Week of December 8

<< Previous Week  —  Next Week >>

December 8, 2003

Empire State Building lights up to celebrate NCJW

December 10, 1947

Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori wins Nobel Prize

December 10, 1977

Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow becomes first American-born woman to receive Nobel Prize in science

December 11, 1922

Birth of author Grace Paley

December 12, 1950

Paula Ackerman becomes "spiritual leader" of Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Mississippi

December 14, 1935

Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour" is banned in Boston

December 14, 1952

Dramatization of Anne Frank's diary broadcast on the radio

 

December 8, 2003

Empire State Building lights up to celebrate NCJW

The Empire State Building offered a special tribute to the 110th anniversary of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), when it was illuminated by the organization’s colors of blue and green, on the nights of December 8 and 9, 2003.

The illumination marked the founding of the Council at the Jewish Women’s Congress held at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The New York section of NCJW took a strong role in its early years sending volunteers to Ellis Island to look after the welfare of single Jewish women who arrived alone in the New World. Today, with 90,000 members, NCJW continues to advance Jewish values by working for social change, acting nationally to improve the quality of life for women, children, and families, and to advance individual rights and freedoms.

Source: www.ncjw.org/html/News/PressReleases/031204/.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

December 10, 1947

Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori wins Nobel Prize

Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori (1896–1957) became the first Jewish woman, as well as the first American woman, to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences when she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on December 10, 1947. She won the prize jointly with her husband, Dr. Carl F. Cori, and Bernardo A. Houssay. The scientists were honored for their research in identifying the “Cori Cycle” which explains how the body converts carbohydrates into sugars that supply muscles with energy. This research was particularly important in leading to the understanding and treatment of diabetes.

Dr. Gerty Cori was born in Prague. Encouraged by her family, she enrolled at the Medical School of the German University of Prague, receiving her Doctorate in Medicine in 1920. Together with her husband, Cori immigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1928. Carl took a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, NY, and Gerty was hired as an assistant pathologist. The Coris persisted in working together despite the discouragement of many institutions that sought to hire only Carl. In 1931, they moved to St. Louis where Carl became the chair of the pharmacology department at Washington University School of Medicine. Gerty was offered a position as a research assistant.

When Carl was made chair of a new biochemistry department in 1946, Gerty was finally promoted to full professor. They won the Nobel Prize the following year. In 1952, President Truman appointed her to the Board of Directors of the National Science Foundation.

Sources: New York Times, October 24, 1947, October 27, 1957; http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_69.html.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

December 10, 1977

Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow becomes first American-born woman to receive Nobel Prize in science

On December 10, 1977, Rosalyn Yalow became the first American-born and American-trained woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science when she accepted the Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work in the development of radioimmunoassay, a technique that allows scientists to measure minute amounts of hormones and other substances in human blood.

Born in 1921 and raised in the Bronx, Yalow planned to become a teacher until, at 17, she read a biography of Marie Curie and found her role model. Yalow studied physics at Hunter College, then took a position as a secretary at Columbia University’s medical school. No graduate school would admit her to a physics program, because faculty felt that there would never be job opportunities for a Jewish woman physicist. She hoped to use her staff position to take classes at Columbia and work toward a degree that way. However, in 1941, the University of Illinois relented and admitted her. She was the only woman and one of only three Jews, among 400 faculty and teaching assistants. Later, she married one of those Jews, Aaron Yalow.

Moving back to New York after graduate school, Yalow took a position at the Bronx V.A. Hospital, where she remained for over 30 years. Following her interest in nuclear medicine, she joined forces early on with physician Sol Berson; their research partnership lasted 22 years, until Berson’s death in 1972. Together, they discovered a way of measuring insulin in human blood. Along the way, they disproved some major tenets of medicine, including the idea that molecules like insulin were too small to produce antibodies. The technique of radioimmunoassay that they developed soon became a widespread tool for measuring all kinds of hormones and diagnosing many conditions that had previously been difficult to test for or treat.

