education programs designed to strengthen Hadassah members sense of
Jewishness centered on Zionism but also included political awareness programs.
(These will be discussed in detail in the next chapter). In addition to political
education, Hadassah members learned through panels and publications about Jewish
history and holidays. Some local chapters even included a “Hadassah Prayer” in
their Yearbooks. This prayer asked G-d for guidance “in our task of aiding and
providing for the spiritual needs of the community.”4 6 Hadassah programs ranged
from Jewish education workshops on history and the Bible to studying Hebrew and
explanations of holidays. Some chapters even held a “Jewish Home Beautiful”
event. It showcased appropriate table settings for various Jewish holidays while a
member performed Holiday songs 4 7
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One of the most successful programs of Hadassah in the 1950s was the
Youth Aliyah program. Youth Aliyah was envisioned at its inception in the 1930s as
a program to help youth emigrate from Europe to Palestine and join in the pioneer
movement. However, the looming anti-Semitic fervor in Germany shifted the
emphasis from an immigrant aid program to a rescue mission. Spearheaded by
Hadassah, the Youth Aliyah program rescued 12,332 Jewish children and youth from
Hitler’s Germany between 1934 and the end of the war and also brought over 4,000
children to Palestine from Africa and Asia.4 8 During the post-war era and well into
the 1960s, Youth Aliyah served as an important conduit for Hadassah to widen its
focus to new regions of the world and to minister to troubled youths already within
Israel. The maternal emphasis of Youth Aliyah— American club women helping
disadvantaged foreign youth— served to attract new members. After Hadassah was
named the official liaison for Youth Aliyah in America in 1943, its chapters
increased in numbers from 272 to 375.4 9 “Hadassah,” one brochure argued, “is
rescuing Jewish children from Arab lands and Iron Curtain countries through the
Youth Aliyah movement which functions in 300 cooperative settlements and a
network of special schools in Israel.”5 0 Articles and publications written about
Youth Aliyah in Hadassah in the 1950s stressed the importance of women as
nurturers and mothers and the need to protect Jews from anti-Semitism in all areas of
the world, including the countries enclosed by the Iron Curtain.
Youth Aliyah invited Hadassah members to figuratively adopt a child in
need. “WANTED A MOTHER EMA” (ema the Hebrew word for mother) was used
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in brochures designed to motivate American women to participate more fully in
Youth Aliyah programming or to join Hadassah. Beside the caption in one such
brochure was a picture of three children of varying ages. A short entry about each
child explained his or her particular economic plight. The next page followed the
same pattern and warned that “Jewish children and youth have become victims of
political upheaval, discrimination, anti-Semitism.” Through Youth Aliyah,
American Jewish women could save these children from areas of the world like
Eastern Europe and Arab lands with “Hitler-like economic and social persecution.”
America Jewish women were thus empowered by virtue of their responsibility as
mothers of the Jewish people to, “become a mother to a homeless child”. 5 1
Discussions of youth and children’s programming thus carried messages
about proper Jewish womanhood. Implicit in these messages was the notion that
women naturally bear the responsibility for children by virtue of their maternal
nature: “CHILDREN SUFFER AND YOU RESPOND. You know from your own
children and those around you that there is no future for the world if any of the
world’s children is insecure.” 5 2 Therefore motherhood and womanhood predisposes
women to have a greater appreciation for children. Although Hadassah in many
ways challenged traditional gender norms by allowing women a political and public
voice and by stressing the importance of women to Jewish cultural understanding, at
the same time it utilized traditional gender roles of the day that stressed the
importance o f women as the caretakers of the family. Rather than remaining in the
private sphere, as Elaine Tyler May contends in her study of Protestant women, the
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135
Jewish family was encouraged to extend into the public sphere to publicly represent
children, youth, the Jewish people, and Israel.
Thus a contradictory approach to gender was employed. On the one hand, it
challenged restrictive notions about women’s roles and, on the other hand, the
approach reinforced notions of domesticity. Jewish women, through Hadassah, were
uniquely poised to rescue Jewish children and by extension Judaism itself from anti-
Semitic hatred. “So through Hadassah,” argued the literature, “you take on the
sweetest task a woman can assume: you work for youth.... Being a woman you also
know that without love and unceasing vigilance, even a rescued child hurt by fear,
poverty and orphan hood will not become a child again. So you watch and
guide...”5 3
Drives to raise money for other Hadassah activities such as its hospital fund
also stressed the importance of programs that benefited children. An advertisement
that ran in the Hadassah Newsletter showed a picture of a nurse caring for a sick
child with a large caption: “ITS YOUR CHILD TOO!” The ad went on to suggest
that this child “in Israel is fighting for her life” and that Hadassah members could not
stand by and not help. The advertisement further drew a parallel between the
helpless and sick child and the state of Israel. “All Israel is engaged in a fight for
‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ today. And you are a part of it.” Thus
Israel is equated within this text to a helpless child, with all of Hadassah serving as
the responsible maternal caretaker.5 4
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The emphasis on Hadassah’s traditional gender roles relied heavily on the
extension of women’s matemalism into the public sphere. Jewish women would be
important not only to their own children but to children all over the world, and they
would care for a newborn nation-Israel. In Hadassah literature very little emphasis
was placed on the importance of women as wives.
While much of Hadassah’s activities were geared towards its work in Israel,
it also had many programs in the United States directed toward educating the youth
in Hadassah values. Again Hadassah members were to assume the responsibility for
engaging American Jewish youth in Jewish cultural education and in Zionism as a
vehicle for preserving Jewish identity. “As a woman your responsibility to youth is
also basic for a fully rewarding way of life. So through your work for Zionist youth
in this country, Hadassah makes it possible for you to ‘connect’ with the younger
generation, among whom may be your children.”5 5
References to patriotism infused Hadassah’s gender discourse with another
layer of meaning. “YOU ARE IMPORTANT BECAUSE it’s Good Americanism:
Hadassah members believe, ‘we have not only responsibility but a duty to foster the
democratic way of life at home and abroad . . . As American citizens, Hadassah
women are expected to make up their own minds. We give them information to help
them think. Their own zeal, intelligence and patriotism do the rest to keep them
sensitive, responsive to their citizenship duties.”5 6 Good American women should be
educated and take active civic, political and cultural roles. Democracy and America
itself worked to legitimate Jewish women’s political and social action.
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In fact, Hadassah literature not only argued that women should empower
themselves, their children, and the Jewish community but also that the world needed
rescuing. Through education, action, and fund-raising, properly American
“Hadassah ladies” would be well informed and well-equipped for the challenge.
“You BECOME A BETTER CITIZEN through Hadassah’s American Affairs
program. You receive information on the United Nations and on issues facing you as
an individual American Citizen.... Thus you are ‘armed’ to help protect democracy
in the United States and foster freedom and justice elsewhere throughout the
world.”5 7
Hadassah also utilized education programs to define American Jewish
womanhood to its members. Through Zionism and Jewish education provided by
Hadassah, Jewish women would gain “importance” as better women, “better
Americans, and better Jews”. The culmination of Hadassah’s work lay in the
development of a woman who knew who she was, in addition to knowing her history
and her political affiliation. Her Jewish identity could then successfully be handed
down to the next generation of Jews,
The Hadassah education program here is designed to give our
members a sense of Jewish history and a high degree of responsibility
for the continuing of a great tradition. It is not enough to be bom
Jewish— we must live as Jews. And we must give to our children the
knowledge— the tools and the instruments— to make them want to
live a positive Jewish life. It is not enough to pride ourselves on
being the “People of the Book”— we must know these people and
know this book. Pride in a great tradition can degenerate into
complacency, unless we take seriously our responsibility for safe
guarding and re-interpreting the tradition. This implies knowledge,
understanding and growth.”5 8
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While matemalism and Americanism acted as strong forces in the shaping of
Hadassah women’s identity and the platform of the organization, absent from the
rhetoric was the domestic ideology of women’s importance as wives. To the
contrary, Hadassah women were instructed in ways to challenge their husband’s
authority and to demand respect for their activities through Hadassah. Hands of
Healing, a promotional film released by Hadassah in 1951, detailed the experiences
of one “Hadassah husband” as he visited Israel on a business trip after being
“Ordered by his wife” who works hard for Hadassah, “to take a look at my work
too.” While in Israel, “he has one of the greatest emotional experiences of his life.5 9 ”
he realized the importance of wife’s Hadassah work.
Hadassah husbands were encouraged to support their wives’ activities.
Movies were made and literature was written to introduce Hadassah husbands to
Hadassah concepts and to defend their wives’ right to participate in such a worthy
cause. One Hadassah husband spoke of how his support for his wife had become “a
career” in and of itself; it was a vehicle through which an everyday business man
was able to expand beyond the realm of his daily work life:
“It has been my privilege to address many evening
meetings of Hadassah chapters, and always there is a goodly
sprinkling of Hadassah Husbands. Their very presence tells a
story— a story of mutual participation with their wives in being
part o f this great movement.”6 0
A Hadassah husband would have to follow the lead of his wife or at the very least
“look upon his wife with respectful puzzlement” and think to himself, “How did this
housewife become so knowledgeable in international affairs, so able a defender of
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civil rights. ...” Hadassah women thus challenged the dominant and traditional
gender norms of the day that defined women as mothers and housewives and
occasionally made husbands the passive spectators in their lives.
Through their public articulations and politicization, Hadassah women’s
conceptions of womanhood differed from those studied by May, who saw the private
sphere as the only acceptable arena for women’s activity in the rhetoric of the 1950s.
While Hadassah may have used concepts of motherhood to defend and legitimate
their cause, they simultaneously challenged the foundations of the domestic ideology
of the 1950s. In relation to Jewish women’s roles as housewives, the organization
espoused a gender consciousness that sought to gain respect— and deference— from
their husbands.
Hadassah introduced Jewish American women to a form of gender
consciousness that incorporated traditional notions of matemalism in order to
empower women to channel their maternal authority into new male-dominated
territory such as politics, Jewish education, and Zionism. At the same time women
were encouraged to see themselves as breaking new ground as women. On the
Jewish cultural front, they would take on the role of cultural disseminators once
attributed to men. Unlike the women of the past, who were described as concerned
primarily with beauty and pleasing men, Hadassah urged women to respond to
“modem society’s” new approach to gender roles. “For the social revolution of the
last century has placed women on a more or less equal footing in the competitive
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world and has moved her to the forefront of organized communal life.” The typical
Hadassah woman shared in this social revolution.
The article tells us that she is “fascinating, aggressive, knowledgeable” and,
most important, she no longer defines herself as only a wife. For she realizes that a
“shrinking physical world has expanded her original purpose from companion of
man to companion of mankind.” Thus Hadassah women, we are told, shared in this
new uniquely 1950s form of womanhood with “an added ingredient— a deep
consciousness of her Jewish roots.” The Hadassah woman represented the
quintessential modem twentieth century “emancipated woman.”6 1 “And so, the
question is answered, who is she? Can be answered with: She is an alert daughter of
the 20th century, she is a conscious Jewess-and a soldier.”6 2 Hadassah women are
thus equated both with progressive values and with a warrior like presence.
Hadassah women figuratively served as warriors for Jewish women and for Israel.
Fashioning Gender and Jewishness
The beauty culture of the 1950s was yet another avenue through which
Hadassah members and leadership articulated a complicated sense of womanhood
and political identity. As fashion historians have shown, fashions and beauty ideals
have often shaped the ways in which women express and understand gender roles.
Historians, such as Kathy Peiss and Nan Enstand, have shown the ways in which
fashion and consumerism served to provide immigrant working-class women in New
York’s garment district a voice and a language for a new Americanized class and
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141
gender consciousness. Others have pointed to the oppressive aspects of the fashion
and beauty industry that worked to undermine women and create unrealistic and
destructive images of beauty. In American Beauty, historian Lois Banner argues that
while fashion and beauty have at times provided women positive sites for escapist
fantasy and pleasure, “of all of the elements of women’s separate culture, the pursuit
of beauty has been the most divisive and ultimately the most oppressive.”6 3 The
1950s, Banner argues, brought with it a reinstatement of Victorian ideals of beauty,
emphasizing the binding of women’s bodies through the corset and hoop skirts that
resembled the Victorian fashions and gender sensibilities. For Hadassah, however,
fashion shows not only proved an extremely successful avenue for fund raising, but
also were often rooted in a complex give and take regarding women’s roles.
Hadassah fashion shows, in fact, highlighted the larger sense of duality that marked
the organization’s attempts to wrestle with the role women should play in society.
Designed as showcases for Hadassah’s vocational design programs in Israel, the
fashion shows provided women in Israel an opportunity to gain career training and to
bring Israeli women into the male-dominated fashion industry. However, the
fashion shows also provided Hadassah women with a gender-appropriate form of
fundraising that celebrated not only women but also the pursuit of beauty and a
fashion sensibility as part of a political program.
Hadassah leaders drew from founder Henrietta Szold’s belief that gender-
appropriate vocational training offered women and girls in Israel necessary
opportunities and contributed to the advancement of the nation, to develop programs
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to prepare girls for a variety of careers, “The girl in Palestine has no opportunity to
learn a trade or profession. There isn’t a good dressmaker, there isn’t a good
secretary, there is no good cook, and the reasons—there is no school.” 6 4 On
November 3, 1949, Hadassah’s Alice Seligsberg Vocational Trade School for girls in
Jerusalem opened a Fashion Institute and admitted 26 female students.6 5 At the 35th
annual Hadassah conference in 1949, the Seligsberg fashion students showcased
their talent by designing and creating garments for the first Hadassah fashion show.
“The ‘eternal feminine’ angel,” according to one Hadassah, “was sharply evident
during the fashion show,” held on November 14, 1949. The mission of the Fashion
Institute was to train girls in the fashion industry and then to utilize their talents and
knowledge to rival Europe’s dominance in the industry. “The goal is to produce a
‘flying wedge o f experts’ . . . who after two years of study of original fashion design
and pattern making will open salons and take key positions in mass production dress
factories now springing up in Israel.”6 6
At this “first fashion show of Israel couture,” local models from the United
States exhibited fifteen fashions.6 7 The designs ranged from “cocktail lounge attire”
to a “dance frock” to “knitted suits” and “evening glamour.” The exotic “oriental”
influences of the Middle East became the trademark of the designs, which were
promoted as having “unique Israel influences.” Clothing with intricate
“embroideries are done painstakingly by hand by Jews from Yemen, who use motifs
handed down for generations.”6 8 In addition, the influences of French and American
fashions were also emphasized: this clothing, although designed in Israel, bridged
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East and West. Hadassah leaders such as Dr. Miriam Freund, Vocational Education
Chairman, attended the conference wearing a Westem-style three-piece suit that had
been displayed in the Fashion Show.6 9
After the success of the first fashion show, the show went “on the road” and
was featured at many national conferences over the course of the 1950s. By January
1950, only two months after the convention showcase, twenty chapters from
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Milwaukee to Peoria to Beverly Hills had booked the show. The fashion show
became one of the most successful tools for fund-raising and attracting members. In
some cases especially active members were honored at the show. In Birmingham,
Alabama, only “active chapter chairmen or workers” received the honor of modeling
the clothes, while their name and Hadassah position was announced. The show
ended with a model walking the runway with a very unglamorous item o f dress, a
nurse’s uniform, This nurse’s uniform, the symbol of Hadassah’s medical program
in Israel and the actual uniform worn by many Hadassah workers there, was thus
transfigured into a gown of beauty.7 1
Local chapters often took elaborate steps to promote their shows. In Detroit,
Michigan, the theater for the fashion show had been decorated to resemble an Israeli
airport; 2,500 people attended the show. The fantasy was complete with usherettes
donning stewardess outfits and a ramp emerging from a replica plane door. Fashion-
wearing models then emerged from a “Plane from Israel.”7 2 Thus Hadassah
members were fantastically transported via airplane to Israel in fantasy and to
witness it for themselves; and thus encouraged to identify with the nation. Fashion
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had the power not only to make women feel themselves beautiful but also to take
them to different parts of the world. Many of the fashion designs at the Detroit show
had “oriental” inspirations, thus adding to the experience.
In addition to presenting fashion shows, chapters could order a “Fashion fan.”
The fan was decorated with a watercolor sketch series of the Fashion Institute’s latest
creations. A “special packaged store window display,” which exhibited students
fashions hanging on wire frames, was accompanied by a photos “showing the
students at different phases of work.”7 3
At the national convention of September 1954, a fashion show was held,
“Dressed in the latest creation of Seligsberg School girls—A Hadassah school in
Israel o f fashion design— an Israel model descends from an El A1 plane and is
welcomed by Tex McCrary and his wife, Jinx, stars of the ‘Tex and Jinx’ television
show.” 7 4 Jinx Falkenberg, a superstar model and actress, along with her husband
Tex, had a celebrity interview television show in this period that was extremely
popular among the viewing audience.7 5 Hadassah members and their children
modeled clothes at this event.7 6 In addition to the Israel fashion shows, some
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Hadassah chapters occasionally ran fashion shows sponsored by local industry.
In addition to fashion shows, Hadassah also stressed a unique brand of
consumerism. Consumer culture in the 1950s served as both a status symbol for the
emergent suburban middle-class and simultaneously as a definer of gender roles for
women and men. The emphasis on domesticity in the post-war era glorified the
middle-class housewife and prescribed shopping and house maintenance as among
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145
her most essential duties. As Elaine Tyler May argues, women’s consumerism and
appearance played an important role in the national Cold War image by juxtaposing
the beauty and domestic expertise of American women against the allegedly inferior
Russian women.7 8
Hadassah ladies once again borrowed from the dominant notions about the
gender roles of the day and utilized them for purposes that often challenged the
proscription to focus on the home. The Hadassah strategy was to channel women’s
consumerism into fund raising efforts. Examples of this are numerous in Hadassah’s
activities in the 1950s. In March 1952, at a Hadassah membership conference in
New York City, 500 women gathered at a “shopping expedition”:
At about 1:10 pm the staring became more intense as a few
smartly bedecked women carrying brown shopping bags paraded
through the lobby ... .By 1:30 the lobby habitues o f the Park Sheraton
were caught up in a mass invasion of shopping bags. Scores upon
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scores of women were carrying them ballroom bound.
The shopping bags carried a caption that explained that Hadassah members were
going shopping for “ways and means of bringing 40,000 new members into
Hadassah” in honor of Hadassah’s 40th anniversary. The conference emphasized
new “gimmicks and techniques to get new members.”
In addition to consumerism, some Hadassah ladies also formed sewing circles
that produced clothes to send to Israel. Even cutters from the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), an American trade union particularly strong in
New York, were enlisted as volunteers on occasion to assist in the production of
large quantities of clothing to be sent to Hadassah works in Israel. That many
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146
ILGWU workers were themselves Jewish helped assist Hadassah in enlisting union
members in the effort. By forming relationship with unions, such as the garment
workers, Hadassah, largely a middle- to upper-middle-class organization, brought in
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working-class volunteers.
Hadassah Members Across America’s Gendered Activism
Individual chapters across the country found innovative ways to fundraise,
educate, and advocate Zionism. Focusing on traditional female interests such as self-
beautification, they held days of beauty programs. Hadassah members raised money
and awareness for their political cause. Much in the same way that fashions shows
provided an avenue for women to engage in political and social activism so too other
activities associated with femininity and women’s world served as avenues for
participation. The Yonkers chapter organized a day for beauty for its members
where they received manicures and facials. “Usually 100 ladies gathered together
for lunch is food for Gossip,” the local Hadassah Newsletter, however, in this case
“it resulted in a tidy sum for Youth Aliyah.8 1 ” Some members in the Sabra chapter
offered services as baby sitters, typists, caterers, hairdressers, seamstresses and
chauffeurs in order to raise funds.8 2 Thus women who did not tend to work outside
the home used their skills and worked towards fundraising. Members could enjoy a
traditionally feminine occupation, a day at a beauty salon. Or they could extend
themselves into a pseudo-work environment in order to fund-raise.
