Talk with some of the women in our community who were mentored starting in the 1960s by the late philanthropist, volunteer and activist Esther Leah Ritz, and they’ll tell you that she “was a woman who did not need the women’s movement.”
“Her voice was loud and strong — and men always listened to her,” continued Betty Lieberman, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s director of strategic planning and services, and one of the women who volunteered in the community under Ritz’s tutelage.
But back in the sixties and seventies in Milwaukee and elsewhere in the Jewish communal world, men did not always listen to other women’s voices, and local women needed Ritz’s help in empowering them professionally and as volunteers.
So Ritz, then-president of MJF’s Women’s Division, sat with two of them — Lieberman and Betsy Green — literally standing behind her, and typed in Lieberman’s living room what became known to these women as “the white paper” on “Women’s Role in Communal Leadership and Decision Making.”
“We wrote this resolution, which was formally adopted by the MJF board in early 1976,” said Green, “so that Leah Knight, the Women’s Division director, could be considered for the open position of planning director. And we wrote it in secret, so that she would not lose her job.”
“It’s difficult to imagine a situation like that,” mused Lieberman this week, “but back then, the organized Jewish community did not even use women’s first names when formally addressing them [their husband’s first name was used]. There was no female planning director in the entire country. And there were 89 men on the federation board and only 12 women. It was not right, and we were going to change it.”
Change it they did. The resolution called for, among other things, “That the federation commit itself to a plan for achieving equal representation of women on all committees, including the nominating committee, executive committee and board; that women’s organizations be recognized when ‘top community leadership’ is called upon for community mobilizations; and that qualified women be given equal consideration for professional staff vacancies for all federation positions.”
“I didn’t even know about the white paper,” said Knight, the first direct beneficiary of the resolution, who admitted she still finds it intimidating to talk about how she felt about taking on the planning director role. “But Esther Leah set up the environment that helped me to succeed. She believed that because of women’s special life experiences, they brought something different and crucial to the community’s decision-making process.”
“Esther Leah,” agreed Lieberman, “taught men that it’s okay to listen to women’s voices — that women frequently have something unique to offer — and that women can contribute equally to the decision-making process.”
And according to Lieberman, Green and Knight, Ritz made sure that women had the tools to participate in that process. “As president of the Women’s Division, she educated women about issues in the community, about its structure, about how decisions have to be made, about fund raising, budgets and spreadsheets,” said Knight.
And to this day, all three women have not lost their sense of awe at Ritz’s abilities, energies and accomplishments locally, nationally and internationally.
“I still remember my surprise,” said Green, “back when I started volunteering and Esther Leah said for the first time ‘Hello Betsy’ that she knew my name. And for more than 30 years, she really has been my mentor. When I was asked to become president of the federation, I asked her if I could do it [Green served from 1992-1994]. Anything I was asked to do that was major, I asked her advice about. She did that for a lot of people, many we don’t even know about.
“Esther Leah didn’t care about being the first woman of things, and she took others along with her in that belief.”
I can vouch for that. Esther Leah Ritz was one of the first people who gave me, euphemistically, “a hard time” back in my greener days as editor. Yet only weeks after doing so, we talked about our difference, and she concluded our conversation with the following advice: “Don’t ever let anyone give you a hard time as the first woman editor of The Chronicle.”
When times got tough, as they do for any editor and still, sometimes, for professional women, I remembered and drew strength from Ritz’s words.
As Lieberman said of her, “We knew we could never be an ‘Esther Leah,’ but if we could be a little bit like her, we knew we would be a lot better.”
May Esther Leah Ritz’s memory be for a blessing.
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