Authors: Marnie Winston-Macauley
“As a feminist, an immigrant, and a Jew, I was perhaps too different from the average Vermont voter, yet it was this identity that inspired me to enter public life and shaped my values,” wrote Madeleine Kunin, who was elected the first Jewish and first
female governor of Vermont on November 7, 1984. She served until 1991. In 1940, when the Swiss-born governor was six, she and her widowed mother escaped the Nazis threat and sailed to the United States on the last ship leaving Italy.
Ground breakers:
BETTY FRIEDAN,
BREAKING THROUGH
B
etty Friedan, mother of three and journalist, became a revolutionary. When she surveyed two hundred of her college classmates, she learned that many, despite marriage, children, and affluence were depressed and disappointed, as a gap existed between their education and professional accomplishments. So, in 1963 she wrote
The Feminine Mystique.
It became an instant bestseller and spurred women to pursue their own interests. Friedan became a leading advocate for women’s rights. The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in her hotel room on June 30, 1966, during the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women. Friedan and twenty-six other women discussed the formation of NOW as a separate civil rights organization dedicated to advancing gender equality. NOW was incorporated on February 10, 1967, with Friedan as its first president and works on critical issues, including economic equality, abortion rights, opposing racism, and ending violence against women.
Kunin grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on a scholarship. She received a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1957. When she moved to Burlington, Vermont, to work for the
Burlington Free Press,
she met and married Dr. Arthur Kunin. The couple had four children but divorced in 1995. While devoting herself to her family, she became an active community organizer, focusing on health care legislation and community safety. She was elected to the state legislature in 1972. Here, she gathered support for the ERA, and worked on the environment, education, and the welfare of families and children. In 1984, she was elected governor, and served three
terms. Among her many achievements was the creation of a family court. In 1993, she became the U.S. deputy secretary of education, and in 1996, President Clinton appointed her U.S. ambassador to Switzerland. In February of 2006, at seventy-two, she married John W. Hennessey Jr., a fellow trustee of the University of Vermont.
Both
describe themselves as feminists. Mr. Hennessey said feminism is “in my genes,” adding that his mother marched in the suffragist movement as a student at Vassar College in 1916.
In 1988, the day after Lenore (Lyn) Pancoe Meyerhoff’s death from stomach cancer at age sixty, the lead editorial in the
Baltimore Sun
began: “Just the other day, Lyn Meyerhoff strolled into one of Baltimore’s fancier eateries. … Hatless, wigless. … ‘I’m fighting this monster,’ she remarked, and then quickly launched into an electric conversation about the Baltimore Symphony’s tour of the Soviet Union (her idea), Jeane Kirkpatrick’s prospects for the presidency (her idea), and the work of a think tank in Israel. … (her idea).”
Ground breakers:
BELLA ABZUG,
FIRST WOMAN ELECTED TO U.S. CONGRESS ON A WOMEN’S RIGHTS/PEACE PLATFORM
B
ella Abzug was born July 24, 1920 in the Bronx, and elected to Congress at fifty. As daughter Eve proclaimed: “We got her out of our house and into your House”—and with her famous hat in place she didn’t merely rip the glass ceiling, she shattered it.
Bella’s Hebrew schoolteacher recruited her to a labor Zionist group, Hashomer Hatzair (the young guard), and by age eleven, she was giving impassioned speeches.
Her mother, Esther Savitzky, encouraged her daughter when she was thirteen by aIlowing her to say the Mourner’s Prayer for her father, Manny, traditionally done by males.
“Battling Bella” won a scholarship to Columbia University Law School, where she developed two additional passions: poker and
Martin Abzug. They married in 1944. “While I was at Columbia,” Bella said, “he typed my term papers. Before we married it was agreed that I would work at my legal career even after we had children.” Over the years, Bella pointed repeatedly to Martin’s support as her crucial foundation. The couple had two daughters—Eve Gail (Elgee) born in 1949, and Isobel Jo (Liz) born in 1952.