Many new chapters were formed in the 1950s. Groups like the Sarah Kuzzy
chapter—named after a Hadassah member— a chapter, founded in 1953 in Newark
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147
New Jersey, allowed Jewish women an opportunity to make social connections while
building an identity as Zionist activists.
Like any new group our membership, which is composed of
young married women is small. New babies, baby’s first shoes,
the first day at school, and the eternal problem of baby sitters
are often topics of our conversation. Yet like so many other
Jewish women we have felt the need for affiliation with the
Zionist movement and so we formed the Sarah Kussy group.8 3
Among its missions the group cited its efforts to: work through Hadassah to improve
the health and social services in Israel and youth welfare work in Israel; To promote
Zionist ideals and education in the United States; And to inform its members of
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events on the American scene.
In some chapters members could join a minyon ,(in Judaism a minyon refers
to the ten men required to start a prayer service). Hadassah members purposely used
the term minyon, which generally excluded women, to create a new and empowering
minyon just for women. A Hadassah minyon consisted of a group of ten or more
members who met to discuss and contribute financially to Hadassah. At minyons
topics ranged from music appreciation to mahjong, bible study, cooking, dancing,
• 85
book reviews, taking off pounds sensibly, charm and grooming, and more. Each
member attending minyon sponsored a child in Israel in the Youth Aliyah program
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by paying dues which also allowed them access to minyon meetings.
Local chapters often performed mini-plays or presentations acted out by
Hadassah members to the chapter at special events. Hadassah published scripts like
“Rifka Van Winkle” and “Alice in Hadassahland,” which portrayed the positive
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148
efforts made by Hadassah members in the United States and Israel and provided a
fun social activity for the members.8 7
One successful fund-raiser involved holding movie preview nights at local
theaters with dinner afterwards.8 8 Other popular fund-raising activities included
rummage sales and the managing of local Hadassah thrift stores, in addition to
luncheons and dinners.8 9
Reading Women in Israel: Textualizing Gender and Difference
The fashion shows brought Hadassah women into closer contact with their
sisters in Israel. By wearing clothes designed by Israeli women and sponsoring their
careers, Hadassah members sought to create a bridge between the women of the two
countries. Ideas about gender roles in Israel often worked either to reinforce or to
challenge American gender roles. By observing and talking about Israeli women,
Hadassah members often engaged in their own attempts to understand their proper
roles within society. Women in Israel, a 1952 book published by Hadassah and
written by Hadassah columnist Molly Lyons Bar David, author of the Hadassah
column “Diary of a Jerusalem Housewife” published in the Hadassah Newsletter,
reflected some of the issues involved in American Jewish representations of Israeli
women. According to Barr, women in Israel were not usually described as beautiful;
they were more concerned with working the land than with personal appearance.
The pioneer woman, “has deliberately turned her back on comfort and ease” in
pursuit of higher ideals and the struggle that “leaves marks of experience and
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149
wear...The body beautiful is little cultivated and the glamour girl not greatly glorified
in Israel. This may in part be due to the fact that the stimulus— competition— is
lacking, for there are more men than enough to go around.”9 0 But what women in
Israel lacked in beauty they made up in effort and intelligence. “In perhaps no other
country do women play such an important role among their people as the women in
Israel. In every sphere women of intelligence and ability have proved themselves
equal to men in laying the foundations of the new state.”9 1
Women in Israel went on to describe Israel’s pioneer women, or chaluzot, as
emancipators who worked toward a variety of goals: “Freedom not only for the
depressed and working classes: freedom not only for persecuted Jewry: but freedom
also for woman, who had suffered the degradation of inferior status in every class
and every society.”9 2 Borrowing again from the matemalist rhetoric of the period,
Bar David linked the emancipated nature of the chaluzot to women’s “physiological
nature.” Because women must “bear and nourish the child,” it is a natural next step
that she should want to be involved in “the larger growth process of nature” by
working the land, one of the main activities of a pioneer.9 3
Women in Israel outlined the ways in which Israeli women struggled for
emancipation; that struggle resulted in what the author called a “Women’s Rights
Movement.” The book in many ways glorified the efforts of the chaluzot, painting
them as pioneers for Jews and women alike, and it charted the stages o f an evolving
“feminist” movement in Israel. This served as a convoluted mirror upon which
American Jewish women reading this book struggled to understand their own
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identity and role in society. The book was sold through Hadassah’s national office
to chapters and for individual use. It was also intended to serve as educational
material for chapter discussion sessions.
Bar David furthered the confusion between feminism and domesticity by
painting an uncomplimentary portrait of a typical American woman surrounded by
luxuries and conveniences in a section titled “Breakfast time in an American
kitchen": “The housewife stands on her formica kitchen counter removing a perfect
slice of enriched bread from its sanitary cellophane wrapping . . . popping it into her
chromium automatic toaster.” The privileged American women, we are told, takes
for granted the origins and labor involved in producing that bread. In contrast,
women in Israel were deeply involved in part of that production process.9 4
On the one hand, women in Israel achieved almost mythic status within
Hadassah literature. On the other hand, their apparent rejection of standard
conventions of domesticity was threatening. Women in Israel lacked beauty and
femininity, and this assertion served to point to the downside of feminism and
women’s emancipation: the threat that women might lose their gender identity. A
chapter of Women in Israel titled “Occupational Housewife?” illuminates the
complex discourse on gender that existed within Hadassah. The chapter begins with
an explanation of the reasons why married women in Israel might choose to work.
The author assumes that the idea of a housewife working outside the home will be a
foreign concept to the Hadassah readership. Working outside the home for money,
unlike doing volunteer work for Hadassah, is described as either an economic
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necessity or a choice made by women in order to fulfill their own ambition.
However, even the life of an Israeli woman becomes more difficult when a child
enters the scene. The “mother who goes out to work— whether by hard necessity or
by her own choice— is a divided person tom by conflicting demands and interests.”9 5
The push for women’s equal rights in Israel intrigued Hadassah members. In
1952, the Israeli Knesset passed “The Women’s Rights Bill,” which worked to
equalize the legal status of women in Israel by reforming archaic laws regarding
marriage, divorce, custody rights, and inheritance. Hadassah members learned about
these advances through Hadassah publications and supported a “progressive”
approach to women’s status. Hadassah’s fascination with women’s equal
participation and conscription in the Israeli Defense Forces began in the pre-state
period with women’s involvement in the War of 1948 and continues until today.9 6 In
the United States, where an Equal Rights Amendment has never been passed partly
due to arguments that women would be subjected to the draft, the Israeli case stands
as a unique and longstanding instance of women’s active participation in the army.
Stories and pictures of Israeli women with guns abound in the Hadassah
literature.9 7 The liberated Israeli woman stood in contrast in the Hadassah literature
to the American housewife, but at the same time she is depicted as not that different.
She is tom by the obligations of family and work— and she carries a gun— while
maintaining her status as wife and mother.
Not all women in Israel were depicted in Hadassah literature as supporting
women’s rights. The reverence for chaluzot as models of strength and endurance
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152
applied only to the Eastern European immigrant women, who formed the core of the
early pioneer movement in Israel. These Eastern European women, although living
in Israel, retained many European values. “Oriental” women— Jewish women from
Yemen and other parts of the Middle East who immigrated to Israel— appeared in
Hadassah literature as “submissive” and having been subjected to a history of male
oppression,
It is a long road from the centuries of veiled faces, female illiteracy,
and abject submission to male authority— which was traditional in
Yemen, Morocco, and Tunisia— to the free wind of universal
franchise in Israel. There, women sit in seats of government, wield
the ballot, and bear the responsibility with the men for the security of
the state.9 8
Hadassah, with its programs in Israel designed for immigrant aid and education,
could assist in “awakening the women of the East,” both within Israel and in
neighboring countries. Hadassah work could be influential in prompting these
women “to raise their heads behind their veils and ask themselves when they, too,
will enjoy the human dignity of political and social equality.99”
Discussions of women in Israel brought to the surface anxiety over the roles
of Jewish women in American society. What did they want to learn and what did
they want to reject from their exotic sisters? These questions carried a complex set
of answers that often provided contradictory message about American womanhood.
At the same time that Israel women pioneers received mythic status within the
Hadassah literature as hard-working liberated heroines, their lives were also depicted
as difficult to the point that they might drain Israeli women o f their femininity and
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153
tear them from their family. Their heroism, although admirable, bore heavy negative
consequences.
The fashion shows discussed earlier reflect not only the perceptions of
American Jewish women about themselves but also their efforts to feminize and
glamorize women in Israel. Hadassah vocational programs would train Israeli
women in the arts of culture and beauty and assist in the dissemination of those
values. All girls participating in Hadassah high school vocational training schools
gained both job training and gender training. At the Selisberg Vocational High
School, girls started out with “hair and clothes unkempt, their pockets empty.” The
school would “teach them personal hygiene, cooking and sewing and try to place
them in jobs.”1 0 0 Other vocational programs such as hotel management also stressed
the efforts to Americanize Israeli girls and boys (most programs emphasize girls):
“Even Hadassah husbands are excited when they visit the immaculate kitchens where
girls and boys from Yemen, Morocco and Poland, Rumania, Germany and Iraq,
together learn the arts of housekeeping and home-making and the science of running
restaurants and hotels.”1 0 1
Hadassah women in the 1950s engaged in a combination of political and
social activities. However, even Hadassah social activities were designed to advance
the overall goals of the organization. Hadassah activities and Hadassah discourse on
gender often challenged gender norms encouraging women to devote themselves to
education, politics, fundraising and other public enterprises and to view their roles as
wife as secondary to their obligation to the cause. At the same time, however,
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Hadassah members and Hadassah leadership subscribed to gender tropes that
appealed and inspired women.
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155
NOTES
1 Hasia R. Diner, H er Works Praise Her: A H istory o f Jewish Woman From Colonial Times to the
Present (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 110.
2 Charlotte Baum, Paula Hyman, and Sonya Michel, The Jewish Woman in America (New York: New
American Library, 1975), 29; Diner, H er Works, 110; June Sochen, Consecrate Every Day: The
Public Lives o f Everyday Women (Albany: State University o f N ew York Press: 1981),10.
3 Hasia Diner, A Time fo r Gathering: the Second Migration, 7520-1880 vol. 2 o f The Jewish People in
Am erica (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 54, 56.
4 Diner, Time For Gathering, 1.
5 Diner, Time F or Gathering, 64-66; Baum, Hyman, and Michel, Jewish Woman, 26
6 Diner, Time F or Gathering, 113.
7 Diner, H er Works, 110.
8 Diner, H er Works, 11.
9 Baum, Hyman and Michel, Jewish Woman, 30; Diner, H er Works, 11
1 0 Baum, Hyman and Michel, Jewish Woman, 30; Diner, H er Works, 116
1 1 Baum, Hyman and Michel, Jewish Woman, 31
1 2 Diner, H er Works, 121; Baum, Hyman and Michel, Jewish Woman, 30
1 3 Diner, H er Works, 125; Karla Goldman, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press: 2000).
1 4 Diner, H er Works, 121; Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The
Roles and Representations o f Women (University o f Washington Press, 1995).
1 5 Sochen, Consecrate Every, 45.
1 6 Hyman, Gender and Assimilation, 93.
1 7 Hyman, Gender and Assimilation, 100; Peiss, Cheap Amus ements 5N otkm g Women and Leisure in
Turn o f the Century New York ( Phildelphia, Temple University Press, 1986); Nan Enstad, Ladies o f
Labor Girls o f Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor politics at the Turn o f the
Twentith Century (Columbia University Press, N ew York, 1999). Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women
in the Land o f D ollars (He'S! York, Monthly Review Press, 1985).
1 8 Sochen, Consecrate Every, 49.
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156
1 9 Sochen, Consecrate Every, 48.
2 0 Faith Rogow, Gone To Another M eeting (Tuscaloosa: University o f Alabama Press, 1993); Sochen,
Consecrate Every, 2.
2 1 Rogow, Gone, 5.
2 2 Rogow, Gone, 5.
2 3 Rogow, Gone, 173.
24 Naomi Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders and Palestine, 1912-1925: A Quest for Meaning and the
Creation o f W omen’s Zionism,” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1995), 4.
2 5 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 5.
2 6 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,”6.
2 7 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 18.
2 8 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 50.
2 9 Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 74.
3 0 As quoted in Lichtenberg, “Hadassah’s Founders,” 109— from Szold, Henrietta Hadassah
Newsletter, June 1923, p. 1.
31Mary McCune, “Social Workers in the Muskeljudentum: ‘Hadassah Ladies,’ ‘Manly M en’ and the
Significance o f Gender in the American Zionist movement 1912-1928,” American Jewish H istory 86,
no. 2 (June 1998): 136-137
3 2 McCune, “Social Workers,” 137-139; Michael Berkowitz, Zioinst Culture and West European
Jewry Before the First World War(Chapel Hill, University o f North Carolina Press, 1993)
3 3 McCune, “Social Workers,” 138-139.
34 McCune, “Social Workers,” 138-139; Sochen, Consecrate Every, 66.
3 5 Sochen, Consecrate Every, 68.
3 6 Diner, H er Works, 313.
37Marvin Levin, It Takes A Dream (Geffen Publishing, 1997), 156 .
38Karen Brodkin, H ow Jews Became White Folks and What that Says About Race in America (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
3 9 Brodkin, H ow Jews, 41
40 Brodkin, H ow Jews, 45; Diner, Her Works, 333
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157
41Elaine Tyler May, Hom eward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic
Books, 1988), 14.
42Diner, Her Works, 371.
4 3 “This is Your Life,” brochure, 1954, 5, in call no. 17, box 8, “ 1950s” folder, Hadassah Archives
(hereafter HA), Center for Jewish History, N ew York.
44 Hadassah, “On You It’s Becom ing,” brochure, 1953, 4, in call 17, box 8, “ 1950s” folder, HA.
4 5 Hadassah, “Hadassah Makes You important!” brochure, 3, in call no. 17, box 8, “ 1950s” folder,
HA.
4 6 A us tin Yearbook, 1948, 1 in call no. 15, folder 17, HA.
4 7 “Across the Country Wires,” 7, call no. 15, box 13, “conferences 1954-1959” folder, HA.
4 8 Levin, It Takes, 169.
4 9 Levin, It Takes, 172-173.
5 0 Hadassah, “On You It’s Becoming,” 8.
5 1 “Wanted a Mother,” brochure, in scrapbook no. 4, HA.
5 2 “Wanted a Mother,” brochure, in scrapbook no. 4, HA.
5 3 “This is Your Life,” 8.
5 4 “It’s Your Child Too,” in-house ad, Hadassah Newsletter, October 1950, p. 4.
5 5 “This is Your Life,” 5.
5 6 “Hadassah Makes You Important,” 3, and “Hadassah A Way o f Life,” 5, both in call no. 17, box 8,
“ 1950s” folder, HA.
5 7 Hadassah, “On You It’s Becoming,” 5.
5 8 “Mrs. Rosensohn’s address,” speech, Opening Session Convention, 26 October 1952, 9, in call no.
3, box 17, folder 6, HA.
5 9 “Hands o f Healing,” Hadassah Newsletter, Jan 1951, p. 5.
6 0 Josselyn Shore, “M y Career as a Hadassah Husband,” Hadassah N ewsletter (Sept 1953): 7.
6 1 Miriam Fierst and Lili Eller, “Who is She? An Appraisal o f the Composite o f the Hadassah
Member,” Hadassah Newsletter, Oct 1958, p. 9.
6 2 Fierst, “Who is She,” p. 9.
6 3 Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983), 14-15.
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158
64 Henrietta Szold (1941) as quoted in “Hadassah Annual Report 1952-1953: Vocational Education,”
in call no. 3, box 17, folder 7, HA. This same quote is found on many official Hadassah reports and
statements.
6 5 “Israel Fashions Made by Seligsberg Graduates Are Delegates’ Delight,” Hadassah Headlines,
December 1949, p. 6; Press release, 6, in call no. 17, “Headlines” folder, HA; Press release, 18
November 1949, 8, in call no. 3, box 15, folder 4, HA.
66 Press release, 18 November 1949, 8.
6 7 Press release, 18 November 1949, 8; “Description o f Eight o f Fifteen Fashions Displayed at First
Fashion Show o f Israel Couture: Hadassah Convention, Monday Afternoon, Nov. 14 Fairmont Hotel,”
1, in call no. 3, box 15, folder 4, HA.
6 8 “Description o f Eight o f Fifteen,” 1-2.
6 9 “Israel Fashions Made,” 6; Press release, 6, call no. 17, “Headlines” folder, HA.
7 0 “Fashion Show Already Booked to the Hilt,” Hadassah Headlines, January 1950, p. 5.
7 1 “Fashion Show Getting ‘Rave’ Notices,” Hadassah Headlines, April 1952, p. 5.
7 2 “Fashion Show Getting,” p. 5.
7 3 “Visual Aids Dramatize Vocational Education At Convention: Chapters May N ow Order Them,”
Hadassah Headlines, December 1952, p. 5.
7 4 “Convention Report,” Hadassah Newsletter, Sept 1954, 8.
7 5 Tim Brooks and Earle Marshall, Com plete Television D irecting to Prim e Time TV (New York:
Ballantine, 1999), 1012.
7 6 “Convention Report,” 8.
7 7 “Across the Country Wires,” 7, call no. 15, box 13, “conferences 1954-1959” folder, HA.
7 8 Elaine Tyler May, Hom eword Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York:
BasicBooks, 1988).
7 9 H.Y. Engel, “Shopping Bag Brigade Begins Membership Drive,” Hadassah Newsletter, March
1952, n.p.
8 0 “ILGWU Cutters Preparing Garments for Hadassah,” Hadassah Newsletter, September 1949, 6.
8 1 Westchester local bulletin in “Across the Country Wires,” 7, no. call 15, box 13, “conferences
1954-1957” folder, HA.
8 2 “Keeping Time with Hadassah Westchester,” call no. 15, box 13, “conferences 1954-1957” folder,
HA.
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159
8 3 Sarah Kuzzy Group 1, no. 1, 1953, 1.
8 4 Sarah Kuzzy Group 1, no. 1, 1953, 1.
8 5 North Shore Hadassah Newsletter, Oct. 1954, 1-2.
8 6 Hadassah Shoreline, N ov 1956, 1.
8 7 “Across the Country Wires,” 7, call no. 15, box 13, “conferences 1954-1959” folder, HA; “Keeping
time with Hadassah in Westchester,” call no. 14, box 13, “conferences 1954-1959” folder, HA.
8 8 “Keeping time with Hadassah in Westchester,” call no. 14, box 13, “conferences 1954-1959”
folder, HA.
8 9 Hadassah Shoreline, N ov 1958, n.p., in call 15, box 5, HA; Shoreline Newsletter, December 1959,
n.p., in call 15, box 5, HA.
9 0 Women in Israel, based on material by M olly Lyons bar-David (New York: Hadassah Education
Department, 1952), 1.
9 1 Women in Israel, 2.
9 2 Women in Israel, 4.
9 3 Women in Israel, 4.
94Women in Israel, 3.
9 5 Women in Israel, 79.
9 6 Sylvia Satten Banin, “W omen’s Rights and W omen’s Wrongs in Israel,” Hadassah Newsletter,
May 1952, p. 7.
