Week of April 28

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April 29, 1957

Reform Judaism leader Jane Evans argues for ordination of women rabbis

April 30, 2001

Lifetime achievement award for cookbook author Joan Nathan

May 1, 1916

Labor leaders announce their engagement at May Day Parade

May 2, 1975

Publication of Gladys Rosen's Jewish bicentennial guidebook

May 3, 2000

Longest-serving federal employee Lillie Steinhorn retires

May 4, 1930

Birth of opera singer Roberta Peters

 

April 29, 1957

Reform Judaism leader Jane Evans argues for ordination of women rabbis

On April 29, 1957, Jane Evans spoke to 1,000 delegates in favor of ordaining women rabbis at a biennial general assembly meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), the synagogue federation arm of the Reform movement, and of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS). Evans was the executive director of NFTS. In her speech at a special session of the meeting, Evans told her audience that "women are uniquely suited by temperament, intuition, and spiritual sensitivity to be rabbis." Although the New York Times called Evans's speech a "strong plea," the UAHC took no action.

Evans, however, continued her advocacy of women's ordination. At its 1963 biennial assembly, NFTS approved a resolution calling on the UAHC, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (the Reform movement's rabbinical seminary) to move forward on the ordination of women. Although some delegates were ambivalent, Evans was said to have the support of Jean Wise May, the daughter of the founder of American Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise. Nevertheless, the Reform movement did not ordain a woman rabbi until 1972, when Sally Priesand graduated from Hebrew Union College.

Women's rabbinic ordination was not the only progressive issue that Evans championed during her long career at the head of the NFTS. Hired as the first full-time executive director in 1933, Evans led the organization to pass resolutions supporting civil rights, access to birth control, fair employment practices, child labor legislation, the elimination of capital punishment, and de-escalation of the Vietnam War. A committed pacifist who became president of the National Peace Conference in 1950, Evans insisted that the NFTS encourage its members to speak out on national political issues as well as on issues concerning Reform Judaism specifically. She served as NFTS executive director until 1976, but she remained a central figure in the Reform movement as an activist and adviser to other movement leaders until her death in 2004.

See also: This Week in History for January 21, 1913 and June 3, 1972.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 979-982; New York Times, April 30, 1957, November 20, 1963, January 15, 1950; Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution, jwa.org/feminism.

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April 30, 2001

Lifetime achievement award for cookbook author Joan Nathan

Acclaimed cookbook author Joan Nathan found her way to food writing from a very different, if related, field. Armed with a master's degree in French Literature, she took a job as foreign press officer to Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. Inspired by his habit of conducting meetings over meals, Nathan wrote and published her first cookbook, The Flavor of Jerusalem, in 1975.

The success of Nathan's first book was followed by the publication of The Jewish Holiday Kitchen in 1979, An American Folklife Cookbook in 1984, and Jewish Cooking in America in 1994. Jewish Cooking in America was an instant hit, winning both the Julia Child Best Cookbook Award and the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook. In addition to writing cookbooks, Nathan helped found New York City's Ninth Avenue Food Festival. In March, 2001, Nathan published The Foods of Israel Today, which contains recipes from Muslim and Christian as well as Jewish traditions.

On April 30, 2001, she was awarded the Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America award for lifetime achievement from the James Beard Foundation.

Nathan is the host of the PBS television show Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan, based on her award-winning book. The show combines recipes, history, and visits to chefs. Nathan contributes articles to Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Cooking Light, Hadassah Magazine, and the New York Times. Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook (2004) combines and updates the earlier Jewish Holiday Baker (1997) and Jewish Holiday Kitchen (1979).

In 2005, Nathan utilized the research for her new book The New American Cooking: An American Folklife Cookbook in her role as guest curator of Food Culture USA at the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The New American Cooking won the 2006 International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award in the American category.

Sources: www.pbs.org/mpt/jewishcooking; www.jamesbeard.org/visual/index.php?q=james_beard_awards_whos_who.

