This is the seventh in a series of articles intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community. Today, we focus on Edith Adelman.
Edith Adelman, 85, couldn’t believe at first that The Chronicle found her name in a random pick and sought to write a story about her purely on that basis. She thought the impetus must have had something to do with the long history of involvement she and her husband Albert (Ollie) have had with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
Her husband is a former campaign chair and president of the organization when it was called the Milwaukee Jewish Welfare Fund. In fact, it was in the last year of his tenure as president (1968-71) that the name was changed.
Edith was a campaign chair and president (1965-68) of the Women’s Division and won the division’s Esther Cohen Community Service Award in 1970. She also wrote a regular column for The Chronicle in the late 1960s-early 1970s, called “Serendipity.”
But it was also partly for that reason that she was reluctant to be interviewed. “We’ve been in the paper so much,” she said.
And this attitude toward herself apparently is characteristic. Melvin S. Zaret, former executive vice president (1955-84) of the MJF, worked closely with Adelman during that time. “She was a woman who never felt too big to take on a small job,” he said. “And she was too modest ever to expect a great deal of credit.”
But Adelman would be an intriguing, colorful member of this community even if she hadn’t been involved in the federation. “All my life I did things that Jewish girls don’t usually do,” she said.
As a child growing up in Chicago (she was born Edith Margoles in Atlanta), “I was a sort of athlete,” she said. She played in ball games with her younger-by-one-year brother and his friends. Later, she ran in track meets; and in college “I thought I might be a physical education major.”
So it’s not surprising to learn that Milwaukee native Albert was “a football hero” when she met him at Northwestern University, where they were both students. They married about six months after they graduated.
While in college she changed her major to social work. When asked if this reflected her later interest in community service, she said it “probably did,” although she doubted she thought in those terms at that age.
However, she added that she “always was involved in politics” and read a lot about it; and this may have influenced her change of major. She did some professional work in the field in Chicago for a short time, then for five years after she was about 50 in Milwaukee.
For most of her life, she was a homemaker raising the couple’s three children and a “professional volunteer” who “drifted” into her volunteer work for the federation. “I just wanted to be part of it,” she said.
She credits Ann Agulnick and Esther Cohen with mentoring her for leadership roles. “They were great leaders in the community, and they brought along a lot of people,” Adelman said.
But Adelman left her own mark, according to Women’s Division director Evelyn Garfinkel. “She was one of the innovators” who emphasized women contributing money in their own names, rather than subsumed with their husband’s, said Garfinkel.
And Adelman’s name is permanently attached to the Women’s Division’s Political Awareness Series, for which she created an endowment. “She cares a lot about political advocacy,” said Garfinkel.
Adelman has had some struggles with her health — which, also characteristically, she didn’t want to discuss with The Chronicle. (As Zaret put it, “She never imposed her problems or her burdens” on anyone else.) But, according to Garfinkel, Adelman has not let that stop her from continuing to be active and attending the Political Awareness Series.
Individuals for this column are selected at random from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation community data base. The Chronicle does not have access to donor information, or contact members of the community with regard to their giving habits.
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