97 “Citizen Army,” Hadassah Newsletter, October 1952, p. 3.
9 8 Banin, “W omen’s Rights,” p. 7.
9 9 Banin, “W omen’s Rights,” p. 7.
1 0 0 Hadassah, “Face Forward to the Future” 1950s Brochure, 15 HA.
1 0 1 “Mrs. Rosensohn’s address.”
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CHAPTER FOUR
Hadassah Women on the American Scene During the 1960s
The turbulent 1960s brought forth major social and cultural changes within
American culture— from the March on Washington to the assassinations of Malcolm
X, Martin Luther King Jr., and President Kennedy. Strong social movements
challenged the American status quo. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society called the
nation to action on behalf of the underprivileged, and second wave feminism drew
awareness to women’s rights. A trend toward ethnic nationalism among minority
groups, including Jews, forced groups and individuals to reimagine their identity.
All of these forces of change influenced most Americans in some way. The members
and leadership of Hadassah were no exception.
Gender
Hadassah members drew on a history of support for civil liberties, cultural
pluralism, and civil rights to participate increasingly in domestic activism. At the
same time, they maintained their primary goal of supporting projects in Israel.
Simultaneously, they broadened definitions of proper Jewish womanhood by
championing new avenues for women’s involvement in society while maintaining
(previously held) notions of traditional femininity.
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1950s America stressed women’s importance as homemakers. By the 1960s,
however, new political and social forces slowly eroded this position. Advances
made by feminism and a media backlash against the 1950s “June Cleaver” model of
femininity encouraged Hadassah members and leaders to further complicate the
construction of Jewish women’s identity in their rhetoric and actions. Hadassah
publications and meetings emphasized the significance of women’s education and
depicted women’s participation in the workforce as an acceptable option. Models of
femininity proposed by Hadassah in the 1950s had stressed organizational
volunteerism through Hadassah as the proper avenue for women’s engagement in the
wider culture, but the 1960s version of womanhood advanced by Hadassah provided
women with more options to partake in political and cultural life.
American women throughout the 1960s witnessed the increasingly vocal
movement to expand women’s rights and to empower women to challenge dominant
notions about their roles in society. The American mass media in the 1960s
increasingly focused on the repressive nature of domesticity. Magazines and
television decried the fruitlessness of a life devoted solely to domesticity and raising
the family. American women embraced the new cultural notions of proper
womanhood. Throughout the 1960s American women doubled their attendance in
college and waited longer before getting married.1
Lois Banner has argued that as a the focus on Cold War McCarthyism and
the repression of the 1950s lessened, a new emphasis on social reform in the 1960s
paved the way for activists from the civil rights movement to the women’s rights
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movements to appeal to the general public.2 Rather than a marginal movement of
radicals, the feminist movement of the 1960s spoke to a broad range of women.
Many middle-class women who had participated in the civil rights movement
adapted the language of the struggle to work for women’s rights.3 Even President
Kennedy legitimated concern about women’s status by appointing the Presidential
Commission on the Status of Women. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission,
which outlined the various inequities faced by women in its final report in 1963. In
addition, 1963 saw the passage of the Equal Pay Act, which legally established the
concept that women and men should have pay equity.4
Betty Friedan in her widely read 1963 publication The Feminine Mystique
gave voice to the “problem with no name.” She argued that recognizing and dealing
with ‘the problem” o f unhappy housewives trapped in an empty life of domestic
limitations, “may well be the key to our future as a nation and as a culture. We can
no longer ignore that voice within many women that says: ‘I want something more
than my husband and my children and my home.”5 Friedan’s book gained popular
attention. Magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Life and TV Guide ran articles
about her, and television programs interviewed her. With this newfound celebrity,
Friedan took her message to the widest possible audience.6
As discussed in previous chapters, Hadassah in the 1950s struggled to create
a balance between domesticity and the outwardly public and political nature of their
work. They relied heavily on the language of matemalism as a way to define their
activities as part of the dominant proscription of proper feminine behavior. A more
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openly politicized notion of volunteerism that developed during the 1960s replaced
Hadassah’s emphasis on maternal volunteerism. Hadassah’s emphasis on social
reform, no longer couched solely in domestic ideology, worked to construct a new
gender role for Jewish women that applauded their work without an emphasis on
maternal ideology.
Gendered language that emphasized femininity and family did not entirely
depart from the language of Hadassah members. Rather, a gradual change over time
created new options for understanding Jewish women’s identity through expanded
gender roles. “Varda was as beautiful and calm as the moon, sitting there in her
father’s big wing chair, her flowing wedding gown falling like a Grecian drapery
about her.” Thus Molly Bar-David described a bride in her monthly column “Diary
o f an Israeli Housewife” in the December 1960 edition of the Hadassah Newsletter.
In this article Bar-David allowed her readers access to a local Israeli wedding to
provide the Hadassah member with a day in the life of an Israeli Housewife. While
the monthly column “Diary of a Jerusalem Housewife” continued to cover gendered
events such as weddings, depicting the fine details of family life and the difficulties
of motherhood in Israel, increasingly the column addressed more political and more
complex themes. Her column, like other forms of official Hadassah literature,
moved away from the emphasis on domestic matemalism and towards a more
intellectual and openly political understanding of women’s role in society.
Hadassah developed a new column in the 1960s “Diary of an American
housewife” which ran in the Hadassah Newsletter. It was often placed adjacent to
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164
the column “Diary of an Israeli Housewife.” Written by Ruth Gruber Michaels,
shied away from regressive domestic subjects, while it encouraged women to engage
in political discourse and civil rights activism and to expand their knowledge base.
In her first column “Diary of an American Housewife”, Ruth Gruber Michaels set
the tone for what would follow. She explained that when asked by her friend
Rebecca Shulman, a member of the editorial board of Hadassah, to take on the
responsibility of writing the column she hesitated but eventually she accepted.
Michaels detailed Shulman’s explanation of her expectations for the new column,
‘“Now look,’ Rebecca said to me, ‘I want my children and grandchildren to read in
the column how you bring up your children as Americans and as Jews concerned
with Israel, what your children did on Passover. Tell me, how did you spend
Passover?’”7 In response, Michaels took a new direction in Hadassah rhetoric, and
rather than focusing solely on the domestic duties of hosting a Passover Seder (The
traditional dinner that celebrates the holiday), Michaels expounded on the trial of the
notorious Nazi, Adolph Eichman, who had been captured and tried by the Israeli
government. She examined whether or not one should discuss this topic with one’s
children. Michaels argued for the importance of teaching children about “hatred”
through teaching them about the Holocaust. She explained that she wanted her
children to know about the Holocaust in order to understand the horrible outcome
that evil and hatred can produce. “We want them to grow up with a strong sense of
good and evil, so that if they ever must fight, they will fight for good against evil.”8
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Michaels discussed her role as a Jewish mother, but she also educated Hadassah
readers about the Eichman trial and the threat of racism.
In this first column, Michaels emphasized her role as a mother and a Jewish
educator. Yet during the 1960s her columns increasingly omitted or de-emphasized
children and family. Instead, they focused on her experiences in the world of civil
rights activism. Michaels was active in the Civil Rights movement and wrote
columns describing segregation in the South and the March on Washington and gave
Hadassah readers a first hand account of Michael’s participation in a “fight for good
against evil.” Hadassah members thus gained access through one of their own
“housewives” into the world of activism and were encouraged to participate whole
heartedly. Their roles as Jewish mothers still remained a theme in Michaels
‘Diaries,’ but Michaels’ central argument was that motherhood provided an
expanding set of possibilities that included not only participation in Hadassah as
activists but also a politicization on the domestic scene.
In the May 1960 edition of Hadassah Newsletter, readers also learned about
the founder of Hadassah, Henrietta Szold, and her work for social reform. One
article entitled “Mother o f Thousands”— about Henrietta Szold — depicted her work
with children in matemalist terms. Szold had focused her personal attention on each
child, while she sought to place orphaned children in communal living arrangements
as a “family substitute.” While the article used the language of matemalism as
Hadassah had during the 1950s, it also provided a picture of a powerful woman
pioneer, single and childless, drawing on a matemalist ideology as an avenue
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towards social reform.9 While articles that incorporated matemalist rhetoric into the
principles of Hadassah life were the norm in the 1950s, during the 1960s they
became increasingly rare, as a new language emphasized women’s participation in
social activism and politics as an empowering and self-fulfilling activity.
In October 1963, Hadassah Magazine ran a piece entitled “A Woman’s
Place.” It consisted of a series of excerpts from a commencement speech given by
Adlai Stevenson, United States representative to the UN, at a commencement
ceremony at Radcliffe College. Above the article the magazine ran pictures of
Radcliffe alumnae, such as Marietta Tree, United States representative on the United
Nations Human Rights Commission. The introduction to this article, written by a
Hadassah member, read, “Is a woman’s home her prison? Today a growing number
of people in education, government and communal leadership are expressing concern
over the plight of the gifted woman who is unable to put to use the knowledge and
training she has received during her years of college and graduate study”1 0 Adalai
Stevenson’s commencement address, which followed this introduction provided a
scathing critique of the role of women as housewives and “slaves”. Stevenson
described how men looked forward to a rewarding career upon graduation, while
women engaged in “servile” and monotonous domestic activities. Stevenson
cautioned that while some women might be satisfied with their domestic role, those
women who desired more than domesticity should be encouraged to pursue further
education or a career.1 1
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Unlike the Hadassah of the 1950s, which had championed Hadassah activities
as the proper extension of Jewish women’s domestic role, the Hadassah of the 1960s
empowered women to widen the acceptable role of middle-class and upper-class
housewives. While Hadassah participation remained a vital avenue for women’s
expression and voice, Hadassah leaders, magazines, and resolutions encouraged its
membership to accept a variety of women’s roles.
Hadassah publications of this era featured descriptions of women in the
professions and presented in-depth analyses of women in positions of power, from
doctors to legislators. In addition, they also represented women, both in Israel and
America, who were working as secretaries, teachers and nurses in a positive light. In
the 1950s working women were depicted as single, but the 1960s Hadassah articles
provided a roadmap for Jewish women who wanted both to work and raise a family.
Articles like “Secretary and Homemaker,” published in Hadassah Magazine in 1964
described a day in the life of an Israeli homemaker who also worked as a secretary.
The balance between career and motherhood, although portrayed as difficult, was
also shown as rewarding and commonplace. In the 1950s, Hadassah articles and
literature presented Israeli women workers as a strange and completely different
from American Jewish women, but this article presented work outside the home as a
part of a normal life and argued in a positive manner that women in Israel and
12
America both worked and raised families in order to make ends meet.
While Hadassah challenged the domestic roles of women by advocating
women’s political participation and by representing women as having life choices
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168
that included work and education, the organization continued to appeal to American
housewives. As one chapter president put it, Jewish history and the variety of
programs offered by Hadassah explained why “318,000 American housewives in 49
of our beloved United States have been magnetized by our democratic history-
making and humanitarian endeavors.”1 3 To appeal to those “housewives,” Hadassah
continued its emphasis on beauty and fashion as a form of drawing women’s
attention to important Hadassah events and as a fundraising tool. Gender discourse in
Hadassah moved away from matemalist rhetoric and even more towards the notion
of beauty and fashion as an important forum for women during the 1960s.
In 1960 and 1961 Hadassah circulated its annual Master Kit to all members.
The kit provided Hadassah members with an overview of the various activities and
programs available to them. The 1960-61 edition was conceived partly as an
advertising tool based on the advertising philosophy of the fashion industry. An
interview in Hadassah Magazine with Mina Brownstone, Hadassah promotion
director, explained that she borrowed from high fashion stylists in order to create her
new “line” o f promotional materials, modeled after “Paris High Style.” Knowing
that women paid attention to the “fashion practices and modes which make up their
lives in America,” Hadassah literature must, she argued, “compete with all the slick,
gay, ‘image building’ mail our women receive from others who have something to
sell, even though we are selling an idea and an ideal.1 4 ” Thus, to “sell the ideal” of
Hadassah throughout the 1960s Hadassah incorporated concepts from the fashion
and beauty world to attract members and to sustain interest. Hadassah boxed lipsticks
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169
were sold as a means to raise money. The lipsticks bore the imprint “Put Hadassah
on Every Women’s Lips.” They could be purchased in sets of 100, although only one
shade was offered.1 5 Another “member getting gimmick” included boxing
membership information in an attractive “plastic coin purse.”1 6 Mrs. Morris
Kertzer, chairman of the national supplies committee, suggested that women utilize
women’s interest in fashion for fund raising activities.1 7 She argued that since new
fashion trends included shorter hem lines, chapters should go into the business of
shortening hems: “set up shop for a talented volunteer seamstress, charge\the going
rate per hem and let over-the knee pit you over-the-top in supplies.”1 8
Already in full swing in the 1950s, Hadassah fashion shows continued to
remain a part of Hadassah life through the 1960s. Every annual Hadassah
convention showcased political leaders, and sessions dealt with serious subjects such
as politics and social welfare. Alongside these crucial topics, Hadassah conventions
also continued to include fashion shows of clothing made in Israel at Hadassah’s
Alice Seligsberg Vocational High School. A Hadassah member joked about the odd
pairing: “Only Hadassah women, it should be noted, can attend to serious business
and sigh with delight at beautiful clothes-and even quote the Talmud for approval on
both.” 1 9 In addition, members could use a series of slides and accompanying texts
as a way to raise funds for Hadassah vocational programs. A virtual fashion show,
entitled “What is a Dress,” contained eighty eight slides of dresses designed by
Seligsburg students, with “clearly written script” accompanying the slides. This
written text could be read by local Hadassah chapters when the slides were shown.
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A unique feature of the show was “a series of introductory cartoons which cleverly
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depict the meaning of a dress to a woman, to her husband, and others.” Local
chapters ordered this slide show and presented it to their members who did not attend
the national conference. A movement to buy Israeli fashions in America also gained
ground during the 1960s. The fashion shows served the purpose both of fundraising
and creating attractive activities for members and non-members. They were also
2 1
aimed, as were those of the 1950s, at placing Israel as a top fashion producer.
Jewish Culture
During the 1960s Jews and other ethnic groups increasingly embraced their
cultural heritage and expressed this sentiment in public forums. Hadassah responded
to this trend by urging its members to embrace Jewish culture through Hadassah.
Simultaneously, anxieties about the fate of Judaism in America surfaced among
Jews, who began to express concerns over a perceived eroding of Jewish identity.
Hadassah reacted to this second development by arguing that a central
aspect of member’s work lay in safeguarding Jewish religion and culture, in addition
to supporting programs in Israel and working towards a pro-Jewish political agendas
in the United States: “It is our duty to demand of ourselves that we continue the
surging progress of which Hadassah women are capable. Many Jewish women
through Hadassah can develop a real sense of identity and relationship to something
greater than themselves.”2 2 Hadassah appealed to Jewish women by offering
messages about women’s importance and their need to take action. By merging
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Americanism, activism, Zionism and more of an emphasis on Jewish identity,
Hadassah attracted a broad spectrum of women with articles like “Identify with
Hadassah” published in the Philadelphia chapter newsletter, “The momentous events
in the world have created a unique change in the action and thinking of the American
Jewish woman. She wants to identify with the fight for peace and democracy.. .she
wants to identify as a Jew .. .she wants to identify with an organization with a
goal.. .a purpose .. .a responsibility.”2 3 Zionism offered an avenue for Jewish women
to participate in a mission defined as Jewish but not in a traditional fashion. As one
Hadassah member put it, “Zionism is Judaism on the march.2 4 ”
Programs designed to instruct youth in Zionist ideas and action to teach
women how to raise children in a Jewish environment flourished in Hadassah during
the 1960s. While in other communities traditional forms of Jewish identity, such as
synagogue attendance and religious study, may have been the mark of Jewishness,
for Hadassah women, Zionism served as the central link to Jewish identity. This had
been true since Hadassah’s inception, but it became an even more central issue as
fears over the loss of Jewish culture dominated Jewish thinking in the 1960s.
Although matemalist rhetoric decreased in popularity in Hadassah during the
1960s, the dissemination of Jewish identity to families remained an important theme
in its rhetoric. At the 1966 annual convention, the current Hadassah president voiced
anxiety about the survival of Jewish culture. As Jews for the most part no longer
lived in segregated communities and had successfully assimilated into the dominant
culture, “Judaism is a second culture acquired on top of the culture of the countries
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where they live.” American Jews, she warned, have a justified worry about the
future of Judaism. “The basic concern of a modem Jew in a free society is not
whether his son will face anti-Semitism, not whether his son will earn a living-but
whether he will remain a Jew.”2 5 By holding Jews “responsible” for other Jews,
Hadassah, the president argued, gave members an option to work in repairing the
situation, and it also served to connect members with their Jewish identity. In
addition to serving as role models to their children, Hadassah members needed to
actively represent to their children and friends the importance of remaining in touch
with their Jewishness.2 6
Hadassah continued to support Aliyah, the movement of Jews to Israel, as a
way to retain Jewish identity. In a resolution passed at the 1965 national
conference, Hadassah stated: “Hadassah rejoices in the rebirth o f (sic) Israel offers
Jews in free countries new paths for self-fulfillment. Aliyah (Settlement in Israel) is
one such path.” The resolution further stated that Hadassah would “encourage those
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who choose Aliyah” and assist them in their quest.
The only American programs for which Hadassah raised funds were youth
activities and programs designed to inculcate the younger generations in Zionism and
Jewish education. Young Judea and Junior Hadassah were two groups that targeted
this youth population. Young Judea and Junior Hadassah, part of Hadassah’s youth
and young adult programming, allowed Hadassah women to continue to focus on
their role as Jewish educators for their children, while working outside the home
through Hadassah. Junior Hadassah allowed girls from their senior year in college to
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the age of 24 to participate in Hadassah as trainees.2 8 Young Judea consisted of after
school programs and summer programs for high-school students—both girls and
boys— interested in connecting with Zionism and their Jewish heritage. Under the
umbrella of HaShachar (the dawn), Hadassah had Young Judea programs including
Junior Young Judea for boys and girls ages 9-11, intermediate Young Judea for ages
9Q
11-13, and Senior Judea for high-school age:
These organizations help Jewish boys and girls learn about
their Jewish heritage: they make possible that the Jewish and Zionist
aspirations which enrich our lives, give us dignity, security and
equilibrium, be attractive to our children; they guide them, through
knowledge of, and experience in Israel- and thru understanding of
Jewish life every-where-toward insight and self fulfillment as Zionists
via service to their people. And through all this they are they are
shown how to be better Jews and better people.3 0
Hadassah members often sent their children to programs like Young Judea and
Junior Hadassah in order to fulfill their responsibility as Jewish educators. They
spoke of the importance of the “Jewish mother in the education of her children” and
argued that Young Judea with its after school programming, summer camps, and
trips to Israel served as an arm of Jewish mothers as educators.3 1 Hadassah’s 1964
junior Hadassah campaign was entitled “because we can’t live without you.” It
recognized that the future of both Hadassah and the Jewish people’s futures was tied
to the young generation.3 2 Young Judea camps were advertised in Jewish
newspapers, and they were open to all Jewish youth. One Philadelphia Young Judea
program called Tel Yehudah catered to about 500 campers between the ages of 14 to
18. It was described as follows:
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The program includes study and discussion periods dealing with
Jewish history, the American Jewish community, Zionism and
modem Israel, as well as classes in spoken Hebrew. Song, dance,
drama, arts and crafts, and sports, hikes and other special activities
round the program.3 3
While education of youth served an important function in Hadassah it the education
of women still remained a the central goal of Hadassah.