During the 1950s, Bella defended victims of the McCarthy witch hunt. A strong activist, she helped create Women Strike for Peace, and became a prominent spokesperson against poverty, racism, and violence. In 1970 at age fifty, she agreed to run for Congress from New York City and was reelected for three terms. Abzug, called the hardest working member of Congress, was acknowledged by
U.S. News and World Report
as the “third most influential” House member.
Her numerous accomplishments include: sponsoring the Equal Rights Amendment, organizing the National Women’s Political Caucus, serving as chief strategist for the Democratic Women’s Committee, coauthoring the Freedom of Information Act, the Government in the Sunshine Act, the Right to Privacy Act, introducing the first federal bill to support gay and lesbian civil rights, cofounding the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), and being an influential leader at UN conferences to empower women around the globe. Despite breast cancer and heart disease, Abzug continued to confront the global problems of poverty and discrimination. Her daughter Liz called Bella “a great politician, a great friend, a great and enlightened mother.”
“You try to adjust the family situation to the realities of your life. You don’t put one ahead of the other. There is a balance, and you strive to keep that balance. The family grows with it. And the kids also know that the mother I am woman, wife, and lawyer. A total person. It makes them better people.”
— Bella Abzug
Bella Abzug’s dedication has fortified a global sisterhood never before imagined. At her funeral in 1998, Geraldine Ferraro said: “She didn’t knock politely on the door…. She took it off the hinges forever.”
She grew up in the 1930s in one of the few Jewish families on Chicago’s North Shore. She was the fifth child of a Jewish family in Wilmette, Illinois. Lyn Meyerhoff was a major figure in Maryland Republican politics, and blended her amazing skills as politician, networker, fund-raiser—and most important to her, mother. She served in President Ford’s administration on the Council of International Economic Policy and worked with the Reagan administration while continuing to support Planned Parenthood and oppose efforts to reinstitute public school prayer.
“Most of what Mom stood for has a corollary in the Eyshet Hayil. ‘The Woman of Valor,’” wrote her daughter, Lee M. Hendler. Meyerhoff believed it was her duty to confront injustice head on. “We are what we do, not what we say,” was a favorite maxim. She was a vociferous advocate for the Jewish State from her very first federation visit to Israel in the 1950s. She was a member of Hadassah’s Society of Major Donors, a charter member of Israel Bonds’ president’s and prime minister’s clubs, and on a first-name basis with many of Israel’s leaders, from Golda Meir to Bibi Netanyahu. She also founded the Jeane Kirkpatrick Forum at Tel Aviv University to encourage American/Israeli dialogue. In 1993, she served as one of three presidentially appointed public delegates to the United Nations. This amazing activist was committed to her role as wife and mother—and her vibrant, nonconformist personality and humor shined through.
Her daughter, Lee, wrote: “She hated to cook, preferred puppies to babies, refused to sew, and sent us to school pageants dressed in the wrong outfits, saying ‘I’ll be able to see you better! ‘” She could drive a farm tractor, tame a wild raccoon, raise chickens (that she gave away as party favors), catch fish, “woman” a truck, and captain a boat. Oh, and she was known to drop to the floor in full evening dress to challenge a fellow partygoer to one-armed push-ups. But she also lit candles on Shabbat and grew weepy at flag raisings. Her most ardent acts, apart from her response to the Holocaust, could be found in her leadership and philanthropy.
She was ashamed by Roosevelt’s cowardice and horrified by how little America had done to combat the Holocaust, and was one of the first to articulate an American vision and rationale
for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—for which she raised $1 million in just one morning from fifty non-Jewish business leaders.
She let her children “laugh but allowed us to cry. … Mom’s life was one long lesson in attention. Life matters, she taught. Pay attention. Do your best.”
Ground breakers:
RUTH BADER GINSBURG,
FIRST FEMALE JEWISH SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
R
uth Bader Ginsburg was known as a “centrist” when she was sworn in as the 107th justice to the United States Supreme Court. On August 10, 1993, she became the second woman to sit on the court and the first Jewish justice since 1969.