After Berson’s death, Yalow continued her work, publishing hundreds of papers and giving lectures around the country and the world. In 1976, she became the first woman ever to win the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. The following year, she won the Nobel Prize. Though Yalow made a point of saying that she was not “a feminist in the ordinary sense,” and that she had kept a kosher home for her husband and raised two children, she also spoke out for women in science. At the Nobel awards dinner in Stockholm on December 10, 1977, she told attendees that “we still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home...we must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe in us; we must match our aspirations with the competence, courage, and determination to succeed, and we must feel a personal responsibility to ease the path for those who come afterward.” For a woman who had been told she would never find a job in physics, Yalow had gone a long way toward opening up that path.

Sources: New York Times, November 29, 1977, December 22, 1977, April 9, 1978; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1517-1520.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

December 11, 1922

Birth of author Grace Paley

Grace Paley, author, feminist and “somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist,” was born on December 11, 1922 in the Bronx. She wrote three highly acclaimed collections of short fiction including Later the Same Day (1985) and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), as well as three poetry collections, and her fiction appeared in many prominent periodicals. She taught at City College of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, and Dartmouth.

Raised in a socialist family by parents who had been arrested by the Russian czarist regime, Paley's progressive stances and concern for the underdog often emerged in her writing. Her political activism as an adult began with her work with the PTA at her children's school. She maintained an active and long-term involvement in anti-war, anti-nuclear, and feminist movements. Her more controversial activities included a visit to North Vietnam in 1969 and her role in co-founding the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the Left Bank and Gaza in 1987.

Paley received many grants and awards including a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in recognition of her lifetime contribution to literature in 1987. In 1986, Governor Mario Cuomo named Paley as the first official New York State Writer. Paley passed away on August 22, 2007.

Sources: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/literature/Overview_Jewish_American_Literature/ Into_The_Literary_Mainstream/Literature_Paley_Norton.htm; http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/paley.html; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1026-1028; jwa.org/discover/weremember/paley.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

December 12, 1950

Paula Ackerman becomes "spiritual leader" of Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Mississippi

On December 12, 1950, Paula Ackerman became the interim "spiritual leader" of Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi after her husband, who was the congregation's rabbi, passed away. Paula Herskovitz had married Rabbi William Ackerman in 1919. As a rebbitzin, Paula Ackerman was an active partner, not only teaching in the Hebrew school and helping out with the sisterhood, but also taking her husband's place in the pulpit whenever he was absent or ill. Ackerman was also a member of the board of the Reform movement's National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS) and chairman of NFTS's National Committee on Religious Schools.

After Ackerman's husband died on November 30, 1950, the synagogue's president asked the 57-year-old Ackerman if she could "carry on the ministry until they could get a rabbi." Ackerman wrote in a letter to a friend, "I also know how revolutionary the idea is—therefore it seems to be a challenge that I pray I can meet. If I can just plant a seed for the Jewish woman's larger participation—if perhaps it will open a way for women students to train for congregational leadership—then my life would have some meaning."

Concerns among national Reform leaders about Ackerman's lack of proper ordination and rabbinic education were mostly expressed privately. Many understood the importance of Ackerman's example in showing that a woman could serve in a rabbinical role. She steered Beth Israel for the next three years, leading weekly and holiday services, officiating at weddings, confirmations, and funerals, and participating in meetings of Mississippi rabbis. Eventually, Beth Israel did find a man to serve as their rabbi. In 1962, however, when the rabbi of Ackerman's childhood synagogue, in Pensacola, Florida, suddenly quit, Ackerman agreed to return temporarily to the rabbinical role to hold that congregation together as well.

Source: Pamela Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985, (Boston, 1998), pp. 120-126.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

December 14, 1935

Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour" is banned in Boston

Calling it "indecent," Mayor Frederick Mansfield banned Lillian Hellman's first play, The Children's Hour, from being staged in Boston, in a decree issued on December 14, 1935. Showcasing the destructive power of lies, the play depicts the experiences of the headmistresses of a girls' boarding school, who are ruined by a malicious rumor that they are lovers.