Education of both Hadassah members and their families on issues such as
Jewish learning, Zionism, and international and domestic policy issues served as a
major component of Hadassah action and rhetoric in the 1960’s.“EDUCATION
MUST GO ON AT EVERY MEETING, whether it be a general meeting, a board
meeting, a study group, a special function etc. Time must be regularly allotted to
interpretation of all our committees, as well as the study of our ideology, Bible,
American and Zionist Affairs, Hebrew, history etc.. .”3 4 In the 1960s, Hadassah
offered regional Bible Seminars designed to train selected Hadassah members from
each chapter to conduct a course of Bible study in their local chapters.3 5
Hadassah regional president Ruth Zelgis of the Central States Region urged
her members to rise to the challenges faced by Hadassah and discussed at the 51s t
annual convention. The convention theme, “Today’s Challenge-Tomorrow’s
Achievement” reminded members of the obstacles they faced in gaining new
members. Mrs. Mortimer Jacobson, chair of membership, argued that, ‘“ Hadassah’s
greatest challenge is to reach out to the unconcerned woman, the disinterested
woman, the unaffiliated.’”3 6 In order to do so, Hadassah members employed various
techniques. Often their programs were designed not only for current members but
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also to attract new membership. Hadassah members were aware that many Jewish
and non-Jewish organizations competed for these women’s attention. By stressing
Judaism and Jewish education in combination with politics and involvement in
Israel, Hadassah offered a unique avenue for women to connect with their heritage,
spirituality, and other women.
Hadassah women could be part of a movement of Jewish women. Depending
on what Hadassah programs appealed to them, they could empower themselves. If a
connection to Jewish identity appealed to them, “As Jewesses, we are sustained by
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the creative and moral power of the G-d of Israel and our rich heritage.” If
working for democratic values appealed to members then “as Americans, we are
sustained by the\power to protect and strengthen the democratic way of life at home
and abroad.” 3 8 If humanitarian work attracted them, then “As members of
Hadassah, we are able to hold our heads higher for our unparalleled growth and
shinning record of humanitarian achievement these 50 years dedicated to the
advancement of Jewish ideals— dedicated to the Healing of the Daughter of my
People and to the healing of the daughter of all free peoples, have been a potent force
in Jewish survival and the cause o f freedom everywhere.”3 9 Hadassah became a
successful organization by providing women with a variety of approaches to
activism.
In her “Presidents Message” Ruth Katz published in the local Franklin
Square New York Newsletter, found it “hard to understand how any Jew, anywhere in
the world, especially in our country, can feel remote and removed from the people of
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Israel; and how any Jewish woman and mother can say that she feels no need, no
desire, to help HER people survive.” 4 0 She urged her fellow members not to be
distracted by all the other women’s organizations vying for their time. “On a local
level, all of us receive invitations and phone calls from all of the women’s
organizations in town, each of which would like us to join them, and each for a
worthwhile reason.” 4 1 While she admitted the appeal of other women’s
organizations, “if YOU don’t support YOUR people in the land of YOUR fathers
.. .who will?”4 2 Hadassah leaders urged members to remain committed to the cause
and to try to attract new members who might be currently involved in other groups.
By stressing the wide variety of programs and forms of involvement offered to
Hadassah members— including Zionist work, philanthropic efforts, American affairs,
fund-raising, and numerous others activities and programs— Hadassah leadership
successfully appealed to women.
Hadassah members often viewed their participation as work. Many members
described their time at Hadassah as work, and they spent many hours— often at set
times— at Hadassah offices or functions or otherwise assisting in Hadassah projects.
Hadassah work was sometimes referred to as an “authentic” profession4 3 Hadassah
leaders wanted women to see the importance of their work, and they urged them to
view Hadassah action as stemming from an all encompassing world view and
personal commitment that involved Hadassah members and their families.
Connection to Judaism was one aspect of involvement that Hadassah offered
its members. The Hadassah Central States Region held Education Institutes
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designed to, among other goals, educate Hadassah members on Jewish subjects.
Attendees held seminars discussing the “Book of Samuel,” (a book of the Bible) and
the seminar provided them with a ready-made course complete with syllabus and
teaching instructions to be taught to Hadassah chapters throughout the country.4 4
Other workshops were held on “How Can We Transmit Jewish values to our
Children”; Have Jewish Values been Influenced by the Emergence of Israel”, and
“Jewish Values for the Modem Man.” They provided members with more
information on Judaism.4 5
Central States Region President Ruth Zelgis, in a letter of appeal to Hadassah
members published in the Central States Region Newsletter, explained the
connection between Hadassah and Judaism. Referring to a Midrashic tale (Midrash
are interpretive stories about the Bible and Jewish law):
The Midrash tells us there are only two kinds of people in the world—
the builders and the destroyers. If you are not building you are
destroying. You cannot remain in limbo doing nothing— for to do
nothing is destructive. Hadassah women are builders for we are
engaged in fulfilling the commandments of our faith. By our deeds,
we seek to ‘do justly and love mercy’. The words of Deuteronomy are
our guidelines. ‘Until the Lord give rest unto your brethrens well as
unto you... only then shall ye return, every man unto his possession,
which I have given you.’4 6
Each new member enrolled had the potential to help ameliorate the situation for Jews
in Israel, for Jews in America, and for herself. At the national convention of 1965
Hadassah re-committed itself to achieve a “deepened and intensified Jewish
education for ourselves and our youth.”4 7
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Hadassah literature defined Jewish Education as among the major programs
Hadassah offered in America, along with Zionist Affairs and American Affairs. The
Jewish Education program manifested itself in many ways throughout Hadassah.
Some of these included book review groups, seminars, study circles, Education Day
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Institutes, Bible study and holiday workshops, and Hebrew education. In addition,
Hadassah awarded education grants to scholars, researchers, students, and writers
engaged in Jewish education.4 9 Hadassah also commissioned the publication of
books on Jewish subjects, like Great Ages and Ideas o f the Jewish People.5 0
Civil Rights
As the 1960s progressed, popular culture fueled by the women’s movement
challenged the 1950s model of female domesticity. In line with this development,
Hadassah encouraged members to view themselves as activists with a political
mission. Hadassah’s support of the Civil Rights movement during the 1950s, as
discussed in chapter three, typified the types of Jewish-Black cooperation common
in the so called “golden age” of Black-Jewish relations. The 1960s, however,
presented a potent challenge to this spirit of collaboration as Black Nationalism and
separatism, popularized by the 1964 publication of Malcolm X ’s autobiography and
by activists such as Stokely Carmichael, threatened Jewish notions of acceptable
forms of protest and ideology.5 1 At the same time, particularly in the early 1960s,
Jewish men and women remained active in the Civil Rights movement. They
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participated in freedom rides, in the SNCC activity, and a variety of other Civil
Rights activities.5 2
Hadassah continued throughout the 1960s to advocate Civil Rights legislation
and more determined efforts to de-segregate the South. Yet anxieties over Black
Nationalism caused Hadassah members and leaders to question the relationship of
Jews and Blacks and fight to even further to maintain what they saw as the least
threatening ways to collaborate with the Black community.
The strengthening of civil rights remained a central mandate of the American
Affairs branch of Hadassah during the 1960s. Among the various responsibilities of
the appointed Washington Representative of the National Board that served as a
liaison between Hadassah’s American Affairs program and the Washington DC
political community was the maintenance of ties and information regarding civil
rights.5 3
Articles in Hadassah Newsletter and Hadassah Magazine educated Hadassah
members about the difficult attempts made to combat segregation in the South.
These articles described sit-ins and freedom rides in positive terms. One article
entitled “Civil Rights Report: The Momentum of History is Working Against
Segregation,” published in the January 1962 edition of Hadassah Newsletter, ran a
picture of a sit-in, with smiling activists juxtaposed with a picture of Martin Luther
King at a NAACP meeting. The caption read “renowned leader of the Negro
struggle for civil equality, reiterates his faith in the ultimate triumph of justice at a
NAACP convention.” It further read “Below, confident of the moral rightness of
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their demands, militant young Negro students smilingly brave insult and possible
violence in ‘sit-in strike’, one of the many protests that characterized the Negro’s
mood in 1961.”5 4 Several articles such as this one detailed the history and progress
of de-segregation. Hadassah had officially supported de-segregation in their
resolution. Had this just been a face value attempt to support de-segregation they
could have stopped at that; however, throughout the 1950s and the 1960s Hadassah
continued aggressively to support civil rights activity.
The Philadelphia chapter co-chairs of the American Affairs Committee told
their members: “It is important that we be aware of what is going on. The Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties issues, Freedom Riders, and human relations law, and Fair
Educational Opportunities Act, may not be a part of the first session of the 97th
congress, but they will come up. Let us be properly informed and learn to do our
share.”5 5 That same year, at Hadassah’s mid-winter conference, resolutions were
passed and publicized in Hadassah material “supporting the advancement of civil
rights and civil liberties so that every citizen will enjoy the rights and privileges
guaranteed by the constitution.”5 6
In her article “Desegregation in the South: Progress is Visible, But Not Yet
Won” Ruth Gruber Michaels charted a recent speaking trip she made to several
southern cities and local Hadassah chapters there. She gave an eyewitness account of
the limitations o f de-segregation and what she called “a token integration”. After
explaining some of the “small battles” she witnessed in the area of integration on her
trip, Michaels explained, “These, however, are still small victories. Years of agony
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lie ahead in the North as well as the South. Let no one think 250 years of slavery
and 100 years of degradation can be erased overnight.”5 7 Michaels used strong
language to convey her message to the over 315,000 members of Hadassah receiving
the magazine and their families. She wrote about slavery as a crucial historical issue
often left out of discussions of racism in America. Michales warned of the growing
power of the white supremacist movement led by George Wallace. In one article she
provided quotes from local southerners that equated Wallace, with “McCarthy” and
credited him with constructing “a regular Gestapo in Alabama.” Michaels also
pointed out that the “racists” were also often “anti-Semites.”.5 8 With a friendly
voice like that of “American Housewife,” columnist Ruth Gruber Michaels, affirm
strong support for the civil rights movement and a rejection of racist attitudes.
Later that same year, Ruth Gruber Michaels wrote another eyewitness
account, this time of her participation in the historic march on Washington on
August 28 1963. At that event Martin Luther King Jr. seared into the national
consciousness his famous “I have a dream” speech. In her article Michaels described
a historic march with 210,000 people— “the greatest demonstration this capital has
seen since the birth of the Republic.”5 9 Michaels depicted a joyful occasion where
families marched together— Jews, Christians, whites and blacks all as one. The
Jewish perspective remained a central theme in the report, with quotes from various
rabbis and Jewish officials who had participated in the march. A mainstream picture
of Jewish support was thus presented to Hadassah readers, introducing once again
Civil Rights activism as a Jewish activity. Rabbi Marc Tannebaum was quoted in
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the article as saying, “Had this march taken place in the 1930s in Germany, there
might never have been the mass murder of Jews. The conscience of Christians might
have been awakened as our consciences are being awakened today.”6 0 Hadassah
members again heard one of their own reporting to them the efforts of Jews to help
others being oppressed as they had been.
In 1963 Hadassah further solidified its alliance with the Civil Rights
movement. Responding to a conference called by Vice-President Johnson in July of
1963, in order to rally support for his Civil Rights Bill, Hadassah president wrote a
letter declaring the organization’s support of the effort. She explained that the
“National board of Hadassah representing 318,000 members.... Voted unanimously
to help mobilize favorable public opinion on behalf of the administration’s Civil
Rights Bill.”6 1 To put this vote into action, Hadassah members at the 1963
convention voted to adopt a new Civil Rights resolution endorsing and supporting
the Civil Rights bill. The resolution stated that the “program is in full accord with
Hadassah’s traditional position on Civil Rights.” In addition, the resolution urged
members to lobby political officials in their community to pass this legislation.6 2 In
its 1964 national conference, Hadassah renewed its support for the Bill by calling on
the federal government to ensure that guarantees of equality would be enforced
regardless of “color, race or country of origin.” The statement further urged
Hadassah members to engage in “active participation with your respective boards of
education, commerce, industries, enterprises, and institutions in your community,
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thereby striving to bring about a true equity of opportunity in all areas mentioned in
this civil rights bill.”6 3
In 1964 Johnson’s Civil Rights bill passed, but the South experienced more
race-related violence with the bombing of a church in Selma, Alabama. Hadassah
again lent support to the passage of the new Civil Rights bill and harshly condemned
the bombing in Selma. In a briefing sent to American Affairs chapter heads and
meant for dissemination to chapter members, the Hadassah American Affairs
national department wrote, “It is because the present aim of the Negro people in
these areas strikes more deeply into the corrupt structure of law enforcement and
legal power than have their previous efforts, that it has provoked violent ripostes.”6 4
The briefing further explained that segregation still remained a force to be reckoned
with in many parts of the south. Positive strides resulting from sit-ins and the Civil
Rights Bill of 1964 only offered “the first basis for tangible gain.” Securing the
ability to vote unobscured by racism “which is as forbidden to some southerner
Negroes as it was to their pre-Civil War forebears- strikes at the heart of the
matter.”6 5 At Hadassah’s national convention in 1966 held in Boston,
Massachusetts, Hadassah delegates adopted a resolution supporting the Civil Rights
Act of 1966 and reaffirmed their commitment to the expansion of civil rights.6 6
While Hadassah built on its Civil Rights tradition by working with Black
organizations, a new shift in the Civil Rights movement towards Black Nationalism
and Black Power, sometimes interpreted as separatism, created a strained
relationship between Jewish liberal organizations and the Black community.6 7
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Black Nationalist leaders such as Stokely Carmichael attracted many Black
northerners who felt alienated from the Southern Civil Rights movement. In
addition, the emergent emphasis on pan-Africanism on the part of many Black
Nationalists and their critique of colonial oppression in Africa gradually shifted
allegiance in many parts of the Black community away from Zionism. Thus, they
aligned themselves with the Palestinian and Arab third world as opposed to Israel,
now seen as a colonialist first world country.6 8 Fears about Black power and the
questioning of Zionism produced anxiety amongst the ranks of Hadassah. At the
1968 Hadassah national convention Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of the
National Urban League, told Hadassah members that the Black power movement
provided positive qualities to the Black community and that the Urban League
supported Black “pride and self-respect.” But he also warned that the separatist strain
should not be tolerated. Young also stated that white people were in the greatest
position of power to change the racist system from within, as opposed to relying on
the black community to champion the cause; thus he supported civil rights action. 6 9
Hadassah published statements of Martin Luther King Jr. in an article
honoring the “testament of Martin Luther King JR,” that clearly rejected Black
Power. In an excerpt from a speech given to the Jewish Rabbinical Assembly in
March 1968, King was quoted as saying that he regretted “that the slogan ‘Black
Power’ ever came into being”. It has become confusing and so often promotes Black
domination rather than Black equality.7 0 ” King also explained in the article the
contradictory view of Blacks in the “ghetto.” For they see Jews both as an ally in the
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civil rights movement but also as economic oppressors abusing their power as
landlords within the ghetto.7 1 Anxiety over Black anti-Semitism and Black
separatism created a rift between Jewish and Black organizations and people in that
period.
Further fueling the fires of fear, Robert Gordis, a professor of religion at
Temple University, wrote a scathing critique of the black separatist movement in an
article published in Hadassah Magazine. After the death of Martin Luther King Jr.,
Black separatism had become the dominant voice in the black community, he
claimed. One aim of Black Separatists, he explained, was to create “all Negro
Ghettos” ridding the communities of the ‘white business man.” The communities
would be equipped with all Black police departments, fire departments and school
systems. If this came to pass, Dr. Gordis cautioned Hadassah members, “In a few
years our public schools will have produced cadres of black racists consumed with
hatred for all non-blacks and as disruptive of the social order and destructive of
themselves as the German Nazis in their heyday.”7 2 One can see how an atmosphere
of fear was nurtured through articles like these and the wider media’s depiction of
Black nationalism. A new breed of “Nazi,” according to Gordis, could be
developing within American culture.
In an effort to present an explanation of the complexities within the Black
community and to put a positive spin on Hadassah efforts for Civil Rights and its
alliance with the black community, an American Affairs kit was sent to American
Affairs representatives as a guide for understanding current events. One section
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entitled “Civil Rights Legislation” provided a questions and answer form and an
explanation of goals to be accomplished through association with “moderate” Civil
Rights groups. Hadassah therefore continued to push for civil rights legislation and
align itself with what saw as the moderate wing of the Black community. Hadassah
members learned that just as the white community had divisions between
“moderates,” “conservatives,” and “radicals,” so too was the black community
divided. Among the efforts outlined as moderate areas of Civil Rights that would be
supported by Hadassah were advances in: housing, education, medical treatment,
employment and “adequate income for those unable to work to live with self-
respect.7 3 ” In a similar kit produced by the American Affairs Committee on
February 17, 1969, a section entitled “Black Organizations” provided several pages
of analysis of the Black community and civil rights groups. Hadassah members were
encouraged to view the Black community as diverse, with many groups supporting,
integration like organizations like CORE, the NAACP, and the Urban League. The
Black Panthers and SNCC, were characterized as non-integrationist and negative
groups promoting violence and “confrontation.”7 4
Although threatened by Black Nationalism and a growing sense of frustration
and even anti-Semitic undertones in some branches of the Black community,
Hadassah continued to support the passage of Civil Rights legislation. In a
resolution passed at the February 1969 mid-winter national convention, Hadassah
members condemned anti-Semitism within the Black community. The same
resolution, however, urged Hadassah members to “continue its vigorous participation
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in all efforts to assure the realization of the American ideal of freedom and justice for
all.”7 5 The same year, Hadassah passed a resolution on desegregation protesting the
delayed process of integration in the South and urging the federal administration to
assist in the “speedy implementation of full school integration.”7 6
Hadassah leaders found ways to negotiate the crisis between the Jewish and
Black community in the late 1960s. Choosing to dismiss what they viewed as the
negative constructions of Black Nationalism as irrelevant, they aligned themselves
with “moderate” voices. Instead of just breaking ties with the black community and
divorcing themselves from Civil Rights action, they chose to be selective in their
approach to Civil Rights and to continue to work in that area. Even amid a flood of
perceived black anti-Semitism, Hadassah leaders and members worked to maintain a
relationship with officials in the Black community deemed responsive to their
efforts.
Hadassah Members and the Great Society
Alongside its support for Civil Rights, Hadassah also endorsed and lobbied
on behalf of Johnson’s Great Society efforts. These consisted of a series of social
welfare and economic programs meant to eradicate “poverty and racial injustice.”
At Hadassah’s annual 1967 conference , the organization endorsed a statement in
which it stated its approval of Johnson’s anti-poverty program: “ ‘The passage of
this bill will be a first step toward giving every citizen an opportunity to share in
America’s material abundance and in the cultural, social, common, and political life
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of the country”’7 8 Hadassah reiterated its support for Great Society programs like
Medicare, the anti-poverty act, and the revision of the restrictive immigration laws in
a statement adopted at its 1966 mid-winter national conference.7 9 In a resolution
addressing anti-poverty legislation adopted at Hadassah’s annual national conference
in September of 1967, the organization urged Congress to provide adequate funding
in order to insure the success of the “War on Poverty.”8 0 The American Affairs
Committee produced several kits which dealt with the issues of the war on poverty
and various other initiatives within the realm of housing, medical aid, and hunger
relief programs. The kits were designed to educate members about the problems
facing Americans, and they wholeheartedly supported efforts by the Johnson
administration to remedy the situation.8 1
Throughout the 1960s Hadassah members participated in activities geared not
just toward aiding Israel. They also championed Civil Rights issues, the war on
poverty, an increase in education funds, and various other social welfare programs
geared towards improving life for a broad range of citizens in the United States.