She was born on March 15, 1933, the daughter of Celia and Nathan Bader of Brooklyn, New York. Her mother had a strong passion for reading, language, and a love of books, putting Jewish tradition in the context more of doing justice than of observance and pushed her daughter hard to succeed. Having felt the sting of discrimination, Ginsburg became the first woman to be tenured on the Columbia University law faculty—her mission to open up doors for everyone. She was also codirector of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, working extensively on sex-discrimination cases, arguing and establishing that constitutional protections should apply to women—thereby establishing that differential treatment based on gender was unconstitutional.
In 1954, she married Martin Ginsburg, a well-known tax lawyer and professor. They have two children, one of whom is a law professor at Columbia.
Ginsburg was often referred to as the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s rights movement and has a reputation for logic, reason, and realistic pragmatism.
Justice Ginsburg has pointed proudly to Judaism’s eternal pursuit of justice, the promise of America, and the accomplishments of Jewish women who have preceded her.
Cohen, mayor of an Israeli town, passed a construction site with his wife. A construction worker called out to the woman.
“Sara … how are you?”
“Avi! Nice to see you again,” she replied. Then she introduced her husband. After a short chat, they continued on.
“How do you know such a man?” asked the mayor.
“We were sweethearts in school. I almost married him.”
He laughed. “See how lucky you are? If I hadn’t married you, today you would be married to a construction worker!”
“If I had married him,” said his wife, “so now
he’d
be the mayor.”
Minna Kleeberg received an excellent education in Germany and by the time she arrived in the United States in 1866, she was a well-regarded poet, known for her passion for social justice and her faith.
After her marriage to Rabbi L. Kleeberg, her poetry turned to liturgical creations, while continuing to serve as a vehicle for social expression. Her poetry was also feminist—before the word existed—and called for democracy and the emancipation of women. She also wrote verses on the joys and sorrows of domestic life, addressing these to her children.
A collection of her poems,
Gedichte,
was published in 1877 in Louisville, Kentucky, where her husband was serving as rabbi.
Ground breakers:
BARBARA WALTERS,
FIRST LADY OF NEWS
B
arbara Walters was born into show business in Massachusetts, on September 25, 1931. She is the daughter of Dena and Lou Walters, a
nightclub owner. Walter’s mentally challenged sister no doubt honed her ability to create a special intimacy with her subjects.
After receiving her degree from Sarah Lawrence College, Barbara was hired by RCA-TV, NBC’s local affiliate in New York City. Dave Garaway recognized her talent and made her a staff writer. She was soon doing on-air stories and became the first female cohost of the
Today Show,
a post she held for fifteen years. In 1976, she became the first female coanchor in prime-time network news at ABC, and she coanchored
20/20
from 1984 until 2004. Walters, who has one daughter, Jacqueline, holds the distinction of interviewing every U.S. president and first lady since the Nixons. Although her notable interviews include every “who’s who” in the world, a special groundbreaking moment occurred in 1977 when she arranged the first joint interview between Menachem Begin and Anwar el-sádát. Another “first” was her prime-time interview with Fidel Castro, which received worldwide attention.
Now creator, co-owner, coexecutive producer, and cohost of
The View,
this legendary lady has all but turned the glass ceiling in the newsroom to sand.
Dialoguing has long been a passion of Blu Greenberg, Orthodox feminist, author, and lecturer. Her books include
On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition; How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household; Black Bread: Poems After the Holocaust,
and a children’s book coauthored with Reverend Linda Tarry,
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Since 1973, she has been active in the movement to bridge feminism and Orthodox Judaism. Amoong her many remarkable achievements, she is a founding president of JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and cofounder of Women of Faith. She has been an active participant in the Dialogue Project and the Multi-Religious Women’s Network (2000). In 1997 and 1998, she chaired the International Conference(s) on Feminism and Orthodoxy.
Blu has an abiding belief in interfaith and interethnic issues. She was first chair of the Federation Task Force on Jewish women.
She attended, among other conferences, the Jewish Tibetan encounter in Dharmasala in 1990 and the World Conference of Religious Leaders in Bangkok in 2002.