Although the play was also banned in London, The Children's Hour had opened on Broadway in 1934 to critical and popular success. One reviewer called it both "a venomously tragic play" and "one of the most straightforward, driving dramas of the season." The scandal associated with the play's lesbian theme was reflected in a 1936 film remake, These Three, for which a screenplay written by Hellman transformed the play's rumor of lesbianism into a rumored love triangle centered around a man. Another film version, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine in 1961, restored both the lesbian-rumor theme and the original title. The play remains a significant milestone in the representation of gay themes in American letters and an important piece of the contemporary American theater repertoire.

Hellman, whom the New York Times has called "one of the most important playwrights of the American theater," was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 20, 1905. Her parents both came from wealthy German-American Jewish families. After her high school graduation and three years at New York University, Hellman took a job reading manuscripts at a Greenwich Village publishing house. After a year, she left to marry writer Arthur Kober and move to Hollywood. Although their marriage ended in 1932, the move proved a good one for Hellman. She worked reading scripts and was soon writing them herself.

Other significant Hellman plays include The Little Foxes (1939), Another Part of the Forest (1947), and The Autumn Garden (1951), all loosely based on her mother's family, and the two anti-fascist plays Watch on the Rhine (1941) and The Searching Wind (1944). Watch on the Rhine and Toys in the Attic (1960) each won a New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

If her later plays were less controversial than The Children's Hour, Hellman's offstage life was even more so. From 1930 to 1961, she lived off and on with writer Dashiell Hammett, with whom she was active in left-wing literary circles. Hellman became known as a pro-Stalinist, and in 1948, she was blacklisted from Hollywood as Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunt began. Called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, she offered to speak about her own activities but refused to name names or speak about the activities of others. In a line perhaps more famous than those from any of her plays, she wrote to the committee that "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." It was considered a brave statement at the time, but Hellman was later criticized for never explicitly condemning Stalinism.

During a decade on the blacklist, Hellman wrote stage adaptations of four plays, including the book for the operetta "Candide," with music by Leonard Bernstein. She wrote no new plays after 1960, but did publish three volumes of memoirs. The first of these, An Unfinished Woman, won the National Book Award for 1969. Hellman died on June 30, 1984.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 618-620; New York Times, November 21, 1934, December 15, 1935, July 1, 1984.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

December 14, 1952

Dramatization of Anne Frank's diary broadcast on the radio

Soon after the 1952 publication of the English translation of Anne Frank's war-time diary of her family's hidden life in Nazi-controlled New Amsterdam, her story found its way to the American airwaves. A televised dramatization of the diary, written by Morton Wishengrad, appeared on NBC television's Frontiers of Faith in November. Jewish journalist Meyer Levin who had visited the concentration camps after the war had contacted Anne's father Otto Frank to request the rights to create a play based on the diary. On December 14, a radio drama written by Levin, called "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl," appeared on The Eternal Light series, produced by the Jewish Theological Seminary on the NBC network. In 1955, a stage version written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett appeared on Broadway.

Anne's account, depicting the spirit with which she continued to hope for the future and for humankind despite her family's desperate situation, struck a chord with American audiences, particularly with young girls and teenagers. Her diary and its various dramatizations exposed many people for the first time to the personal side of the destruction of European Jewry.

The Broadway play won a Tony Award in 1955 and was later portrayed in film in 1959. A 1995 restaging of the Broadway play included previously deleted sections of the diary, including political and religious references. Since its first release, the Diary of Anne Frank has sold more than 30 million copies and has been published in more than 60 languages. For over 50 years, the story of Anne Frank, who died in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15, has provided many people with a sense of personal connection to an often ungraspable tragedy.

Sources: Lawrence Graver, An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary (Berkeley, CA, 1995); J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, eds., Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton, NJ, 2003), pp. 192-193; http://www.annefrank.com.

Print, email, or bookmark this entry.

^ Back to top of page

<< Previous Week  —  Next Week >>