Authors: Marnie Winston-Macauley
Yiddishe Mamas (31 page)
Many rebbetzins had their own following. Sarale (1838-1937), wife of Reb Hayyim Shmuel Horowitz-sternfeld, acted as a rabbi, as did her daughter, Hannah, who was the wife of Reb Elimelekh of Grodzisk (1892).
Rabbis’ wives, despite their enormous contributions to their mates and congregations, have been given short-shrift in
history. We do know that among the East European shtetl Jews, the rabbi’s wife was quite often also the bread winner. A role model, she was expected to be a superb wife and mother, while exhibiting piety and learning. But her priority was maintaining her husband’s standing in the community.
Perhaps one of the most fascinating rebbetzins (and God knows, patient) was the beloved Ruth Cohen Frisch, daughter of Galveston’s popular Rabbi Henry Cohen.
Oy, did she get her “spirited” husband, radical Rabbi Ephraim Frisch, out of
tsouris
(trouble) and controversy more than once after he took the pulpit at San Antonio’s Temple Beth-El in 1923. The rabbi was an avid New Dealer and friend of Clarence Darrow and Diego Rivera; sometimes he went … a
bissel
overboard, for example, when he blessed the hogs at the Stock Show on radio.
Rabbi Frisch’s controversial views also got him into hot water when he chastised San Antonio’s wealthy for ignoring poverty and disease in the Mexican barrio; criticized congregants who fought unionization of their factories; and ridiculed legislators who sought to ban evolution from being taught in the schools. He also angered a number of people when he backed pecan shellers in their strike against employers that included some of his congregants.
Yet his rebbetzin, wife Ruth, while also progressive, used her wit, warmth, and persuasiveness to smooth her husband’s rough and tumble edges.
In addition to motherhood, Ruth held classes for youngsters, steering a number of children into the arts. At a later time in history, she might have been a writer, a pianist, or even a rabbi. In 1942, when she died from Hodgkins disease, her husband sunk into depression and “retired”—with the help of his congregation.
What do you call the husband of a rabbi? Why “hubbitzen,” of course, quips Rabbi Yocheved Mintz, or adds … “or lucky… or doctors!”
EMINISM AND
A
CTIVISM
W
ith our commandment to “heal the world,” plus our verbal acuity, not to mention our chutzpah, it’s not surprising that Jewish women and Jewish mothers have been intricately involved in activism and feminism. In fact, given our significant social role, we may indeed have been the “first feminists.”
NOTE: In scouring the contributions of the Jewish mother and activism, the list is no less than encyclopedic. The women I’ve chosen to highlight are not only formidable, but are meant to be representative of the vast numbers who have contributed mightily: to their religion, to all women, and in doing so, to the world. Many of those I couldn’t include are noted in the appendix in “From These Roots: Jewish Mothers to Us All.”
“To be seen and not heard is not a role, and not who we are.”
— Rabbi Shira Stern
“Many people will say that women in the Bible are subservient, silent, not leaders,” says Rabbi Shira Stern, who feels this is not an accurate picture. “Miriam was as important on the Exodus Journey and was seen as leader among the people. Deborah was a prophet [and strategist]. There have been a variety of ways in which women were instrumental in changing the course of Jewish history. Jewish women do stand out and influence even when they live traditionally.”
In the morning blessings, traditionally men and boys recite the following: “Blessed are You, HaShem, our God, King of the universe, for not having made me a woman.”
“When men thank God for making them men, it is really a recognition of the overwhelming responsibility of the female who has the weight of everything on her shoulders,” says Rabbi Felipe Goodman.
T
he Recording Angel needed a new Executive in Heaven.
The first applicant arrived. “I was a lawyer.”
“Excellent,” said the Angel, “but I give a quiz to all applicants. Spell ‘God.’”
“G—O—D.”
The second applicant arrived. “I was a CEO.”
“Impressive! First, a quiz. Spell ‘God.’”
“G—O—D.”
A woman approached. “I worked for a powerful man. I did everything and he got the credit.” “Sure,” said the Angel, “but there’s a little quiz….”
“Oy! Because I’m a woman I was harassed by chauvinists. I thought it would be different here.”
