"'Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace' explores the social and political activism of American Jewish women from approximately 1890 through World War II. Written in an engaging style, the book demonstrates that no history of the suffrage, birth control, or peace movements in the United States is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women's presence. The volume is based on years of extensive primary-source research in more than a dozen archives and hundreds of published primary sources, many of which have previously never been seen. Voluminous personal papers and institutional records paint a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and working-class American Jewish women were consistently and publicly engaged in all the major issues of their day and worked closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist causes"--Page 4 of cover.

This is the "everything" women's suffrage and Nineteenth Amendment book, coming just as the country celebrates the centenary of the constitutional amendment that finally brought the vote to all American women. Women's Suffrage: The Complete Guide to the Nineteenth Amendment tells the dramatic story of American women's long fight for the vote and passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A veritable library on all things to do with suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment, this reference tells the heroic stories of suffragists and brings to life the ideas and deeds of the organizations that made suffrage possible. Along the way, the book delves into less well-known stories, like the experiences of African American women during the fight for suffrage, the role of labor in the suffrage movement, and the special role of Western states in the fight for voting equality. The material analyzes key moments in the suffrage fight. A comprehensive document section brings to life the arguments for and against suffrage. Included among many primary sources are Jane Addams's provocative "If Men Were Seeking the Franchise" (1913), Carrie Chapman Catt's "Address to Congress on Women's Suffrage" (1917), and many more speeches, laws, and documents of all types.

“It has ever been the boast of the Jewish people, that they support their own poor,” declared Kentucky attorney Benjamin Franklin Jonas in 1856. “Their reasons are partly founded in religious necessity, and partly in that pride of race and character which has supported them through so many ages of trial and vicissitude.” In That Pride of Race and Character, Caroline E. Light examines the American Jewish tradition of benevolence and charity and explores its southern roots. Light provides a critical analysis of benevolence as it was inflected by regional ideals of race and gender, showing how a southern Jewish benevolent empire emerged in response to the combined pressures of post-Civil War devastation and the simultaneous influx of eastern European immigration. In an effort to combat the voices of anti-Semitism and nativism, established Jewish leaders developed a sophisticated and cutting-edge network of charities in the South to ensure that Jews took care of those considered “their own” while also proving themselves to be exemplary white citizens. Drawing from confidential case files and institutional records from various southern Jewish charities, the book relates how southern Jewish leaders and their immigrant clients negotiated the complexities of “fitting in” in a place and time of significant socio-political turbulence. Ultimately, the southern Jewish call to benevolence bore the particular imprint of the region’s racial mores and left behind a rich legacy.

Finalist, 2019 PROSE Award in Biography, given by the Association of American Publishers Fifty years after the start of the women’s liberation movement, a book that at last illuminates the profound impact Jewishness and second-wave feminism had on each other Jewish women were undeniably instrumental in shaping the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Yet historians and participants themselves have overlooked their contributions as Jews. This has left many vital questions unasked and unanswered—until now. Delving into archival sources and conducting extensive interviews with these fierce pioneers, Joyce Antler has at last broken the silence about the confluence of feminism and Jewish identity. Antler’s exhilarating new book features dozens of compelling biographical narratives that reveal the struggles and achievements of Jewish radical feminists in Chicago, New York and Boston, as well as those who participated in the later, self-consciously identified Jewish feminist movement that fought gender inequities in Jewish religious and secular life. Disproportionately represented in the movement, Jewish women’s liberationists helped to provide theories and models for radical action that were used throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led to new initiatives in academia, politics, and grassroots organizing. Other Jewish-identified feminists brought the women’s movement to the Jewish mainstream and Jewish feminism to the Left. For many of these women, feminism in fact served as a “portal” into Judaism. Recovering this deeply hidden history, Jewish Radical Feminism places Jewish women’s activism at the center of feminist and Jewish narratives. The stories of over forty women’s liberationists and identified Jewish feminists—from Shulamith Firestone and Susan Brownmiller to Rabbis Laura Geller and Rebecca Alpert—illustrate how women’s liberation and Jewish feminism unfolded over the course of the lives of an extraordinary cohort of women, profoundly influencing the social, political, and religious revolutions of our era.