Much of this shift to incorporating even more United States-based programs
addressed to remedying problems within the United States resulted from the
initiative of Hadassah’s rank and file members. Hadassah noticed that many
members wanted to volunteer within their local communities to improve conditions
there. “An increasing number of Hadassah members” the American Affairs Kit
distributed in October-November, 1969 explained, “want to become actively
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involved in the important domestic local problems which affect all of us.”
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Hadassah launched a “new action program” to place members in local volunteer
opportunities either through tutoring school children or working to end hunger.
Members were also encouraged, however, to regard this initiative only as an added
aspect of Hadassah work and as not a replacement for their already established
programs. Training programs run by agencies like the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, and representatives of the National Schools Volunteer
Program would prepare Hadassah members to take up their designated volunteer
assignment. They tutored children and assisted in preparing meals for inner city
children in need. Local chapters also had the authority to target specific need in their
local communities. In many Texas chapters, for example, Hadassah members chose
to focus their efforts on assisting migrant workers in their communities by extending
83
migrant workers and their children health care and improved nutrition.
Conclusion
Throughout the 1960s Hadassah members and leaders adapted to the
changing tides within American culture. Rather than fighting to maintain the
regressive gender roles of the 1950s, Hadassah encouraged its members to broaden
their conception of Jewish women’s identity to include more forms of politicization
and more vocal and public manifestations of their activism. As the fight to improve
the status of the underprivileged in American society gained in popularity among its
members, Hadassah even further expanded its mandate to include and strengthen
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programs directed at the domestic scene while simultaneously cementing ties to
Israel as the central import of the organization.
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191
NOTES
1 Sara Evans, Born fo r Liberty (New York: Free Press, 1997), 265.
2 Lois Banner, Women in America: A B rief H istory (Fort Worth, Texas: Flarcourt Brace, 1995), 217.
3 Alice Echols, Daring to Be B ad (Minneapolis: Univ. o f Massachusetts Press, 1989).
4 Banner, Women in America, 237-239; Evans, Born fo r Liberty, 275.
5 Betty Friedan, The Feminine M ystique (New York: Norton and Company, 1963), 32.
6 Glenna Matthews, Just a Housewife the Rise and Fall o f Female D om esticity in America, (Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press, 1989), 219.
7 Ruth Gruber Michaels, “Diary o f an American Housewife,” Hadassah M agazine, May 1960, p. 11.
8 Michaels, “Diary o f an American Housewife,” p. 11.
9 Zena Harman, “Mother o f Thousands,” Hadassah Newsletter, December I960..
1 0 “A W oman’s Place,” Hadassah Magazine, October 1963, p. 10.
1 1 “A W oman’s Place,” p. 10.
1 2 “Secretary and Homemaker,” Hadassah Magazine, June 1964, p. 1.
1 3 Mrs. Harry Donner, “From the President’s Pen,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin,
September 1961, 1. All references to this bulletin stem from the periodical collection o f Philadelphia
Historical Society (hereafter PHS).
1 4 “Peek Preview for 1960-1961: Master Kit Shows N ew ‘Line’ To Be Match For Paris High Style,”
Hadassah Headlines, June-July 1960, p. 2. All references to Hadassah Headlines from call no. 17,
“Hadassah Headlines” folder, Hadassah Archives, Center for Jewish History, N ew York.
1 5 Hadassah Headlines, May 1960, p. 2.
1 6 “Chapters Swing into H-Month Campaigns with Member-Getting Gimmicks, Ideas, and
Incentives,” Hadassah Headlines, Sept-October 1962, p. 1.
1 7 “Filmed Fashion Show is Fine Forerunner: Fund-Raising Pitch for Vocational Education,”
Hadassah Headlines, November 1962..
1 8 Interview with Mrs. Morris Kertzer, “Higher Hems can Mean Higher Supplies Total,” Hadassah
Headlines, June-July 1966, p. 4.
1 9 “Convention Report,” Hadassah Magazine, December 1963, p. 8.
2 0 “Filmed Fashion Show,” p. 6.
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2 1 W. Granger Blair, “Israel Seeks a Place in the Fashion World,” Hadassah M agazine, April 1965, p.
12; Ruth Gruber Michaels, “Israel Fashions in USA ,” Hadassah Magazine, Oct 1966, p. 8; Ruth
Gruber Michaels, “Israel’s Fashion M ission,” Hadassah Magazine, April 1967, p. 12.
2 2 “Identify with Hadassah,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin, October 1968, p. 5
2 3 “Identify with Hadassah,” p. 5
24 Mrs. Arnold Berman, Philadelphia Hadassah Chapter News Bulletin, October 1965.
2 5 “President’s Column,” Hadassah Magazine, Sept 1966, 1.
2 6 “President’s Column,” 1.
2 7 “Resolutions August 1965,” 2, call no. 3, box 25, folder 4, HA.
2 8 “Facts about Hadassah,” 1966, call no. 17. box 10, HA.
2 9 “Facts about Hadassah,” 1968, call no. 17, box 10, HA.
3 0 Bulletin Chaim Weizman Chapter xv, no, 6, p. 2.
3 1 Bulletin Chaim Weizman Chapter xv, no 6, p. 2.
3 2 “Junior Hadassah Offers Great Prizes in Membership Drive,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah
News Bulletin, February 1964.
3 3 “Camp Tel Yehudah open for applications,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin, March
1963, p. 7.
34 “Attention education Chairman,” Hadassah Central States Region Conference brochure, October
1962, call no. 15, box 1, “Pres. Adeline Kaufman” folder, HA.
3 5 “Bible Seminar,” Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, October 1962, n.p. A ll references to
this newsletter from call no. 15, box 1, HA.
36 Ruth Zelgis, “Letter to Members”, Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, October 1965, p. 1.
37 “From the President’s Pen,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin, September 1962, p. 1.
3 8 “From the President’s Pen,” September 1962, p. 1.
39 “From the President’s Pen,” September 1962, p. I.
40 Ruth Katz, “President’s Message,” Hadassah Bulletin Franklin Square, New York, February 1966,
p. 2.
4 1 Katz, “President’s M essage,” p. 2.
42 Katz, “President’s M essage,” p. 2.
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193
4 3 Zelgis, “Letter” Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, October 1965, p. 1.
44 Zelgis, “Letter” Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, October 1965, p. 2.
4 5 Zelgis, “Letter” Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, October 1965, p. 2.
46 Ruth Zelgis, “Presidents Letter "Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, March 1966, p. 1.
47 Zelgis, “Presidents” Hadassah Central States Region Newsletter, March 1966, p .l. Ruth
4 8 “Facts about Fladassah,” 1968, call no. 17, box 10, HA.
4 9 “Facts about Hadassah,” 1968.
5 0 “Facts about Hadassah,” 1968.
5 1 Waldo E Martin Jr., “Nation Time!” in Struggles in The Prom ised Land, ed. Jack Salzman and
Cornel West (Oxford University Press, 1997) 343.
5 2 Debra Schultz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement, (New York University
Press, N ew York, 2001).
5 3 “Hadassah Annual Report 1960,” 35, call no. 3, box 3, folder 6, HA; “American Affairs Annual
Report July 1961-June 30 1962,” 1, call no. 3, box 23, folder 7, HA; “American Affairs Annual
Report July 1965-June 30 1966,” 7, call no. 3, box 2, folder 4, HA; “Hadassah Annual Report,” 1
July 1966 to 30 June 1967, 6, call no. 3, box 26, folder 6, HA.
5 4 Anthony Lewis, “Civil Rights Report: The Momentum o f History is Working Against Segregation,”
Hadassah Newsletter, January 1962, p. 3.
5 5 Mrs. Louis Parris and Mrs. Benjamin Reed, “American Affairs,” Philadelphia Chapter News
Bulletin, October 1951, n.p.
5 6 Mrs. Norman Bram, “National Board Passes Resolutions Vital in National and World Peace,”
Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin, March 1961, n.p.
5 7 Hadassah M agazine, April 1964, 9.
5 8 Hadassah Magazine, April 1964, 22.
5 9 Ruth Gruber Michaels, “March on Washington,” Hadassah Magazine, September 1963, 40.
6 0 Ruth Gruber Michaels, “March on Washington,” Hadassah Magazine, September 1963, 40.
6 1 “The Presidents Column,” Hadassah Magazine, September 1963, 2.
6 2 “Hadassah Resolutions,” 1963, 2, box 23, folder 11, HA.
6 3 “Press Release,” 20 August 1964, 4, box 23, folder 11, HA.
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194
6 4 “American Affairs Kit,” March-April 1965, p. AA-1, HA.
6 5 “American Affairs Kit,” p. AA-1, HA.
6 6 “Civil Rights Act o f 1966” as listed in “Annual Resolutions,” August 1966, 2, in call no. 3, box
26, folder 5, HA.
6 7 Martin, “Nation Time,” 346.
6 8 Martin, “Nation Time,” 351,
6 9 “Black Power Can Be Helpful,” Hadassah Magazine, Sept. 1968, n.p.; “Press Release: Special
1968 Convention Issue,” 9, call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA.
70 “The Testament o f Martin Luther King Jr.,” Hadassah Magazine, May 1968, 8.
7 1 “The Testament o f Martin Luther King Jr.,” 8.
7 2 Robert Gordis piece, Hadassah Magazine, November 1968, 9.
7 3 “American Affairs Kit,” 1 October 1968, AA-4, HA.
7 4 “American Affairs Kit,” 17 February 1969, AA-6 to AA-9, HA.
7 5 “America Affairs Kit,” April 1969, AA-2.5, HA.
7 6 “America Affairs Resolutions,” October 1969, 2, call no. 3, box 28, folder 3, HA.
7 7 As quoted in William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 233.
7 8 “Press Release,” 20 August 1964, 3, HA.
7 9 “American Affairs Annual Report,” 2, call no. 3, box 26, folder 4, HA.
8 0 “American Affairs Anti-Poverty Legislation,” September 1967, 2, HA.
8 1 “American Affairs Kit,” 17 February 1969, HA; “American Affairs Kit,” May-June 1965, HA;
“American Affairs Kit,” 15 April 1969, call no. 15, box 95, folder la, HA; “American Affairs Kit,” 1
October 1968, HA; “American Affairs Kit,” 15 December 1969, HA.
8 2 “American Affairs Kit,” Oct-Nov. 1969, 2, call no. 15, box 95, folder 1A, HA; Cover letter,
“American Affairs Kit,” 15 April 1969, call no. 15, box 95, folder la, HA.
8 3 “Press Release,” 13 October 1969, 2-3, call no. 3, box 28, folder 1, HA; “Hadassah Annual Report
1968-1969,” 18, call no. 3, box 28, folder 2, HA.
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CHAPTER FIVE
From the Six Day War to Nuclear Disarmament:
Hadassah and Foreign Policy in the 1960s
As outgoing president of Hadassah, Mrs. Charlotte Jacobson in 1968
addressed over 2000 Hadassah delegates at the national convention in Chicago, she
issued a plea to Arab nations to negotiate for peace. The only way to end tensions in
the Middle East, she argued, was through peace talks. Nasser and Arab leaders
refused to engage in productive discussions. She appealed as a member of Hadassah,
an organization that, ‘“holds out its hand of friendship to all the Arab people,
inviting them to share in the medical knowledge and facilities of our great medical
center.1 ’” Her statements reflected the conflicted position of Hadassah foreign
policy and views of Arabs during the 1960s.
As Cold War ideology continued to stress the importance of maintaining a
balance of power in the world through both diplomatic and military efforts, Hadassah
also engaged in Cold War rhetoric to secure the position of Israel in the Middle East.
Hadassah members learned about the Arab-Israel conflict in the 1960s through
Hadassah literature, resolutions, meetings, and seminars. As the sixties progressed
and public opinion turned a critical eye towards Israeli policies and stances vis-a-vis
the Arab world and the Palestinians, Hadassah increasingly armed its members with
data and talking points about “Arab propaganda,” while at the same time assuring
Arabs from Israel and elsewhere full access to their medical center and some social
programs in Israel.
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During the 1960’s Hadassah labored to ensure that Israel continued to receive
foreign aid from the United States. To that end, Hadassah consistently lobbied
government officials on the importance Israel played strategically in a Middle East
divided by Cold War interests. With the Soviets backing countries like Syria and
Egypt, Israel— a democratic country and ally of the United States— served,
according to Hadassah, as a fortress of democratic values in a sea of Soviet-backed
Arab aggression. Essential to that argument, Hadassah stressed the vulnerability of
Israel to Arab attacks, both economic and military in nature. On the economic front,
Hadassah argued that Israel had to contend with an economically hostile
environment of Arab countries that worked to deny Israel access to important
environmental resources such as water, and while they boycotted Israeli products. On
the military front the Soviets; Hadassah explained, had armed the Arab nations with
an arsenal of effective weaponry while Israel struggled to maintain a defensive army.
Hadassah contended, both to its members and to the outside world, that Arab nations
sought to destroy Israel and that Israel sought only peaceful coexistence.
In the fall, Hadassah held its 48th national convention in the fall of 1962, two
thousand Hadassah delegates met. In 1960 Hadassah had 318,000 members in 1320
chapters and groups in the United States and Puerto Rico.2 In addition, to speakers
such as Golda Meir, then Foreign Minister of Israel, the Israeli Ambassador
Avraham Harman and various Hadassah leaders, Chester Bowles, a representative
from the Kennedy administration, spoke on the issue of tensions with Cuba. He
urged Hadassah members to support a cautionary approach towards military action in
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Cuba. Attacking Cuba, he argued, would “undercut our influence in world affairs”
and claim the lives of thousands in an amoral war. Bowles urged Hadassah members
to be weary of “extremists” who sought to lead America into a futile war. The “hot-
blooded and hot-headed minority of Americans” that viewed military action as the
only way to deal wit h the Soviets, he contended, “can lead us into a game of Russian
roulette.”
The Cold War of the 1960s produced anxieties among American people
about the nuclear arms race and the potential of a nuclear holocaust. Hadassah
members dealt with that reality and supported efforts for disarmament.
At the same time, Hadassah members and many other Americans supported the
notion that a military build up would serve as a deterrent for war. Bowles in this
convention speech in 1962, provided a perfect example of this seemingly
contradictory approach. As part of a six point plan for American foreign policy he
argued that the United States must be equipped with, “military capacity to inflict
devastating damage on our adversaries should they attack us.” 4 At the same time, the
United States should recognize the dangers of nuclear arms race and work towards
nuclear disarmament.5
Beginning in 1960, Hadassah started to assert the danger o f an “arms
imbalance” in the Middle East and urged the United States government to provide
economic assistance to Israel. In addition, Hadassah also worked to guarantee that
the United States not “tolerate discrimination against Arab firms who do business
with Israel.” 6 At the Pittsburgh National Convention in 1962 Hadassah adopted a
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new resolution designed to put pressure on the United States government to
encourage talks between Israel and Arab governments. In addition, the resolution
warned of the growing threat Egypt posed to Israel and to world security more
generally. The United States should, “take such steps as are necessary to remedy the
dangerous arms imbalance resulting from Egypt’s possession of the most modem
military material, which constitutes an invasion to aggression.”7 Resolutions
adopted at Hadassah conventions throughout the 1960s argued that the United States
should continue to support Israel through foreign aid.8 Hadassah here showed its
concern over the Arab boycott of Israeli goods. Similarly, Hadassah endorsed
legislation designed to curtail the use of American foreign aid for military build up
of nations aggressive to the United States or its allies.9 A resolution adopted at the
Hadassah national convention of 1964 urged the United States to maintain foreign
aid programs as an arm of its foreign policy and a weapon in the struggle against
poverty and economic problems in the world and as a means to secure “peaceful
cooperation with other nations.”1 0 The resolution further acknowledged the benefits
that economic aid had bestowed upon Israel in a “peaceful economic aid endeavor”
and urged that funds not be utilized to promote war.1 1
At the February 1965 Mid-Winter Conference, Hadassah adopted a
resolution further stipulating that American foreign aid should be given only to
countries intent upon using funds for “peaceful economic development, and not as a
means to release funds for building military establishments designed for aggression
against allied of the United States, or to subvert United States objectives in any
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way.”1 2 The resolution further stipulated that the President of the United States
should assure that countries, like the United Arab Republic, receiving funding from
the United States not be allowed to engage in such activities.1 3
By the 1966 Annual Convention held in Boston Massachusetts, Hadassah
thanked Congress in a resolution for expressing “its opposition to giving economic
assistance to the United Arab Republic, so long as it continues to acquire vast
supplies of sophisticated Soviet weapons, threatening the security of Israel and its
neighbors.”1 4 Other resolutions adopted at the Mid-winter and annual conference in
1965 stressed the importance of United States support of Israel in a hostile region,
led by Nasser and the nations of the Arab League that desired the destruction of
Israel.1 5 Hadassah’s resolutions expressed the threat of Arab aggression in the
Middle East as directly tied to Cold War dynamics: “Hadassah notes with growing
concern the continuing flow of conventional and sophisticated arms from the
U.S.S.R. to Egypt, and the continuing insistence of Egypt’s president that war with
Israel was inevitable.”1 6 By the 1966 convention Hadassah in a resolution thanked
President Johnson for allowing Israel to “acquire deterrent weapons in the United
States” and to support Israel through diplomacy.1 7
Other resolutions adopted at conventions in 1965 and 1966 urged the United
States to continue to support Israel through foreign aid. In addition, the resolutions
stipulated that countries receiving foreign aid from the United States not be allowed
to “engage in economic warfare1 8 ” in countries also receiving support. In later
resolutions, Hadassah continued to urge the United States government to challenge
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the Arab boycott and to ensure that United States business people did not succumb to
Arab pressure.1 9
Hadassah passed a resolution at its 1960 annual convention that proposed that
the United States government adopt Hadassah’s Seven Point Middle East program,
which Hadassah referred to throughout the 1960s as its cornerstone for foreign
policy issues in the Middle East. Point one urged the United States to “oppose and
aggression in the Middle East.”2 0 The second point stated that the United States
administration should, “take effective measures to insure that an arms imbalance
shall not result in the Middle East.2 1 ” Points three and five emphasized that the
United States not support any Arab countries refusing to do business with Israelis
firms or “wage economic warfare” against other countries also receiving assistance
from the United States. Point four urged the administration to secure the Suez Canal
as an open waterway for all countries including Israel. Point six offered a
controversial remedy to the situation of Arab refugees in Israel, arguing that they
should be resettled in Arab countries. (The issue of Arab refugees will be discussed
more fully later in the chapter). Point seven remained a central tenant of Hadassah
throughout the 1960s, that the United States should promote, “direct negotiations
between Israel and the Arab States.2 2 ” Israeli leadership echoed this sentiment
promoted by Hadassah in its various publications and pamphlets in the 1960s. The
fact that Arabs refused to negotiate with Israel was depicted, along with Cold war
23
tensions, as the roadblock to peace.
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The 1960s saw the emergence of a new relationship between Hadassah and
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Founded in 1954 as a pro-
Israel lobby, AIPAC would become an extremely influential political action lobbying
group; with only 65,000 members today AIPAC wields enormous power in
Washington DC. Although not well known even within most of the Jewish
community until the 1980s, Hadassah paid attention to AIPAC policies early on.2 4 In
the 1960s the Hadassah Zionist Affairs Committee included a copy of the Near East
Report, a publication of AIPAC that addressed Middle East politics, in Hadassah
Kits. Hadassah leaders described AIPAC as an “authoritative” interpreter of events
in the Middle East to the American public and government officials. In addition to
circulating AIPAC’s Near East Report and Resolutions to Hadassah members, the
Chairperson of the Zionist Affairs Committee attended AIPAC‘s Annual
conference.2 5 Hadassah Zionist Affairs also circulated copies of AIPAC's conference
resolutions. Members were urged to study the document carefully and to circulate
it widely among their membership.2 6 AIPAC materials consistently warned of the
threat the Arab world posed to Israel. Like Hadassah, AIPAC viewed the tensions
27
between Israel, Palestinians and neighboring countries, through a Cold War lens.