“It is!” said the Angel. “I give this quiz to all applicants. Spell… ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism.’”
Rabbi Yocheved Mintz has a slightly different take. “The
Artscroll Siddur
(an Orthodox prayer book) comments: The Torah assigns missions to respective groups of people. … Male, free Jews have responsibilities and duties not shared by others. For this, they express gratitude that, unlike women, they were not freed from the obligation to perform the time-related commandments. The topic is an interesting one,” she says, “and the above explanation works within a traditional setting. However, in contemporary times, more liberal Jews have taken offense to the wording, as it seems to come across as sexist and somewhat demeaning to women. That particular part of the morning blessings is totally absent in the Reconstructionist siddur, and the modern Conservative prayer book says ‘for making me in the divine image.’
“
M
other was an activist. A public speaker on Jewish subjects. She won many awards from the Jewish community. She was the first woman professional in Denmark in an executive position with JCC. Yet, she loved tradition and did keep Shabbat. Shabbat was her day of rest—from the Jewish community.”
—Jody Lopatin
AND SOCIAL SERVICE
In Hebrew, there is no special word for “charity,” as the Hebrew prophets held that social injustice is the cause of poverty. The word, “
tzedakah,”
then means “justice”—that which is right, in the sense of piety. According to the Talmud, donors are given the opportunity to perform a mitzvah or commandment, based on the belief that all earthly possessions belong to God and that one’s worth is measured in good
deeds,
not in material goods.
One can’t be considered pious unless one lives a righteous and just life, and that requires devotion to helping the needy. The poor, both Jew and non-Jew, shall not be denied the feelings of joy and self-esteem that derive from performing the mitzvah of
tzedakah.
As the Talmud teaches: “When a person gives even a
perutah
(the smallest coin) he or she is privileged to sense God’s presence.”
The most famous formulation of laws concerning the relationship of donor to recipient is Maimonides’ Eight Degrees of Charity.
From the lowest to the highest level they are to give
but sadly
less than is fitting, but in good humor
only after having been asked
before being asked
so that the donor doesn’t know who the recipient is
so that the recipient doesn’t know who the donor is
so that neither knows the identity of the other
in a manner so that the recipient becomes self-sufficient, thus avoiding the loss of self-respect that may result from receiving the lower degrees.
Seeing the enormous needs that arose in industrial America,
tzedakah
took on an American character and Jewish women acted.
“My mother taught me to sew at seven. Idle hands were sinful. I’m still that way,” says Dr. Ruth Gruber. “She would invite the old ladies from the Menorah Home in Brooklyn to our yard for tea and mandelbrot. My grandmother ran a place where relatives stayed. An old man would come around and ask for money— there was always
tzedakah.”
“My mom was someone who taught me a lot about Israel,” said the late mogul producer, Aaron Spelling, during a 1993 dinner of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, when he announced his family’s Foundation for the Performing Arts (Jerusalem campus). “She had a little blue and white tin can with a slit on top, which she called her
pushke.
Every night, when my dad went to sleep, she would go through his trousers and gather up the change and put it in the pushke. And when I got paid for my paper route on Thursday afternoon, I would have to put a dime in the pushke.”
Ground breakers:
HANNAH GREENEBAUM SOLOMON,
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN
I
n her autobiography, Hannah dotes on her children’s crayon portraits, her son Herbert’s chemistry experiments, and cooking her famous sweet and sour gefilte fish more so than her illustrious career in social service, and founding the National Council of Jewish Women.
Hannah was born in 1858, the fourth of ten children, to Sarah and Michael Greenebaum, German emigres. Her mother organized Chicago’s first Jewish Ladies Sewing Society to make clothes for the needy, and during the great Chicago Fire of 1871, their home became a refuge for survivors. The family also helped found Chicago’s first Reformed Temple.
At twenty-one, Hannah married kindred spirit Henry Solomon, and they raised three children together. Hannah along with her sister, Henriette Frank, became disturbed over the status of Jewish Women; she became a dynamo for change, and created many social organizations.