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May 1, 1916

Labor leaders announce their engagement at May Day Parade

Born in Russia in 1889, Bessie Abramowitz Hillman immigrated to Chicago at age 15 to escape an arranged marriage. Within five years, she had become a leader among the workers in a garment factory. In 1910, she instigated a walkout by 16 women to protest a pay cut. Although the strike was ridiculed at first, it soon spread to thousands of workers in several plants, and won the support of reformer Jane Addams and her influential Hull House settlement. As a result, Hillman was hired as an organizer for the Women's Trade Union League. She would be active in union activity for the rest of her long life.

In 1914, when the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America split from the more conservative United Garment Workers, Abramowitz was elected to the Amalgamated's executive board. Marking their joined lives and work, Abramowitz and Amalgamated president Sidney Hillman announced their engagement on May 1, 1916, while marching at the head of the clothing workers' contingent of the Chicago May Day Parade. They were married two days later. Because wives were expected not to work, her union work for the following 30 years was as a volunteer. During the 1920s, she organized workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Connecticut, working with both immigrant and native-born workers. In 1937, she became the education director of the Laundry Workers Joint Board. Her work with the laundry union's large non-white membership drew Hillman into civil rights work.

When Sidney Hillman died in 1946, Bessie took a paid position as vice president for education in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union, a position she held until her death. In that role, she not only spoke at conferences and organized summer schools for workers, but also pushed the union to work for civil rights and peace. Hillman's union work led to involvement in broader social justice causes as well. She worked with the Child Welfare Committee of New York, the American Association for the United Nations, the National Consumers League, and the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee, as well as many other organizations. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy appointed her to his historic President's Commission on the Status of Women, which documented widespread economic discrimination against women and was an important element in the rise of second wave feminism.

Bessie Abramowitz Hillman died on December 23, 1970.

Sources: Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1991); Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 632-634; New York Times, December 24, 1970.

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May 2, 1975

Publication of Gladys Rosen's Jewish bicentennial guidebook

Born and raised in New York City and educated at Columbia University, Gladys Rosen became the program specialist at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in the early 1970s. There, she drew on her training in history and Judaic studies to write several guidebooks focused on American Jewish history. First, in 1971, Rosen wrote a manual entitled "Guidelines to Jewish History and Social Studies Instructional Material." Designed to counter the absence of information about Jews in elementary and secondary school history textbooks, the manual presented brief summaries of Jewish history from the Biblical era to the modern era, and provided a bibliography of books covering world and American Jewish history.

Four years later, with the U.S. Bicentennial approaching, the American Jewish Committee published another Rosen booklet, entitled "Jews in American Life: A Guide to Local Programming for the Bicentennial." Publication was announced on May 2, 1975. Sold for $1 per copy, the booklet was directed to the Jewish community, encouraging Jews to bring the story of Jewish contributions to American history into Bicentennial celebrations. The booklet included guidelines for developing local community archives and family genealogies, and for conducting oral histories. While the AJC's publicity highlighted the achievements of a variety of Jewish men, from colonial militiaman Asser Levy to Confederate cabinet member Judah Benjamin, it did little to disseminate information about Jewish women's contributions.

In addition to writing these and other publications, Rosen helped organize conferences for the AJC on the Jewish family, the changing role of the Jewish woman, and Jewish education. She was also active in continuing education projects, serving as the assistant director of the Academy for Jewish Studies Without Walls and the Jewish Studies Summer Seminar series. In addition, Rosen has edited two books: Jewish Life in America: Historical Perspectives (1978) and (with Steven Bayme) Jewish Family and Jewish Continuity (1994).

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 1168; New York Times, October 30, 1971, May 3, 1975.

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May 3, 2000

Longest-serving federal employee Lillie Steinhorn retires

When Lillie Steinhorn retired from the Social Security Administration on May 3, 2000, she ended a 65-year career as a federal employee. Her longevity at the Social Security Administration set a record, making her the longest-serving federal employee. She began on April 28, 1935, as a card puncher in what was then called the Bureau of Federal Old Age Benefits. She remained at Social Security for her entire career, through decades of changes and modernization. From card punching, Steinhorn moved into positions as a dictating machine operator, a statistician, and a research analyst. After working in Washington, DC, for the first few years, she returned to Baltimore, where she had been born and raised. After fifty years with the SSA, Steinhorn explained to an employee magazine that she intended to stay, saying, "I love the people I work with, and it gives me a good feeling to know that I play a small part in helping serve the public."

