by admin on March 4, 2012
[This opinion piece is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Esther Eisengardt Friedman of Dubno (d. 1917).]
I originally viewed Megillat Esther as a kind of instructional manual for Jews about the dangers of the Diaspora, and the strategies for surviving them, and what the men — who took responsibility for implementing these strategies — expected of the women in facilitating their work. These strategies and the gender role division for carrying them out emerge from the book’s text.
But bearing in mind the fact that the root for “Esther” is hidden or secret, undertaking some literary archeology reveals the Megillah’s subtext: a glorification of assertive women as rescuers and a ridicule of sexist and/or powerful men as arrogant and also either evil, stupid or thoughtless. And the form this alternate and critical view of Jewish reality takes is that of a historical novel. [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on January 3, 2012
Rose Heilbron, one of Great Britain’s best-known barristers and judges, became the first woman jurist to sit at London’s Old Bailey, the central criminal court of England and Wales, on this date in 1972. Heilbron’s other “firsts” included being the first woman appointed King’s or Queen’s Counsel (1949), the first to lead in a murder case, and the first woman Recorder (the highest legal officer of a particular region). Heilbron gained national fame as a young woman in the 1940s and ’50s in a series of murder cases in which she gained acquittals or avoided capital punishment for her defendants. “Her qualities included a crystal-clear mind and a fine incisive voice,” wrote the Telegraph in her 2005 obituary. “She was also a tremendous fighter and a prodigiously hard worker . . . Her tenacity enabled her to dominate the courtroom, in spite of her quiet demeanor, which put some in mind of a housewife.” In 1975, she led a successful effort to reform Great Britain’s rape laws by protecting the identities of complainants and limiting the investigation of their sexual histories.
“The fact that a girl from Liverpool could become a QC and high court judge played a big part in my decision to go into law. She was an inspiration for me and countless other women of my generation.” —Cherie Blair
by Lawrence Bush on September 13, 2011
On this date in 1890, the eve of Rosh Hashone, Rachel (“Ray”) Frank became the first Jewish woman to preach formally from a pulpit in the United States. She was a talented, well-known teacher and newspaper correspondent who came to Spokane, Washington on a journalism mission. Finding no synagogue, and a community split between Orthodox and Reform elements, Frank expressed her dismay — she had long campaigned for Jewish religious unity — and community leaders responded by offering to arrange Rosh Hashone services if she would give a sermon. A special edition of the Spokane Falls Gazette, announcing that “a young lady” would preach to Spokane’s Jews that evening at the Opera House, drew both Christians and Jews to the event. Frank spoke so effectively on “The Obligations of a Jew as Jew and Citizen” that a non-Jewish man in the audience offered to donate land for the construction of a synagogue. “The Girl Rabbi of the Golden West,” as she became known, spent much of the 1890s lecturing to Jewish organizations and synagogues up and down the west coast, gaining enough celebrity that the topic of ordaining women became widely discussed for the first time. Surprisingly, however, Frank was quite conservative about women’s rights: She opposed the women’s suffrage movement and quit her public life as a speaker and writer after marrying in 1901. Her husband published a memoir about her several years after her death in 1948.
“Drop all dissension about whether you should take off your hats during the service and other unimportant ceremonials, and join hands in one glorious cause.” —Ray Frank
by Lawrence Bush on August 25, 2011
American women at last won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on this date in 1920. Among the Jewish women involved in the suffrage movement were Gertrude Weil, a lifelong activist in Goldsboro, North Carolina, who organized suffrage leagues in the 1910s and civil rights actions in the 1960s; Rose Schneiderman, the key organizer for the National American Women Suffrage Association; Ernestine L. Rose, president of the National Women’s Rights Convention of 1854; Hannah Greenbaum Solomon, who convinced the National Council of Jewish Women, which she founded, to support the suffrage cause; and Elizabeth Suchman, who helped create Votes for Women Broadside, a suffragist newspaper in New York City.
“Women in fighting for the vote have shown a passion of earnestness, a persistence, and above all a command of both tactics and strategy, which have amazed our master politicians. A new force has invaded public life.” —New York Times ratification editorial
But bearing in mind the fact that the root for “Esther” is hidden or secret, undertaking some literary archeology reveals the Megillah’s subtext: a glorification of assertive women as rescuers and a ridicule of sexist and/or powerful men as arrogant and also either evil, stupid or thoughtless. And the form this alternate and critical view of Jewish reality takes is that of a historical novel. [click to continue…]