In 1890, Hannah organized a national Jewish Women’s Congress for the World Columbian Exposition Parliament of Religions. The group became a permanent organization, and the National Council of Jewish Women was born. Hannah was elected its first president and served until 1905 when she was then made honorary president for life. Local chapters were formed in America and Europe. Her involvement in women’s issues were widespread, from helping Russian-Jewish immigrants to founding the Chicago Juvenile Court.
Throughout her life, she was dedicated to her twin commitments— family life and civic responsibility.
“Even in our formative years,” she wrote, “we children of Sarah and Michael Greenebaum were unconsciously affected by their spirit of joyous citizenship in a beloved country whose reverse side, our parents never forgot, imposed civic obligation.”
Hannah Greenebaum Solomon died on December 7, 1942.
At a Jewish National Fund briefing at his Manhattan law firm, Mayor Michael Wildes of Englewood, New Jersey, mentioned the blue and white
pushke
(
tzedakah
box) his mom kept in the kitchen, reported Tim Boxer.
“Excuse me,” said Hal Linden, “it’s
pishkeh
.”
TV’s Barney Miller recalled how his mom used to lift him up so he could drop a coin in the
pishkeh,
on the butcher’s block. The kids would cry that their nickel was gone and mom would say, “It’s alright, they’re building a country for the Jews.”
D
orothy Jacobs, fifteen, who had spent two years as a three-dollar-a-week buttonhole maker, organized the women in her men’s coat shop into a local of the United Garment Workers of America.
As Jewish mothers came to the United States, we brought with us our passion, experience, and fervent belief in righteousness— doing for the community and world—which we viewed as a mitzvah. “Healing” the world was a matter of hard work, strategy, and a “mouth” that was not afraid to tackle the very things we believed in.
Ground breakers:
DR. RUTH GRUBER, “
MOTHER RUTH
”
R
eader’s Digest saluted her as “America’s Schindler.” During World War II when much of the world turned its back on the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Brooklyn-born Ruth Gruber fought to make a difference and did. Gruber was born in 1911 and earned her PhD at age twenty. In 1944, while she was working for the secretary of the interior, Harold L. Ickes, President Roosevelt sent Gruber on a covert mission to escort 1,000 World War II refugees to America. During the mission, she was hunted by the Nazis as a spy. Afterward, she wrote her book
Haven,
about the experiences—which became a television movie in 2000. Dr. Alex Margulies, who helped develop the CAT-scan and the MRI, was among those rescued. The refugees were given sanctuary on an old army base in Oswego, New York.
In recounting the voyage, Gruber recalls a rabbi conducting a service as the boat passed the Statue of Liberty, and her pride in telling the refugees that the poem on the base was written by Emma Lazarus, an American Jew. President Roosevelt’s intent was to see the
refugees as “guests” to be sent back to their homelands after the war, although Gruber succeeded in her efforts to allow them to remain. As the quotas remained unchanged, the refugees were just subtracted from that year’s quota.
Following the war, Gruber shined global attention on Jewish migration to Palestine and the growth of Israel. She continues to write and advocate for Jews, and is herself a worldwide symbol of Jewish rescue from oppression. When asked of her motivation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning mother of two and grandmother of four says, “I had to do it. FDR was born anti-semitic. Policy had to be changed.” She also says: “All of us must look inside our souls and find the tools to fight injustice wherever it exists. What I wish for the Jewish people is security and peace—and for the Land of Israel to continue to bloom.”
One of the most interesting politicos was New Yorker Belle Moskowitz, who was born in 1877. This mother of three used her natural savvy to move in heavy political arenas. A devout social reformer, she cleaned up the “dancing academies”—places poor girls frequented, which were liquor-filled halls with side rooms for rent. The savvy Belle used her knowledge of Tammany Hall involvement to coerce legislation. After her second marriage to social worker and community leader, Henry Moskowitz, the couple arbitrated strikes in the garment industry. Belle also held high positions on the governor’s Labor Board and the New York Port Authority, but her most famous role was that of left and right hand to New York governor, Al Smith. Smith rarely made an important decision or appointment without “Mrs. M’s” advice, recommendation, or approval. He later wrote: “She had the greatest brain of anybody I ever knew.”