January 14: Hannah Greenebaum Solomon

Hannah Greenebaum Solomon, who founded the National Council of Jewish Women in 1893, was born in Chicago on this date in 1858. She was an important social reformer in turn-of-the-century Chicago who gave coherence to the city’s social services by creating the Bureau of Personal Service in 1897. The NCJW grew out of the 1890 Chicago World’s Fair, at which events for women of many religious denominations were organized. Solomon, selected to lead the Jewish contingent, resolved to create a permanent organization. “[W]ith no existing associations or lists of Jewish women and without the aid of telephones and modern travel, locating participants was difficult work,” writes the Jewish Women’s Archive. “Solomon hand-wrote over ninety letters, and her planning committee exchanged ‘no less than two thousand’ over the next two years,” according to her autobiography, Fabric of My Life (1946). By far among the most liberal and activist organizations within the Jewish mainstream throughout its century of existence, the NCJW today has about 90,000 members.

“We must add our voices to those who cry out that there is a standard below which we will not allow human beings to live, and that that standard is not at the freezing nor starving point....In a democracy all are responsible.” —Hannah G. Solomon