Philanthropy and Volunteerism

Blanche Gilman

A native New Yorker, Blanche Pearl Gilman contributed her energy and resources to a variety of religious, health, social, and activist organizations. Gilman devoted her career to bringing diverse groups together, from her interfaith work to her leadership in the Pro-Falasha (Ethiopian Jewry) Committee.

The title page of volume 1, issue 1, of a new series of the Die Deborah newspaper. The page reads, in German): "Vorwärts, meine Seele, vorwärts mit Macht! Eine deutsch-amerikanishe Wochenschrift Foerderung juedischer Interessen in Gemeinde, Schule und Haus. Als Wochenschrift begündet 1855 von Isaac M. Wise. Herausgegeben von einem Vereine jüdischer Schriftsteller."

German Immigrant Period in the United States

Among nineteenth-century German Jewish immigrants to the United States, married women often made their own sources of incomes. However, high rates of poverty in large cities motivated women to create benevolent societies. As women participated more in the public sphere, the traditionally strict dichotomy between male and female roles changed in immigrant communities.

Germany: 1750-1945

The Jewish Reform movement did not liberate women from their subordinate religious status, and the nineteenth-century bourgeois German family ideal with its rigid gender roles soon eclipsed the fluid structure of premodern Jewish families. Jewish women were expected to transmit German bourgeois values while also shaping their children’s Jewish identity.

Sylva Gelber

Sylva Gelber dedicated her life to social work, labor politics, and women’s rights. She was the first student to enroll in Henrietta Szold’s School of Social Work in Jerusalem after immigrating to Palestine in 1932. When she returned to Canada in 1948, Gelber became nationally recognized as as a political advocate for women’s rights.

Carrie Bamberger Frank Fuld

The daughter of German Jewish immigrant parents, Carrie Bamberger Frank Fuld was a philanthropist who, in partnership with her brother, department store magnate Louis Bamberger, founded the internationally acclaimed Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Fuld was also involved in many Jewish philanthropic causes throughout her life.

Ruth Bernard Fromenson

Ruth Bernard Fromenson was an early twentieth-century Zionist and Jewish communal worker who volunteered extensively within Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Henriette Fürth

Despite facing ongoing anti-Semitism, journalist Henriette Katzenstein Fürth remained a passionate and vocal German patriot throughout her life. She began publishing articles on social criticism while raising eight children, eventually writing 200 articles and 30 monographs, earning both an income and a reputation for insightful journalism. She served on the Frankfurt municipal council and in 1932 she was honored by the city of Frankfurt for her 70th birthday.

Miriam Freund-Rosenthal

Miriam Freund-Rosenthal brought her passion for art and history to her leadership of Hadassah. Among other leadership positions, she served as the national president from 1956 to 1960.

Jane Friedenwald

Jane Ahlborn Friedenwald used her position as a member of one of the most prominent Jewish families in Baltimore to support and promote vital Jewish causes and institutions.

Ida Weis Friend

Ida Weis Friend worked to improve the lives of those in her Southern Jewish community on many levels. Her leadership in Jewish organizations, such as Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women, and her political activism, such as her time as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and Commission on Interracial Cooperation, earned her many honors and accolades.

Stella Heinsheimer Freiberg

Stella Heinsheimer Freiberg helped found the Reform Movement’s National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods and pushed for the major American Reform organizations to join the World Union for Progressive Judaism. As NFTS president in the 1920s, she advocated for women’s greater participation in the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

Lillian Freiman

Lillian Freiman was unquestionably the most prominent Jewish woman in Canada in the interwar period. Freiman was exemplary for her degree of independent social activism and devotion to an array of Jewish and non-Jewish social causes.

Myra Ava Freeman

The first Jew to be appointed lieutenant governor of a Canadian province and the first woman to hold the office in Nova Scotia, Myra Freeman was born in St. John, New Brunswick. Serving as Lieutenant Governor from 2000 until 2006, Freeman made her mandate the redefinition and democratization of the largely ceremonial office. In 2003 she was named First Honorary Captain (Navy) of Maritime Forces Atlantic, Her Majesty’s Canadian Forces.

Henrietta Franklin

Henrietta Franklin (née Montagu) was a leading British educationist and suffragist and a supporter the Liberal Judaism movement, pioneered by her sister Lily Montagu.

Selma Fraiberg

Selma Fraiberg was a psychoanalyst, author, and pioneer in the field of infant psychiatry. Her classic parenting book The Magic Years was the result of her years of research in the field of social work and her experiences as a stay-at-home mother.

Jane Brass Fischel

An outstanding communal leader in New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community in the early twentieth century, Jane Brass Fischel was a generous philanthropist and active participant in Jewish communal activities.

Ruth E. Fizdale

Ruth E. Fizdale is credited with making modern social work a profession. Fizdale helped transform social work from a charitable volunteer activity to a paid profession, through her development of a fee-for-service, nonprofit counseling firm.

Mary Fels

Mary Fels used her wealth and her talents to further the Zionist cause, arguing passionately for a Jewish state and helping create both settlements and industry in Israel. Both Fels and her husband, a successful soap manufacturer, felt their wealth gave them a responsibility to reform capitalism and use their money for philanthropy.

Ruth Lewis Farkas

Ruth Lewis Farkas’ remarkable and varied career ranged from creating a retail chain that survived the Great Depression, to teaching sociology, to running international education initiatives. Her impressive and full life spanned many occupations: educator, sociologist, businesswoman, philanthropist, inventor, wife, and mother.

A promotional photo of Mary Fabian, signed and labeled with a show title and "Chicago Opera Co, 1924"

Mary Jacqueline Fabian

Mary Jacqueline Fabian was a talented soprano who toured throughout the United States in Europe in the twentieth century. Fabian’s primary legacy to the arts lies not in her performances, her versatility on stage, or her popularity behind the microphone, but rather in her organizational skills and her unswerving conviction that opera and music education are not just for the elite.

Sara N. Evans

Sara Nachamson Evans served as the “first lady” of Durham, North Carolina, from 1951 to 1963. Known affectionately as “Miz Evans” by her friends and family, she was a prominent local, regional, and national leader of Hadassah.

Emunah

Emunah was founded in 1935 under the leadership of Tova Sanhedrai-Goldreich. With its headquarters in Jerusalem, the organization aims to strengthen various sectors of the Israeli community. World Emunah aims to strengthen global commitment to Israel in communities abroad.

Hannah Bachman Einstein

Hannah Bachman Einstein’s activism and volunteer activities bridged very different worlds, from temple sisterhood leadership to lobbying and helping draft legislation for children’s welfare. She helped draft what became the Child Welfare Law of 1915, was the first female board member of the United Hebrew Charities, and served as president of the New York State Association of Child Welfare Boards.

Eastern European Immigrants in the United States

Forty-four percent of the approximately two million Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1886 and 1914 were women. Although these women were more politically active and autonomous than other immigrant women, dire economic circumstances constricted their lives. The hopes these immigrant women harbored for themselves were often transferred to the younger generation.

Ruth Dreifuss

Ruth Dreifuss was the first Jewish member of the Federal Government of Switzerland and the first female President of the country. When she became President of the Confederation in 1999, she was the first Jew and the first woman to hold the office.

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