A central tenant of Hadassah’s mission was to lobby the United States
government to continue financial and military backing of Israel by the United States
through foreign aid and weapons deals. Hadassah sought to accomplish this by
educating its members and their families and by lobbying government officials on
this issue. The Cold War context provided an avenue for Hadassah to argue that
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support of Israel worked to ensure a balance of power in the Middle East. The fact
that hostile Arab nations surrounded Israel’s borders also provided a strong argument
for the necessity of backing Israel and monitoring financial aid to Arab countries.
In an article published in Hadassah Magazine, Hadassah members learned of
the complications affecting the sale of Phantom super-sonic jet bombers to Israel.
Members learned of the positive impact of weapons sales to the survival of Israel and
the balance of power in the Middle East. “Israel must play a critical role in resisting
the consequences of the Soviet build up. Therefore Israel’s possession of the
phantoms is not only important to her but to the United States as well.” The article
further decried the fact that “lengthy political negotiations” had slowed the process
of Israel’s acquisition of weapons.2 8 The Pentagon’s desire to avoid an escalation of
the conflict in the Middle East had resulted in it asking Israel to ratify the “treaty
banning the spread of atomic weapons.”2 9 The article suggested that Israel should
have full access to U.S. weapons and that no “strings” should be attached. Ironically
while Hadassah fully supported Israel on any stances it took regarding nuclear
weapons treaties, it urged the United States to ratify the treaty.
The American Affairs Committee of Hadassah supported the adoption of a
nuclear non-proliferation treaty through the UN general assembly. American Affairs
Kits in the 1960s discussed the importance of insuring that countries without nuclear
weapons did not attain or manufacture them. The non-proliferation treaty did not
require disarmament of the established nuclear weapons-holding countries like the
U.S., but rather was designed to stem the tide of further development. Hadassah
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literature argued that this discrimination, which required only that non-nuclear
countries stop from developing weapons, was a “good discrimination.”
But if ever a case could be built that discrimination is good, then the
use of the discriminatory nature of the non-proliferation treaty is the
example to use. Obligating Israel, West Germany and India—Three
non-nuclear powers who could most easily go nuclear—not to
manufacture these weapons is discriminatory, but vital for world
security. For if Israel goes nuclear, then so also will Egypt; if West
Germany, then so also will most of Eastern Europe; and if India,
then so also will Pakistan. Too many political rivals exist in the
world today to allow nuclear proliferation to continue. It is time for
the international community to practice nuclear birth control— which
is just what the nuclear non-proliferation treaty is all about3 0
As early as 1960, at its Forty-Sixth annual conference in New York, Hadassah
adopted a resolution supporting an international ban on nuclear testing.3 1
At the 1961 mid-winter conference, Hadassah passed a resolution supporting
32
Kennedy’s program to further work towards a ban on nuclear testing.
Six Day War and Perceptions of Arabs
In the spring of 1967 a series of threats on the part of the Israeli government
combined with Cold War geopolitics exploded into the short-lived Six Day war.
Feeling that Syria refused to curtail support for Palestinian guerillas, Israeli officials
publicized their growing impatience and even threatened to go to war if Syria made
no serious changes.3 3 Through the demilitarized zone, the Palestinian terrorist
organization Fatah conducted campaigns into Israel through the Israel-Syria border.
The Syrian government provided Fatah with weapons. Syrian government officials
publicly pronounced their support of the Palestinian campaign to establish a
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Palestinian State within the borders of Israel.3 4 The USSR backed the Ba'ath party in
Syria, due to its Socialist ideology, and put pressure on Egypt the main Arab power
broker, to defend Syria.3 5 In April of 1967 Fatah attacks into Israel increased;
consequently Israel conducted several small air campaigns into Syria. Both
countries reacted by amassing forces along the demilitarized zone.3 6
In a show of force, Nasser ordered troops to the Egyptian Sinai border with
Israel. He requested that the UN emergency force, which had been established after
Sinai, be removed. The straw that broke the camel’s back, as far as the Israeli
government was concerned, was Nasser’s closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli
shipping.3 7 The Israeli Knesset split on the issue of whether to go to war or not.
After intense political maneuvering that included the appointment of Moshe Dayan
from the opposition party to minster of defense, a decision to attack was made.
While the Israeli government was in the process of realigning the political landscape,
38
the Arab forces continued to strengthen their numbers along the borders.
Responding to the ominous atmosphere in the Middle East, Hadassah ran ads
in Hadassah Headlines aimed at raising money for Israel in the event of a war. The
advertisement urged Hadassah leaders to call emergency board meetings in their
39
local communities and “push hard for more members and plus-dollars.” On the
morning o f June 5, when the fighting officially began, Hadassah headquarters in
New York served as a makeshift central command for Hadassah’s efforts to support
the war. Hospitals and drug companies donated over a half million dollars worth of
medications. Volunteer pharmacists and Hadassah volunteers sifted through the
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donations and packaged them for shipping to Israel. In addition, donations of other
types of medical devices, such a prosthetics, syringes, and even beds had to be routed
to Hadassah hospital in Israel. Hadassah representatives contacted Rabbi Emanuel
Rackman of Yeshiva University for permission to work on the holiday of Shavuoat
in order to get supplies out rapidly. The rabbi responded that saving lives came first
and that the obligation of not working on the holiday could be overlooked for that
40
purpose.
After six days of war Israel triumphantly emerged as the dominant military
force in the Middle East. During the six days Israel decimated the Jordanian air
force, significantly weakened the world’s image of Egypt’s military capabilities, and
made their point to Syria that state backed terrorism was not to be tolerated. The Six
Day War not only proved Israel’s military superiority but also significantly changed
the borders within the Fertile Crescent. Israel conquered and later annexed Syria’s
Golan Heights, a strategic mountain range on the border of Israel and Syria that had
been the source of many of the Fatah incursions. In addition, Israel took possession
of the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt— which they traded in 1979 for a peace agreement
with Egypt. Lastly, but most significantly, Israel captured the West Bank of Jordan,
which included the old city of Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish, Muslim, and
Christian faiths. For Jews, the old city housed one of the most holy sites— the
remnants of the great Temple that had been destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The
outer wall, called the Western Wall, is said to be the holiest space in Judaism, where
one can feel the presence of G-d. Along with the Wall also came many other Jewish
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historical sites. Although the West Bank had been part of Jordan, it housed a large
Palestinian population. Thus began one of the most controversial aspects of Israeli
history. Historians with differing political perspectives disagree strongly on the
correct historical narrative.
Hadassah Magazine published a special edition on the Six Day War.
Renowned author and Holocaust survivor Ellie Weisel wrote an essay about the
significance of capturing the Western Wall:
They tell me this is the Wall. No. I don’t believe it.. ..This is the first
time I am here, yet I feel that I was at this very spot before. I have
already seen these Jews, have heard their prayers. Every shape seems
familiar, every sound as if it has arisen from the depths of my own
past. But there is a difference. Before there were no young men and
women milling about in uniforms.4 1
Weisel reflected upon the unique vantage point of these soldiers as both
warriors and Jews witnessing a historical moment. “Indeed” he contended “the
coverage of this war should be handled not only by newspaper columnists and
military experts but by poets and Kabbalists as well“for, what has happened cannot
be described in neat, logical terms.”4 2 Wiesel went on to warn that the war against
Arab aggression, and for the retention of the Western Wall in Jewish hands. For
many years Wall had been in the hands of the Jordanians, and Israelis had been
denied entry into Jordan and the Wall. Wiesel urged Hadassah readers to secure the
Wall within Jewish hands: “The events that took place have finally freed Israel from
the paralyzing chains of ‘logic’. Let the world know: Two plus two equals two
thousand years when the subject is the wall and its stones. Even the almighty
cannot allow what has happened to become as though it had not happened.”4 3
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In July 1967 Hadassah’s Zionist Affairs Committee circulated a Kit for use
as the basis for special sessions, designed to educate Hadassah youth and adults about
Israeli history, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the importance of a united Jerusalem.4 4
The kit also included a copy of AIPAC’s July issue of the Near East Report. It
criticized US ties with Jordan and argued for more US aid to Israel4 5
In a “Basic Information Kit” distributed by Hadassah in July 1967 the Zionist
Affairs Committee included a section entitled “Israel-Never an Arab Land.” In this
section Hadassah offered a historical interpretation that argued that Arabs had
manufactured a “myth” that “Israel and the whole of mandatory Palestine, was stolen
from the Arabs as a result of imperialist machinations and settled by alien Jews.”4 6
Responding to a growing international critique of Israel as aligned with imperialism
and expansionism, Hadassah spent much of the aftermath o f the 1967 War in a
defensive posture— explaining that Israel had a historical, political, and spiritual right
to exist and to defend itself. Arabs had not maintained a historic prerogative to the
area, according to Hadassah, because an Arab land of Palestine never existed in
Israel. Rather:
the one people that has in fact maintained its historic and religious
connection with the area called Palestine, over a period of 2000
years, is the Jews. Their right to the land is not only based on
history and sentiment but is claimed by the physical process of the
work invested in transforming it into an area capable of supporting
life. It is the fruits of this work that motivate mythological Arab
claims to the territory 4 7
Throughout the 1960s Hadassah’s portrayals of Arabs and Arab states grew
more critical. Depictions of Arabs as lackeys of the USSR and hostile towards Israel
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dominated Hadassah’s coverage of events in the Middle East. One example of this
type of coverage occurred when Hadassah reported on the Eichman trial taking place
in Israel:
The Arab countries are bitterly opposed to Eichman being tried in
Israel. They know full well that they will be implicated in the Nazi
genocide crimes by Eichman’s testimony. ‘Captured photographs
now available as documentary evidence in Israel show the Mufti of
Jerusalem with Eichman, standing at the Auschwitz railroad siding
watching a transport of Jews being unloaded from a stinking cattle
train and herded toward the gas chambers.’ It was the Mufti that urged
Hitler to exterminate all Jews if he wanted the support of Arab
nationalists.
In this account of the Mufti of Jerusalem as the leader of the Palestinian people, a
Hadassah publication paints all Arabs as Nazis. Arab propaganda was something
about which Hadassah literature and seminars educated the organizations members
about:
To turn to the ever present problem of the Middle East, the USSR and
Egypt have issued a new propaganda offensive, with the object of
conditioning public opinion to view that Egypt is ready to make
concessions, and that Israel is immovable. We must be cautious
against being influenced by Soviet and Arab efforts to appear flexible
and peaceful. Nasser spelled out the real Egyptian position on his
• • - k r 49
recent visit to Moscow.
Images of Arab aggression and the “Soviet-Arab war machine” dominated Hadassah
literature. By viewing Arabs as irrational or evil it was easy to dispute any claims
they made to their rights in Israel.5 0 “Prior to last June, the nation was threatened with
annihilation, the Arabs were poised to hurl Israelis into the sea, many feared that the
tiny country of two and a half million couldn’t possibly survive the onslaught the
countless divisions of bloodthirsty Arabs armed to the teeth with the most lethal of
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209
Soviet weapons. World sympathy was uniformly arrayed on behalf of the gallant
Israelis.”5 1 After the war, Hadassah was well aware that world opinion began to view
Israel as the aggressor, while the media increasingly depicted the Arab people and
governments as victims.
The Palestinian population on the eve of the War of Independence numbered
approximately 1.3 million.5 2 After 1948, about fifty percent of Palestinians moved to
the West Bank of Jordan, and many others relocated to the Gaza strip of Egypt.
About 20 percent of the Palestinian population left Israel for other Arab countries,
including Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Over time more Palestinians would emigrate to
the Gulf countries and to the United States.5 3 Approximately 200,000 Palestinians
remained in Israel and obtained Israeli citizenship.5 4
In the Gaza Strip and the West bank about 30 percent o f the Palestinians that
entered these territories were placed in refugee camps. The Jordanian government
after 1948 annexed the West bank, and it inherited a geographic region whose
population was predominantly Palestinian.5 5 Prior to the influx of Palestinians the
country of Jordan already boosted a population heavily Palestinian, and by 1949
Palestinians constituted the majority of the population.5 6 The divide between the
Palestinians living in refugee camps and the wealthier Palestinians, dwelling in urban
areas was immense. It was a stratification by class not foreign to Palestinians but
enacted in a new fashion through the refugee crisis.5 7 After the Six Day War, Israel
annexed the territory of Jordan called the West bank.
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In the aftermath of the War of Independence in 1948, the United Nations
established the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to address the
needs of Palestinian refugees and to resettle them in makeshift refugee camps built of
mud huts. By the early 1950s the issue of Palestinian refugees no longer received
political attention, as the Arab host countries took responsibly, albeit often
haphazardly, for the refugee.5 8 UNRWA continued to maintain a presence in the
camps, and as the camps moved into more permanent type of villages with more of an
infrastructure.5 9 After the 1967 war, a new wave of displaced Palestinians moved
into refugee camps. In addition, as Israel occupied the territories of the West Bank
and Gaza it also took control of 590,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and 380,000
in the Gaza strip.6 0
In the early 1960s Hadassah stressed that Arab refugees belonged in Arab
countries. Dr. Miriam Freund, chair of the Zionist Affairs Committee, stated in a
letter that was distributed in a Zionist Affairs kit. Dr. Miriam Freund chair of Zionist
affairs committee, stated in a letter that was distributed in a Zionist Affairs kit,6 1
We deplore the reckless and irresponsible policies seeking to mobilize Arab refugees
for a war against Israel, and for activities menacing the security of Israel’s people.
Accordingly this convention calls upon UNRWA to withhold rations from members
of the army of the Palestinian Liberation organization who are being trained for
aggression against the people of a member state of the United Nations.”6 2
Dr. Freund called upon Hadassah members to study the position of AIPAC on
the Arab refuges issue. A Zionist Affairs Kit circulated to Hadassah chapters in
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211
November 1964 included a supplement on Arab propaganda influenced by AIPAC’s
description of “the Arab propaganda line.” The supplement Dr. Freund argued, “will
help you to answer the assertions of Arab propagandists and of spokesman who
support the Arab line. It explains the methods used, the claims made, and supplies the
facts.6 3 ” The Zionist Affairs Committee chair designed the supplement as an item
that specific members could order to inform themselves on the “Arab propaganda.”
To resist the negative press, Hadassah members could answer any attack
with information provided in the supplement. In addition to reading the supplements
for personal use, Hadassah members were asked to distribute these materials to
libraries and to the community at large.6 4 Among the many roles Hadassah members
played, the role of spokespeople and defenders for Israel against criticism grew in
importance, due to the increase in world criticism of Israel’s positions. In order to
provide a unified defense of Israel against what was perceived as a barrage of
criticism, Hadassah members and its leadership developed a strict binary
understanding o f the Arab-Israeli conflict that painted good versus evil with no room
for shades o f gray. As the conflict continued to deepen over the next few decades,
American Jews in general, including Hadassah, found it problematic both to support
Israel’s existence and criticize certain aspects of its policy.
A letter from the chair of the Zionist Affairs Committee to the Hadassah
members clarified the organization’s position on the Arab refugees status. Counter to
Arab assertions that the war for independence dislocated one million Arab refugees,
Hadassah argued that those numbers were greatly exaggerated and not based on any
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scientific assessment of the situation. In addition, Arab nations who invaded Israel in
1948, Hadassah explained, shared responsibility for any uprooting that did occur as a
result of the war. Over 200,000 refugees had been successfully absorbed into the
local communities of Syria and Lebanon, and Israel had absorbed another 140,000
Arabs into the state. It was also argued that many of the Palestinians had only briefly
resided in Israel and therefore had no claim to Israeli land.6 5
Hadassah discourse on the Arab refugee question increasingly grew more
critical about the issue of refugees over the 1960s. By the post-67 period, with a new
world emphasis on the refugee problem, Hadassah publications, resolutions, kits, and
seminars all focused on de-bunking “Arab propaganda” on the issue of refugees. One
article in the Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin warned about the dangers
King Hussein of Jordan posed to the Jewish people and to peace in general in the
Middle East. The article called Hussein an anti-Semite, who spewed forth Jewish
hate messages, and it noted that he refused to meet with Israel and demanded that the
West Bank be returned to Jordan. Hussein “constantly refers to the cruel fate of the
Arab refugees that has now grown in number by 200,000 as a result of Israel
‘aggression’”. The article then goes on to quote a supposed expert on the issue Dr.
Walter Pinner, that argued that the United Nations figures on refugees were greatly
exaggerated. “It is the greatest misrepresentation ever perpetuated under the banner of
the United Nations.” In fact, Pinner contended that there existed more Jewish
refugees from Arab countries in Israel than the whole total of Arab refugees in Arab
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213
countries.6 6 “Every one of us” the article concluded, “must be well informed to
answer accusations about the refugees.6 7 ”
In the aftermath of the War for Independence, varying stories about the plight
of Arab refugees surfaced. On January 23, 1967 Benjamin S. Rosenthal, a house
representative from New York, brought to the floor of Congress Hadassah’s message.
He presented a five point plan developed by the Park Hills Chapter of Hadassah in
Queens, New York. Based on Hadassah resolutions and literature, the plan
expressed Hadassah’s position on Arab-Israel relations and the role of the United
States in the Middle East. The plan called for the United States to maintain a balance
of power in the region, urged the United States government to be more involved with
a peace process, and supported aid to Arab counties for social and economic rather
than military purposes. With regard to the issue of Arab refugees, the plan read to
congress by Representative Rosenthal stated:
We reaffirm the conviction that the only logical solution to the Arab
refugee problem is their resettlement in Arab lands. We submit that
the United States should censure continuing efforts by Arab leaders to
mobilize into an army to wage war against Israel. It is intolerable that
UNRWA funds, contributed to refugee relief and rehabilitation,
should be diverted to subsidize the Palestinian Liberation Army,
which is organized for the destruction of Israel.6 8
The issue o f Arab refugees had existed before 1967, and it was first raised in the
aftermath of the war for independence. After the Six Day War, however, the
dimensions of the problem expanded. Hadassah Magazine reported: “June, 1967 did
not solve the Arab refugee problem but it did expose it. It is not a sociological
problem nor economic-it is a political one. They are jobless and hungry, backward
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214
and uneducated. This has not been caused by us but is due to the fact that both East
and West have not brought to bear the pressure.”6 9 The implication here was that the
Arab refugee should not be Israel’s problem but rather the world’s issue.
Hadassah, along with most of Jewish organizations, hotly contested the
protests of Arab refugees and cast Arab nations as a negative force aligned with
Communists in a battle for democracy. Yet they also continued to stress the
importance of keeping their services available to Arabs in both the West Bank and
Israel proper. Holding true to their ideology of cultural pluralism and acceptance,
Hadassah leaders and members attempted to reconcile a seemingly contradictory
perspective on Arabs. On the one hand, articles, resolutions, and Hadassah literature
painted Arabs as manipulative, misleading, violent, and aligned with Communists.
On the other hand, Hadassah maintained a policy of inclusion when it came to the
Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and various other Hadassah improvement
projects. Events like the Six Day War and its aftermath only complicated this
tenuous approach.