Steinhorn joined the civil service in the midst of the Great Depression, at a time when the federal government was expanding rapidly in an effort to provide work for millions of unemployed Americans and to revive the economy. It was also a time when thousands of women joined the workforce, often when their husbands and fathers could not find work. During the war years that followed, thousands more women streamed into jobs vacated by men who had gone overseas as soldiers. When the men returned, many of these women were pushed out of their wartime jobs. Steinhorn faced this problem when a supervisor tried to demote her to make room for a returning veteran. Demonstrating her characteristic tenacity, Steinhorn protested and was allowed to keep her job. By the time she retired in 2000, women's presence in the workforce was an accepted part of modern American life.

Outside of her work for the government, Steinhorn was active in B'nai B'rith Women, including in that organization's Dolls for Democracy program. The post-war program created dolls in the likenesses of famous people from American history, for use in elementary school classrooms. A second set of dolls representing different ethnic backgrounds was meant to teach tolerance. Steinhorn also likes to travel, and over the years has visited China, India, Scandinavia, and Costa Rica, among other places. Steinhorn served as one of twenty-nine narrators in the Jewish Women's Archive's Weaving Women's Words community oral history project in Baltimore.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 165; jwa.org/exhibits/baltimore/steinhorn.html; www.ssa.gov/history/lsoral.html; www.ssa.gov/history/oasis/julyaugust1985.pdf.

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May 4, 1930

Birth of opera singer Roberta Peters

Roberta Peters has achieved international fame for her soprano voice and performing success. Born on May 4, 1930, and raised in New York City, Peters began voice lessons at age 13 and auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera at age 19. Though she had no performing experience, she impressed the general manager enough to earn a contract to appear in Mozart's The Magic Flute. Scheduled to debut in February, 1951, Peters in fact made her debut on November 17, 1950, when she was called upon to replace a colleague on only six hours notice. On that day, she sang the part of Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni. The New York Times called her appearance "a very neat, well-sung, intelligent performance." It was the beginning of a long career at the Met, where Peters achieved the longest tenure of any soprano in the Opera's history.

During more than 35 years at the Met, Peters gave over 500 performances in more than 20 roles. Among the most well-known were performances as Gilda in Rigoletto, Rosina in The Barber of Seville, and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor. Success in New York soon led to performances elsewhere. In 1951, Peters debuted at London's Covent Garden in The Bohemian Girl. Tours in Chicago, San Francisco, Germany, and Austria soon followed. In 1972, she performed at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, where she received the Bolshoi Medal. It was the first time the Medal had been awarded to an American-born artist.

In addition to her operatic career, Peters has been an ambassador of classical music to the general public. In recitals and master classes throughout the world, and in a record 65 appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, Peters has brought her music to the people. In her television appearances and recitals on college campuses and for Jewish groups, Peters sings American, European, and Yiddish folk songs as well as classical arias. She has performed often in Israel and also in specifically Jewish works like Abraham Kaplan's Kedushah Symphony (1982). In 2000, at age 70, she was still singing in about 25 concerts each year.

Peters has also devoted energy to social and philanthropic causes. She has served as chairman of the National Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Carnegie Hall Corporation. She has performed in benefit concerts for AIDS research, and established a scholarship fund at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush appointed her to the National Council on the Arts. She has received awards from the Federation of Women's Clubs (1964) and the Foundation for Jewish Culture (1997). In 2000, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani presented her with the Handel Medallion for enriching New York City's cultural life.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1046-1048; www.jewishculture.org/awards/awards_arts_peters.html; www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=41:45646~T1; New York Times, November 18, 1950; New York Daily News, November 3, 2004; Roberta Peters, A Debut at the Met (New York: Meredith Press, 1967).

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