As we approach yet another election year, American voters may be drawing nearer to an enormous landmark: electing a woman president. With Hillary Rodham Clinton polling as the top Democratic contender, it’s never felt more possible.
Ernestine Rose’s speeches on religious freedom, public education, abolition, and women’s rights earned her the title “Queen of the Platform.” In the 1850s, she was more famous than her co-workers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Yet soon after her death in 1892, she was forgotten because of her status as an immigrant, an atheist, a radical, and a woman.
Until recently, “law” in relation to the Jewish community meant religious law, but in a “post-emancipation” context, “law” is related to offical behavior, enforcing equal treatment of all groups. For Jewish women who immigrated to the United States, this modern approach afforded them new freedoms, especially under secular as opposed to religious leadership.
Jewish women participated in and propelled all aspects of the women's rights movement, from suffrage in the nineteenth century to women's liberation in the twentieth. Despite occasional instances of antisemitism in the general feminist movement, Jewish women were passionate advocates of feminist goals.
The Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, or ELF, was a women's group inspired by the humanistic spirit of poet Emma Lazarus. The clubs worked through education and outreach to promote a progressive, secular Jewish heritage, as well as causes such as women's rights and the elimination of antisemitism and racism.