Perceptions of Israel changed among the world community after 1967, as the
view o f Israel as an underdog was replaced by view of Israel as the aggressor. At the
same time the negative Hadassah depictions of Arab political actors and militants
continued to grow more threatening. In Hadassah Magazine in April 1968, an
excerpt from an article published in the New York Times by Dr. Amnon Rubinstein, a
Professor at Hebrew University, was published. “Prior to last June” Dr. Rubinstein
stated “the nation was threatened with annihilation, the Arabs were poised to hurl
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215
Israelis into the sea, many feared that the tiny country of two and a half million
couldn’t possibly survive the onslaught the countless divisions of bloodthirsty Arabs
armed to the teeth with the most lethal of Soviet weapons. World sympathy was
uniformly arrayed on behalf of the gallant Israelis.”7 0 In the passage Rubinstein
expressed the fears of the Zionist community and Hadassah leadership that public
opinion was increasingly espousing the view that Israel was a colonizing and
aggressive country. Paired with an anxiety about Israel, within the view of the world,
Rubinstein’s article referred to Arabs as “bloodthirsty.” In the post-67 period
Hadassah increasingly found itself defending Israeli policy and the very right for
Israel to exist. As this defensive posture grew, Arabs and Arab nations had to be seen
as the oppressors in order to depict Israel as a victim and in danger.7 1
From the inception of the organization, Hadassah leader Henrietta Szold
envisioned a Jewish presence in Israel that would provide medical treatment and
social aid to all residents. As discussed in earlier chapters, Szold, the matriarch and
ideological force behind Hadassah, rejected the racial discrimination she saw against
Blacks in the United States and strove to maintain an open policy towards Arabs,
even when hostilities between Jews and Arabs heightened into all out war during the
War for Independence in 1948. The ideology of cultural pluralism and tolerance
expounded by Szold continued to influence Hadassah long after Szold’s death.
As discussed earlier in this dissertation, Hadassah’s approach towards Civil
Rights issues and McCarthyism within the United States reflected this ideology of
cultural pluralism. During the 1960’s Hadassah continued to extend medical care to
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Arabs within Israel and after the Six Day War, from the West Bank. In addition,
Hadassah spearheaded other programs designed to bring Jews and Arabs together
both in Israel and the United States. For example, in Neurim, Israel Hadassah’s Rural
Vocational Center under the Youth Aliyah program and the Vocational Education
Program, Hadassah offered courses to Arab youth as well as Jewish youth. Jewish
students participated in a field trip to the nearby town of Acre where they met Arabs
living in a “mixed city” where Arabs and Jews lived “side by side.” This field trip
exposed students to an urban Arab population and provided an avenue for cultural
exchange.7 2 Hadassah literature also expounded on the economic, social, and political
benefits Arab citizens received in Israel. These included universal access to medical
care, education, education and freedom of religion.7 3
Inscribed at Hadassah’s original Straus House in Jerusalem was the statement,
“Service Without Distinction of Race or Creed.”7 4 First hand accounts of Arabs
receiving service in Hadassah Medical Center portrayed the universal assistance the
hospital provided to its Arab patients. One Hadassah article entitled “Little Nasser at
the Medical Center,” reported the tale of a baby Arab boy accompanied by his mother
who received life saving surgery. The report featured a picture of the happy mother
and son.7 5
As relations between Arab nations, terrorist organizations, and the new
population of the West Bank worsened, however, efforts to present Arabs in a
positive light became more difficult. Rather than deny service to Arabs at the
Hadassah Medical Center, Hadassah continued to serve the Arab and Palestinian
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217
population. In doing so they proudly declared to the world and to themselves that
Hadassah and Israel were a positive force in Arab lives. After the unification of
Jerusalem, Hadassah Medical center admitted 80 to 100 Arab patients a day— which
amounted to eight to ten per cent of their outpatients and six per cent of their in
patients. In addition, Hadassah lowered its charges for many Arabs who could not
afford the regular fees and turned no one away. Hadassah publications stressed the
importance of this open door policy and celebrated the positive function Hadassah
played in the lives of residents of the West Bank.7 6 A number of feature stories in the
Hadassah Magazine and Hadassah Newsletter focused on personal stories o f Arab
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patients of Hadassah.
In her column “Diary of an Israeli Housewife” in October 1967, Molly Bar-
David provided a first hand account of a trip to the Gaza strip refugee camp.
Responding to the concerns of an Arab doctor acquaintance who feared for his family
in Gaza, Bar-David explained that she went to Gaza to show the American doctor that
in Israel, “the Arabs are as free as the Jews.”7 8 She told her readers that Gaza had
been “wrenched” from Israel nineteen years previously and that now the Israeli flag
was flying over it. The image of Arab “children dirty in rags” and men “loafing
about in the shade, or piddling away on the relief jobs created by our government,”
reminded Bar -David of the Palestine she had known in 1937. The article then
detailed the excellent provisions provided to the Arabs by UNWRA. More than
anything, Bar-David warned that Arabs had been fed “hatred towards the Jews”
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through Egyptian and Nazi propaganda. Israel, Bar-David explained, supported Arab
70
refugees, even though the Arabs hate Jews.
In the post-1967 period Hadassah members learned of the positive gains that
Arabs had made in Israel. For example, the Neurim School continued to offer courses
free of charge to Arabs. Unlike their mothers, the Arab female graduates of Neurim
were girls o f a generation that wanted to learn rather than be like their mothers who
linger, “about the house with nothing to occupy them once the daily chores were
done.” Hadassah through its program at Neurim provided Arab women leaders to the
community who could provide economically for the community. This article, written
by the public relations staff of Hadassah in Jerusalem and published in Hadassah
Newsletter, reinforced the notion that not only did Hadassah not discriminate against
Arabs but it actually assisted them in ameliorating their conditions. Articles and
publications like these, informed Hadassah members that the liberal ideology of
tolerance and multiculturalism still remained a central tenant of the organization. At
the same time many of the Hadassah programs and the coverage of those programs
and those of the Israeli government presented a picture of Arabs happy and thriving
within Israel. O f course, Hadassah leaders and members wanted to believe that they
were holding true to their ideals of tolerance and strengthening Arabs as well as Jews
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even in the face of violence and tension.
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Zionist Affairs
Changing attitudes towards Israel on the part of the world at large, coupled
with a re-examination of the relationship between the Diaspora and Israel during the
1960s, forced Hadassah to contend with new questions about the role of Zionism in
the American Jewish community. In response to comments by Israeli Prime Minister
Ben Gurion indicating that the Zionist movement no longer held great importance due
to the establishment and success of the State of Israel, Mrs. Samuel Halprin, former
national president of Hadassah, stated at the 1960 Hadassah national convention:
He compares the movement to the ‘scaffolding of a building’ and
suggests that now that the building is complete, the scaffolding must
come down. He is in error in the analogy he draws. The Zionist
movement was never the ‘scaffolding.’ Rather, it was the integral
part of the building itself. We helped lay the foundation stone. We
are a retaining wall. A builder who breaks such a wall does so at peril
to the safety of the building itself. And, so we answer ‘N o’ to Mr.
Ben Gurion not because we have vested interests, but because we— as
he— are custodians of Jewish history and responsible for Jewish
survival. 81
Halprin further explained that the Zionist movement served to bind American Jews
to their culture and to secure both the prosperity of the State of Israel and the
survival of the Jewish people.8 2 In the 1960s Hadassah sought to ensure the
relevance of Zionist activity to American Jews. A relationship with Israel and
Zionism would act as a bridge between American Jews and Israel— as well as a
83
bridge to thousands of years of history and culture.
At the same conference, Hadassah adopted a resolution affirming its
commitment to perpetuating a strong Zionist movement. The resolution outlined the
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responsibilities of Zionists in the United States. Among them were: to improve the
relationship between Jews within and without Israel; and to educate Jewish youth in
Israel and the Diaspora about their Jewish heritage; to teach Hebrew to and to inform
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the American people about issues concerning Israel.
In addition, Hadassah aggressively defended the importance of Zionism
against criticism both from within the Jewish community and from anti-Zionist
Jewish groups like the American Council for Judaism. In addition, there was
criticism from the Arab world, while a growing public discourse in the United States
identified Israel as an aggressive imperial presence in the Middle East.
Widespread anxiety over the level of preparedness of Jewish youth and
college students to defend Israel and the ideology of Zionism against criticism
prompted Hadassah to engage in various education campaigns. Hadassah distributed
kits to Jewish high school and college age students. The kits addressed issues
concerning Arabs in Israel and Arab refugees, the American Council for Judaism,
and Israel and the international scene.8 5 The Denver Chapter of Hadassah held a one-
day seminar for high school seniors who, although apparently scholastically prepared
to face the outside world, were, “not sufficiently prepared and knowledgeable
enough to explain Judaism, Israel and the position of the American Jews to their
inquiring non-Jewish friends.8 6 ”
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United Nations
Although Hadassah challenged the status of Arabs as refugees and critiqued
UN involvement in this issues, the organization supported many United Nations
programs. Hadassah had aligned itself with the United Nations in the 1950s, and
they continued to affiliate themselves with the United Nations throughout the 1960s.
Hadassah leaders viewed the United Nations as an objective organization that served
world interest and world peace. The United Nations had played a central role in the
establishment of the State of Israel by passing the United Nations Partition Plan in
1947, and throughout the 1950s and increasingly in the 1960s Hadassah members
looked towards the United Nations as a stabilizing force in a volatile Cold War
world. Hadassah served as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) affiliated with
the Public Information Department of the United Nations, and it both educated and
lobbied its members and local, state, and national political officials about the
importance of supporting the United Nations. Hadassah chapters promoted UNICEF
programs by selling United Nations greeting cards, and they supplied information
pamphlets about the history of the United Nations to social studies high school
classes. In addition, courses were designed to educate Hadassah members about the
importance of the United Nations.8 7
At the 1960 Hadassah annual convention in New York, Hadassah passed a
resolution stating the organization’s support for the United Nations as an “instrument
set up to guard against the calamity of war and to establish the rule of law and peace
among nations.” It also defined the United Nations as an organization working
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“toward the obliteration of disease, illiteracy and poverty.” The resolution urged the
United States government to “exert leadership in the United Nations, by encouraging
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maximum use of the vast machinery of the United Nations.” Hadassah passed
similar resolutions in annual conferences throughout the early 1960s.
In an effort to better inform members, American Affairs kits included
coverage of United Nations issues and updates. Hadassah appointed a United
Nations liaison, Mrs. Arthur Ellis, and an alternate to Ellis, to attend briefings held
by the U.S. mission to the UN. Ellis also provided information on current United
O Q
Nations issues and programs to the organization.
On the domestic front, Hadassah supported Civil Rights legislation and
pushed for an enforcement of desegregation. Moreover, Hadassah championed the
United Nations adoption in 1966 of the International Convention on the Elimination
of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. In an American Affairs kit distributed in
January of 1966 the matter was explained: “after condemning racial segregation,
apartheid and all who espouse them,” 9 0 the United Nations established a committee
that would “have authority to hear complaints from one nation about racial
discrimination of another and a complicated system permits the committee to appoint
a group to look into the complaint, hear testimony from all parties, and make
suggestions for amelioration of outstanding problems.”9 1 Later that year another kit
• • 92
explained that the term racism also “was broad enough” to include anti-Semitism.
Hadassah further articulated its approval of United Nations programs by
resolutions passed in 1966 and 1967 urging the United States to “take prompt action
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to ratify” several conventions already passed by the UN, including: The Convention
on Genocide, The Abolition of Enforced Labor, The Abolition of Slavery, The
Political Rights of Women, and The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Racial Discrimination. Hadassah couched its support for these “Human Rights”
conventions by invoking the Jewish tradition of social justice. “We hold these
conventions to be vital factors in furthering American and Jewish ideals of universal
freedom and the development of a social order based on reason, justice and
equality.”9 3
Prior to 1967 and the outbreak of the Six Day War, Hadassah rhetoric
wholeheartedly accepted that the United Nations served as an international group to
deter war and implement peaceful resolutions to international conflict. After 1967,
however, Hadassah shifted its thinking about the UN as an arm for peacekeeping and
focused primarily on the UN’s commitment to social welfare and human rights. In a
1966 resolution Hadassah argued that because it was under-funded and disorganized,
the United Nations failed “to bring peace “ to the world but instead “effected an
absence of war.” By 1967 and the outbreak of the war in the Middle East, Hadassah
viewed the actions of the United Nations as weak and ineffectual. “The peace
keeping machinery of the United Nations Expeditionary force, set up after the 1956
Sinai campaign, seemed unable to function as an active force for peace, since when
Egypt requested the UNEF be withdrawn, the Secretary-General felt himself
committed to accede to the request of the sovereign power -Egypt- on whose land
the UNEF had been placed.”9 4 Hadassah leaders also believed that the politics of
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bloc-voting within the United Nations and the “power-play” of various member
nations had the potential to favor Arab nations over Israel.9 5 Hadassah continued to
support the United Nations as a place to resolve foreign policy issues, but it
dampened its enthusiasm for the objectivity and efficiency of the United Nations as a
force for peace.
Another area in which Hadassah engaged in foreign policy during the 1960s
was that of concern for Soviet Jewry. The president of Hadassah, Mrs. Kramarsky, at
the 1964 annual convention in Los Angeles, spoke of the importance of Jews in
general and Hadassah members in particular to the fight for freedom for Soviet
Jewry. She warned that anti-Semitism remained a powerful force in the world. Jews
in Russia for example, were “denied the natural and inalienable right of all people to
practice their religion and to teach it to their children...” 9 6 Mrs. Kramarsky went on
to detail the ways in which Hadassah and other Jewish organizations had mobilized
for this effort. The “world must know beyond any doubt that ‘we are our brother’s
keeper’s.’” 9 7 Kramarsky delineated a platform of action in alliance with other Jewish
organizations with the purpose of awakening the American government to the
severity o f the situation and convincing them to act on behalf of Jews by influencing
the USSR to eliminate its anti-Semitic policies.9 8 Mrs. Max Schenk of New York,
the chairperson of the conference, warned of the “spiritual genocide” and “cultural
obliteration” that threatened “all Jews falling under the yoke of Communism.”9 9
During the 1960s, Hadassah worked to assist Jews living under Soviet
oppression. In a resolution about Soviet anti-Semitism passed at the Los Angeles
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National Convention in 1964, Hadassah voiced its concern for the Jews of the USSR.
Hadassah, “vigorously protests the calculated assaults against the cultural and
spiritual life of the Jews within the Soviet Union. Our aim is to mobilize American
public opinion into a moral force and to arouse our government to exert its influence
to the end that this unconscionable wrong will be righted. We urge also that the
Soviet government permit Jewish Families to reunite with their families abroad.”1 0 0
The resolution went on to express Hadassah’s support for the resolution condemning
Soviet anti-Semitism introduced into congress by Senator Abraham Ribicoff from
Connecticut.1 0 1
The protection of Soviet Jewry from its perceived near extinction served as
another cause that made Hadassah women feel themselves to be important and
essential members of the Jewish community. As so much of the membership
materials, it expressed Hadassah’s underlying goal of self-empowerment: “Hadassah
makes you important.” In August 1965, on behalf of Hadassah, the organization sent
a letter to Mme. M.D. Ovsyannikova, the editor in chief of Sovietskaya Zmenshchina
(The Soviet Woman). The letter pleaded with Soviet women “as women to women”
to allow Jewish children to receive a Jewish education and learn about their heritage
and culture.1 0 2 Hadassah further pleaded its case in a resolution adopted at the
national convention in August 1966 in Boston Massachusetts:
On behalf of its 300,000 members Hadassah calls on the Government
of The United States to exert maximum influence within the United
Nations and through diplomatic channels to convince the Soviet
government that discriminatory policies against Jewish Nationals
constituted a violation of elementary human rights, which are a
common concern of free men and nations.1 0 3
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Vietnam
Hadassah utilized Cold War rhetoric in an effort to gain foreign aid and
political favor for Israel. However, the limits of Hadassah’s containment rhetoric
Cold War spirit can be seen in the absence of any support on the part of Hadassah for
the engagement in Vietnam. In fact, the war in Vietnam started to concern Hadassah
in the later part of the 1960s. Hadassah rhetoric did not engage that much in debates
about the war in this early period; however, Hadassah saw the United States
engagement in Asia as a waste of precious resources. Hadassah lobbied to maintain a
steady flow o f foreign aid to Israel. The Vietnam War diverted funds from foreign
aid programs, while it also shifted the discourse on Communism away from the
Middle East to Asia. In an American affairs Kit circulated in January 1968,
Hadassah provide a question and answer section on the issues of recent cuts in
foreign aid.
Q. Are the mounting costs of the Vietnam war related to the large
cut in foreign aid voted by congress?
A. Yes. $2.29 billion was\appropriated for foreign aid. This is almost
$1 billion less than what the president requested. In fact, the foreign
aid appropriation is the smallest in the 20 year history of the
104
program.
In a June 1968 American Affairs kit, the question of civil disobedience in
universities in the United States and Europe was discussed in a question and answer
format. Many students, the kit read opposed the United States role in Vietnam and
“want some say in the future of this country.”1 0 5
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227
In other parts of the world Hadassah hoped to provide guidance to developing
countries. While some parts of the African community viewed Israel as an
imperialist foreign presence, during the 1960’s Hadassah expanded its medical
programs to include humanitarian programs to aid African counties in improving
their medical facilities and programs. In Liberia, for example, Hadassah aided in the
establishment of an ophthalmology center by sending doctors and staff to oversee the
creation of the unit. In addition, nurses and doctors visited and trained at Hadassah
medical facilities in Israel. Hadassah also offered free\medical schooling to
Ethiopian students. In addition, Hadassah offered free services to certain emergency
cases in Ethiopia.1 0 6
In one arena that did not come to the forefront of American politics until Roe
vs. Wade in 1975, Hadassah was progressive in its support o f legal abortion.
Hadassah argued in an American Affairs pamphlet that the abortion laws should be
changed because:
1. Every woman has the fundamental right to decide on the
number and spacing of her children
2. Many present abortion laws do not recognize the right to
abortion even when childbirth is a risk to the mental and
physical health of the mother, or could produce a seriously
handicapped child.
3. Many states do not recognize the right to abort in the case of
pregnancy which is the result of rape, even in the case of
adolescents.”1 0 7
The same American Affairs kit argued that abortion should be understood as a
medical and class issue. While middle-and upper class women had the “money for
good medical treatment” and can obtain abortions.1 0 8 But “women with little or no
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228
money suffer the most under existing abortion laws. They’re the ones forced to use
unlicensed practitioners in unsanitary operative conditions.” 1 0 9 The kit further
explained how the majority of women who died from abortions were lower-income
women. Abortion, Hadassah argued should “become a medical concern between
patient and physician.”1 1 0
Hadassah continued to articulate the importance of Hadassah members as the
protectors of Jews and Jewish culture in the 1960s. While American Affairs
emphasized the work to be accomplished within the United States and on the
domestic front, Hadassah’s very existence rested on calling Jewish women to action
that was political, cultural, and philanthropic, based on the notion that as women
they were uniquely situated to protect and nurture Jews everywhere. In addition,
instead of stressing traditional forms of women’s roles within Judaism that may have
stressed synagogue attendance and child rearing, Hadassah formulated a new identity
for Jewish women that made Jewish women’s action imperative to the survival of the
Jewish people.
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229
NOTES
1 “Mrs. Jacobson Calls for Arab Talks,” Hadassah Newsletter, September 1968, n.p.
2 Convention press release, 15 September 1960, call no. 3, box 21, folder 5, Hadassah Archives
(hereafter HA), Center for Jewish History, N ew York.
3 1962 convention press release, 1-6, call no. 3, box 23, folder 6, HA.