"The Jewish Sunday school in nineteenth-century America was a pioneering new institution founded by Jewish women that not only reimagined the nature and purpose of Jewish education, but also reimagined Judaism as a modern American religion"--

Zelda Popkin’s adventurous life could have made her the protagonist of one of her own novels. In his brilliant telling of the story of her life, her historian grandson, Jeremy D. Popkin, has made a singular contribution to the history of American Jewish women in the twentieth century. From the 1920s when she worked in the highly competitive and male-dominated public relations business to her rise as a million selling author of popular fiction beginning in the 1940s, including some of the earliest fiction on the Holocaust and the state of Israel, Zelda’s life and work documented the rise of American Jewish women. Popkin uses Zelda’s experience to bring to life a larger story of American Jews and American women in the twentieth century, with the vividness that comes from having a lively character at its center. At the same time, this will also be a story about a woman whose powerful personality profoundly influenced several generations of a family. Popkin makes the case that even if she sometimes burnished her stories to create what he calls “legends of Zelda,” she was one of the most articulate female members of the generation of Jews who fought their way into the American middle class during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Zelda’s life is a rich source of evidence about the experience of American Jewish women and offers perspectives that are frequently at odds with analyses based on men’s lives. The story of Zelda, her generation, and its rich and significant legacy will create a compelling portrait and detailed tapestry of an iconic woman and her time.

This publication is significant within the field of Jewish studies and beyond; the essays include comparative material and have the potential to reach scholarly audiences in many related fields but are written to be accessible to all, with the introductions in every chapter aimed at orienting the enthusiast from outside academia to each time and place.

The untold story of how American Jews reinvented modern humanitarianism during the Great War and rebuilt Jewish life in Jewish homelands.

The work of a coterie of dynamic women - not the brainchild of Reform Judaism's male leaders, as is often thought - Women of Reform Judaism has been a force in the shaping of American Jewish life since its founding as the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods in 1913. The synergy of Reform Judaism's universalist ideas and the women's emancipation movement in the early twentieth century made the synagogue auxiliary a natural platform for women to assume new leadership roles in their synagogues, in Reform Judaism, and in American society. These "sisterhoods" have stood for the solidarity among synagogue women as well as the commitment of these women to important social action issues. Called Women of Reform Judaism since 1993, this oldest federation of women's synagogue auxiliaries has grown from 52 temple sisterhoods to 500 and a membership of over 65,000 women, today a vibrant international women's organization. Women of Reform Judaism, in cooperation with The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives and Hebrew Union College Press, marks its centennial anniversary with this collection of new scholarly essays which looks back at its history in order to understand how the hopes and dreams of its founders have come to fruition. Armed with the rich archival resources of the American Jewish Archives, including Proceedings of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1913-1955, eighteen scholars contributed essays on the spectrum of Women of Reform Judaism's activities, including their funding of Hebrew Union College during the Great Depression, their support for Jewish education through production of a substantial women's Torah commentary designed to edify lay people as well as scholars and clergy, their promotion of Jewish foodways and art through publication of cookbooks and support of synagogue gift shops, their invention of the Uniongram as a formidable fundraising tool on a par with the Girl Scout cookie, and their efforts to safeguard Jewish continuity through support of youth activities (NFTY).

This is an unprecedented collection of three newly translated Yiddish plays written by women in the period from 1880 to 1920. Taken together, these plays provide a fascinating insight into female Jewish perspectives on a range of women's issues prevalent at the time and, in some cases, still prevalent today. The works explore topics such as the Jewish law of the 'chained widow', pregnancy out of wedlock, and birth control, amongst many others. Three Yiddish Plays by Women includes an incisive contextual introduction which provides historical context for each individual work, summaries and discussion of the texts and stage histories for two of the three that have them. The introduction offers biographical information about each playwright and looks at what ambit they were each active in, taking into consideration gender norms. It also engages an array of recent sources and angles on intersecting questions of theater and gender in a landmark volume of vital significance to students of women's history, modern Jewish history, cultural history and theatre history.