4 1962 convention press release, 1-6.
5 1962 convention press release, 1-6.
6 “Convention 1960,” N ew York, 8, call no. 3, box 21, folder 6, HA.
7 “Convention 1962 Press Release,” 19 September 1962, 2, call no. 3, box 23, folder 6, HA.
8 Resolution, August 1965 convention, 27, call no. 3, box 25, folder 4, HA.
9 “Annual Conference,” October 1963, 3, call no. 3, box 23, folder 11, HA.
1 0 “Resolutions Adopted,” Los Angeles 1964, 25, HA.
1 1 “Resolutions Adopted,” Los Angeles, 1964.
1 2 Resolutions, February 1965, call no. 15, “Zionist Affairs circulation” folder, circulation material
1965, HA.
1 3 Resolutions, February 1965.
1 4 Resolutions, convention August 1966, 27 call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA.
1 5 “Convention 1965, mid-winter, February, Zionist Affairs Arab Aggression,” call no. 15, “Zionist
Affairs” circulation folder, HA.
1 6 “August 1965 Resolutions,” 27, call no. 3, box 25, folder 4, HA.
1 7 Resolutions, convention 1966, 27, call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA; Judy Heller, “President’s
M essage,” Hadassah Bulletin Chaim Weizman Chapter, October 1967, p. 1.
1 8 Press release, convention 1962, 19 September 1962, 1, call no. 3, box 23, folder 6, HA.
' ’Resolutions, August 1965 annual convention, 6, call no. 3, box 25, folder4, HA; Resolutions,
August 1966, 27, call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA.
20 “Convention Urges U.S. Adoption o f Seven-Point Middle East Program,” 21, call no. 3, box 21,
folder 5, HA.
2 1 “Convention Urges U .S.,” 21
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230
2 2 “Convention Urges U .S.,” 21
23 Golda Meir, “It’s Never Too Late to Talk,” Hadassah Magazine, November 1963, n.p.
24 For more on AIPAC see Marla Brettschneider, Cornerstones o f Peace: Jewish Identity Politics and
Dem ocratic Theory (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1996).
2 5 “Zionist Affairs Annual Report,” 1 July 1961 to 30 June 1962, call no. 3, box 23, folder 7, HA.
26 Letter from Miriam Freund, 10 May 1963, call no. 15, “Zionist Affairs” folder, circulated material,
HA.
27 Resolution adopted at National Policy Conference o f AIPAC, May 1963, circulated in “Zionist
Affairs Kit,” call no. 15 , “Zionist Affairs circulation” box, HA; “Zionist Affairs,” letter, circulated 23
December 1963, call no. 15, “Zionist affairs circulation” box, HA; “Zionist Affairs Kit,” 5 November
1964, call no. 15, Zionist affairs box, HA; “Zionist Affairs Kit,” January 1965, call no. 15, “Zionist
Affairs circulation” box, HA; “Zionist Affairs Kit,” 1 February 1965, call no. 15, Zionist affairs box,
HA; “Zionist Affairs Kit,” 15 February 1965, box 15, HA.
2 8 “World Report: Jerusalem Awaiting Phantom Jets,” Hadassah Magazine, January 1969, n.p.
2 9 “World Report: Jerusalem Awaiting Phantom Jets,” n.p.
3 0 “American Affairs Kit,” 8, 4 June 1968, HA; “American Affairs Kit,” 5, January 15 1969, HA;
“American Affairs Kit,” 15 April 1969, HA.
3 1 Resolutions, adopted 1960, 2, call no. 3 box 21, folder 6, HA.
3 2 Mrs. Norman Bram, “National Board Passes Resolutions Vital in National and World Peace,”
Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah Newsletter, March 1961, p. 2.
3 3 Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
2001), 236-237.
3 4 Howard M. Sachar, A H istory o f Israel from the Rise o f Zionism to Our Time (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1996), 620.
3 5 Shlaim, Iron Wall, 236-237.
3 6 Sachar, A History, 622-623.
3 7 Shalim, Iron Wall, 237
3 8 Sachar, A History, 632
39 “Emergency Act N ow ,” advertisement, Hadassah Headlines, June 1967, p. 1.
40 Ruth Gruber Michaels, “Diary o f an American Housewife; Support for Israel is Overwhelming,”
Hadassah Newsletter, special issue June 1967.
4 1 Elie W iesel, Article N o Title, Hadassah Newsletter, special issue July 1967, 4.
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231
4 2 Elie W iesel, Hadassah Newsletter, special issue July 1967, 4.
4 3 W iesel, 4.
44 Hadassah, “Zionist Affairs Kit,” July 18, 1967, 1, call no. 15, Zionist affairs box, HA.
4 5 Hadassah, “Zionist Affairs Kit,” July 18, 1967, 2.
46 Section titled “Israel Not an Arab land,” in Hadassah, “Zionist Affairs Basic Information Kit,” 1,
call no. 15, Zionist Affairs Committee box, HA.
4 7 “Israel Not an Arab land” section, in Hadassah, “Zionist Affairs Basic Information Kit,” 3.
4 8 Mrs. Theodore Cook, “The Israeli Scene,” in Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah Newsletter,
September 1960, p. 7.
4 9 Mrs. William Bass, “Zionist Affairs,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin, October
1968, p. 3.
5 0 Mrs. Israel Packel, “Arms Race on Again: A Soviet Peace M ove,” Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah
News Bulletin, January 1968, p. 8.
5 1 Amnon Rubinstein, “World Report Israel,” Hadassah Magazine, p. 2.
5 2 Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, The Palestinian People: A H istory (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2003), 217.
5 3 Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, 216-217.
5 4 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 179.
55Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, 219.
5 6 Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 179.
57 Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, 222.
5 8 Ilan Pappe, A H istory o f Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
5 9 Pappe, A History, 149.
6 0 Pappe, A History, 196.
6 1 Resolutions, 1960 Annual Conference, 8, call no. 3, box 21, folder 6, HA.
6 2 Resolutions, August 1966 Conference, 26, call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA.
6 3 “Zionist Affairs Kit,” November 1964, call no. 15, “Zionist Affairs Kit” box, “circulated material”
folder, HA.
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232
6 4 “Zionist Affairs Kit,” November 1964.
6 5 “Zionist Affairs Kit,” November 1964.
66 Mrs. Theodore Cook and Mrs. Louis Paris, “Hussein Travels with Arab Story” Philadelphia
Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin, December 1967, p. 10.
6 7 Cook and Paris, “Hussein Travels with Arab,” p. 10.
6 8 Clipping, Congressional Record, 23 January 1967, call no. 15, “Congressional records” folder,
HA.
6 9 “Security Yes, Peace No: One Year After The Six Day War” Hadassah M agazine, June 1968, n.p.
7 0 Amnon Rubinstein, “Hadassah Magazine: World Report Israel,” Hadassah M agazine, April 1968,
p. 2.
7 1 Rubinstein, “Hadassah Magazine: World Report,” p. 2.
7 2 “Our Vocational Program Also Created Programs to Meet and Know Arabs o f Israel,” Hadassah
Headlines, June 1962, p. 6.
7 3 “Position o f Arabs in Israel,” Hadassah Headlines, No Date, p. 4, 7.
7 4 Phillip Gillion, “Arabs Come to Ein Karen,” Hadassah Magazine, January 1969, n.p.
1 5 Rose Carlin, “Little Nasser at the Medical Center,” Hadassah Magazine, March 1964, p. 34.
7 6 “Our Medical Role within Unified Jerusalem has International Import,” Hadassah M agazine-
October 1967, p. 3.
7 7 Gillion “Arabs Come,” n.p.
7 8 M olly Bar-David, “Diary o f an Israel Housewife,” Hadassah Magazine, October 1967 p. 25.
7 9 Bar-David, “Diary o f an Israel Housewife,” p. 25.
80 “Arab Girl Graduates o f Neurim Lead Their Communities,” Hadassah M agazine, May 1961, p. 6.
8 1 “Mrs. Samuel Halprin Takes Issue with Premier Ben Gurion on Role o f Zionist Movement Today,”
box 21, folder 5, HA.
8 2 “Mrs. Samuel Halprin Takes Issue.”
8 3 “Mrs. Samuel Halprin Takes Issue.”
8 4 “Mrs. Samuel Halprin Takes Issue,” 4.
8 5 Letter to Zionist Affairs chairman, 12 April 1965, call no. 15, “Zionist Affairs” box, “civic material
1965” folder, HA; “Zionist Affairs Issues Kit for Briefings, Study Course,” Hadassah Headlines, June
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233
1965, p. 4; “Zionist Affairs Chairman Urges Chapters to Utilize Updated High School Briefing Kits,”
Hadassah Headlines, May 1967, as compiled in call no. 17, “Headlines” folder, HA.
8 6 “Chapters Disseminate Factual Data on Israel to the Community,” Hadassah Headlines, November
1964, 2.
8 7 “Hadassah Medical Organization Annual Report,” Oct 1959-August 1960, 36-37, call no. 3, folder
6, HA; “Annual Reports; American Affairs Annual Report,” July 1966-June 30, 3, call no. 3, box 26
folder 6, HA; American Affairs Kit, October 1 1968, “United Nations Course” American Affairs Kit,
December 1968, last page, HA.
8 8 Resolutions, 1960 N ew York, 6, call no. 3, box 21, folder 6, HA.
8 9 “American Affairs UN Annual Report,” 1, 2, call no. 3, box 23, folder 7, HA.
90 American Affairs Kit, January 1966, p. AA8, HA.
9 1 American Affairs Kit, January 1966, p. AA8
9 2 American Affairs Kit, May-June 1966, p. aa-1 3 ,, HA.
9 3 Resolutions, Boston, August 1966, 5, call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA. September 1967 page 4
94 Hadassah Annual Report, 1966-1967, 3, call no. 3, box 26, folder 6, HA.
9 5 “American Affairs Annual Report,” July 1966-June 30, 3, call no. 3, box 26, folder 6, HA.
96 Press release, 17 Aug 1964, 4, HA.
9 7 Press release, 17 Aug 1964, 4.
9 8 Press release, 17 Aug 1964, 4.
9 9 Press release, 17 Aug 1964, 4.
1 0 0 Resolutions, Los Angeles national convention 1964, 26, HA.
10lResolutions, Los Angeles national convention 1964, 26. HA.
1 0 2 Press release, 16 August 1965, HA.
1 0 3 Resolutions, Boston convention 1966, 28, call no. 3, box 26, folder 5, HA.
1 0 4 “Hadassah American Affairs Kit,” 15 January 1968, p. aa-3, HA.
1 0 5 “American Affairs Kit,” 4 June 1968, p. aa3, HA.
m “Hadassah Medical Organization Annual Report,” August 1960 1, no. 3, box 21, folder 6, HA.
1 0 7 “American Affairs Kit,” December 1969, p. aa7, call no. 15, box 95, HA.
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234
1 0 8 “American Affairs Kit,” December 1969, p. aa8.
1 0 9 “American Affairs Kit,” December 1969, p. aa8.
1 1 0 “American Affairs Kit,” December 1969, p. aa8.
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235
CONCLUSION
One major theme of this dissertation has been the political nature of
Hadassah. This dissertation challenges depictions of Hadassah as a women’s
organization solely concerned with social networks between women and genteel
philanthropic activities. Instead the evidence suggests that while the organization
contained elements of charity and social networking, the group extended beyond
being a mere “ladies that lunch” organization. In fact, Hadassah played an extremely
active role in the American political community acting as both a lobbying and an
educational organization. In the aftermath of the birth of the State of Israel, Hadassah
sought to persuade Americans both Jews and non-Jews that Israel deserved
American support. Hadassah, as the largest and most powerful Jewish women’s
organization and Zionist organization also played an important role in educating its
members and in turn their families about the Arab-Israeli conflict, defining the
parameters of the conflict and providing conflicting images of Arabs to its
membership. At the same time, Hadassah adopted the philosophy of cultural
pluralism and maintained an open door policy in its medical center and some of its
youth programs to Arabs.
As the 1950s progressed, expanding fears about Soviet domination in the
Middle East played into Hadassah’s desire to make Israel a strong ally of the United
States and secure the new state’s position vis-a-vis financial aid programs and
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236
political support from the American government. Indeed, the U.S.-Soviet arms race
swept into the Middle East further dividing Arab nations from Israel and eventually
solidifying the economic and military ascendancy of Israel and fueling the military
aspirations of neighboring countries like Egypt. In this climate of Cold War
competition in the Middle East and McCarthyite panic in the United States,
Hadassah seized the moment to argue that Israel provided an important safeguard for
checking Soviet aggression. The legacy of this Cold War activism was twofold.
While Hadassah maintained a vigilant Cold War rhetoric in their foreign policy
campaigns, their domestic policy programs championed civil liberties and challenged
McCarthyism and the politics of fear and suspicion. In addition Hadassah supported
civil rights legislation, worked to educate it members on the importance of the UN,
and sought to change restrictive immigration laws.
The gender roles espoused and enacted by Hadassah members during the
1950s served to both challenge and maintain limitations placed on women in the era.
By the 1950s, Jews as a group transformed from an immigrant outsider community
into the mainstream of American suburban society. At its inception Hadassah
offered a sometimes radical approach to gender roles: exalting women as pioneers,
encouraging women to travel or live in Palestine, and lionizing single women like
Henrietta Szold the founder. By the 1950s however as Jews moved into the
mainstream of American society and Zionism gained wide acceptance within the
Jewish community, Hadassah too adapted to the current environment and
incorporated many of the gender and political themes of the time like domesticity
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237
and Americanism. In order to cater to a wider array of members, Hadassah
appropriated many dominant notions of gender and Jewish identity. However, these
dominant notions such as domesticity and patriotism often ironically served to
empower women to challenge traditional gender roles and broaden their self-
awareness through Hadassah.
In contrast to the atmosphere of the 1950s which stressed women’s
importance as homemakers, new possibilities were afforded to women due to the
advances made by feminism and a media backlash against the 1950s “June Cleaver”
model of femininity allowed Hadassah members to further complicate the
construction of Jewish women’s identity in the 1960s. Hadassah publications and
meetings stressed the significance of women’s education and depicted women’s
participation in the workforce as an acceptable option. Whereas, the 1950s model of
femininity endorsed by Hadassah stressed volunteerism as the proper avenue for
women’s engagement in the wider culture, the 1960s version of womanhood
promoted by Hadassah provided women with more options through which to partake
in political and cultural life.
Hadassah women in the 1960s s pushed the boundaries of accepted Jewish
women’s behavior. For the first time Hadassah members forced the Hadassah
leaders to provide them with volunteer opportunities focused on ameliorating
poverty in the United States. Hadassah member further embraced the civil rights
movement and worked to enforce desegregation in the South and endorsed the War
on Poverty. In foreign policy, Hadassah continued to move toward a more hawkish
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238
approach to the Middle East by stressing Cold War geopolitics of the region and
denying the existence of a legitimate Arab refugee problem.
Hadassah continues to be an important Jewish Zionist organization. While
one can argue that AIPAC has taken the primary role in the lobbying for political
support for Israel, Hadassah maintains an active role in lobbying on behalf of Israel.
In addition while AIPAC has only 67,000 members Hadassah continues to have a
membership around 300,000. Hadassah is still the largest Zionist organization in the
world and in 1994 the World Zionist Organization finally granted Hadassah “special
status” thus ensuring Hadassah always has a set number of representatives to the
international Zionist governing body.1 In addition, Hadassah has greatly expanded its
work on the domestic issues and the mandate of its American Affairs Program. A
dissertation could be written on this subject alone, but an overview o f some o f the
issues Hadassah has championed in the past 20 years: It has endorsed policy
statements on a wide range of issues. In the issues of crime, weapons, and war
between 1980 and 1999 Hadassah made 21 policy statements ranging from support
of gun control legislation, bringing attention to violence against women, and race
based hate crimes. In area of health care Hadassah continues to strongly support
women’s right to choose, condemns child abuse, and brings attention to women’s
medical issues like Breast Cancer. Hadassah has consistently, beginning in the
1970s, endorsed an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. In addition,
Hadassah continues to work within the framework of the United Nations to reach a
broader audience for its issues."
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239
In 1997 Hadassah raised $88,474,5000 million which it allocated among
various programs. Hadassah continues to maintain study groups, fashion shows and
a variety of more socially oriented programming."1 It still sees as part of its mandate
to, “equip members to understand their Jewish heritage and to enrich their lives as
Jews in this country.” The Hadassah education Department publishes books on
Jewish Living, conducts seminars and retreats, group study circles, and supports
research in the area of Jewish life.lv Hadassah maintains its status as an “accredited
observer to the U.S. mission in the UN”.V American youth programs such as young
Judea summer camps, clubs Israel programs, and seminars.V l Hadassah also
continues to support Youth Aliyah programs in Israel.
Further research on Hadassah as a historical, political, and social phenomena
will expand our understanding of Jewish life in America. Using Hadassah as a case
study, one learns about the issues that appealed to mainstream middle class Jewish
women and the ways in which the articulated and continue to produce an American
Jewish women’s identity based on the intersection of various political, social,
economic and gendered factors.
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240
NOTES
I Update: The N ew sletter o f the National Zionist Affairs department ofH adassah, “World Zionist
Organization Grants Hadassah ‘ Special Status’” rg 15 box operations and functions
I I Hadassah National affairs Committee, Compendium o f H adassah’ s D om estic Policy statements
1980-Present 2000 Hadassah Archives (HA).
Hadassah Convention daily, Monday July 3, 1997 HA.
iv “Facts About Hadassah” 1987 HA.
v “Facts About Hadassah” 1987 HA.
V l“ Facts About Hadassah” 1987 HA.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
241
Primary Sources
Archives and Materials Consulted:
Hadassah Archives at the Center for Jewish History, New York, New York:
Hadassah Brochures 1930-1970
Hadassah Resolutions 1930-1990
Hadassah National Meeting Minutes
Hadassah Branch Meeting Minutes
Hadassah Speeches
Hadassah Press Releases
Hadassah American Affairs and Zionist Affairs Kits
Hadassah Oral History Collection
Hadassah Education Department Publications
Hadassah Annual Yearbooks
Individual Members Scrapbooks
Hadassah Correspondence via letters or Telegrams
Letters Addressed to Hadassah Officials
Annual Meeting Programs
Hadassah Event Invitations
Local press coverage of Hadassah events
Hadassah publications such as books, cards, merchandise or films
The Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, Ida Pearle and Joseph Cuba Archives,
Atlanta Georgia:
Atlanta Hadassah Branch Meeting Minutes
Hadassah Periodicals
Balch Institute on Ethnic Studies at the Philadelphia Historical Society, Philadelphia
Pennsylvania:
Philadelphia Hadassah Branch Meeting Minutes
Hadassah Periodicals
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.:
Hadassah Periodicals
Periodicals:
Hadassah Newsletter
Hadassah Magazine
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242
Hadassah Headlines
Hadassah Shoreline Newsletter
Sarah Kuzzy Group Founding Newsletter
North Shore Hadassah Newsletter
Philadelphia Chapter Hadassah News Bulletin
Chaim Weizman Chapter Bulletin
Hadassah central States Region Newsletter
Hadassah Bulletin Franklin Square new York
Atlanta Chapter Hadassah Newsletter
Austin Chapter Newsletter
The Senior
Near East Report
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Creator Brautbar, Shirli (author)

Core Title "Not just ladies that lunch": Hadassah and the formation of American Jewish identity

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American studies,history, United States,Jewish Studies,OAI-PMH Harvest,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Bonner, Lois (committee chair), Kaplan, Carla (committee member), Kaufman, David (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-603699

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