When Ghita Bessman was 20, she took her first trip to Israel, in the company of a woman who was a national-level official with Hadassah. It was 1950, and Israel was celebrating the second anniversary of its statehood.
Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America — which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year — had, by 1950, been playing a key role in the life of Palestine and Israel for 38 years.
“I was able to see many different Hadassah facilities — five buildings in Jerusalem alone — and I was very impressed with what I saw,” Bessman recalled in a telephone interview July 26.
“When I came home — home was Lincoln, Neb., at the time — I spoke to the local Hadassah chapter about the trip and my admiration for the work Hadassah was doing in Israel,” said Bessman. “Then I asked to become a member. No one had to ask me; I became a member on my own initiative.”
Bessman moved to Milwaukee in 1951, and lived here for 10 years before making her permanent home in Madison.
“I was very impressed with the Hadassah women in Milwaukee,” she said. “Hadassah attracted women who were models of leadership, and many of them took on leadership positions. I eventually became president of the Great Lakes Region.”
Bessman, 82, is in many ways representative of a cohort of women who came into Hadassah with first-hand knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust and with a deep understanding of the importance of the creation of a Jewish homeland in Israel.
In the family
For many, commitment to Zionism had been an integral part of their home life as they grew up.
“We were a Zionist family, excited with the creation of the state (of Israel),” said Sandra Zetley, 84, in an oral history interview with Barbara Stein, conducted at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee July 26.
As a member, and then president, of the Henrietta Szold group of Hadassah in Milwaukee, Zetley said, “I excelled at programming, I was willing to work, and I felt that others needed to be educated to Zionism.”
Indeed, the coming of Hadassah to Wisconsin in the first place may have resulted from family connections.
Henrietta Szold (1860-1945), following a trip to then-Palestine with her mother in 1909, founded Hadassah in New York City in 1912. In 1914, Henrietta’s sister, Rachel Szold Jastrow, founded the Madison chapter — one of the first Hadassah chapters west of New York and the third in the United States. Following Rachel’s death in 1926, the Madison chapter was renamed the Rachel S. Jastrow Chapter.
According to a brief history of the Rachel S. Jastrow Chapter, presented to Hadassah’s Midwest Regional Conference, Nov. 20-21, 1937, Henrietta and her mother frequently visited Rachel in Madison. Rachel had moved to Madison as the bride of Joseph Jastrow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
(Information on the Madison chapter comes from files of the Rachel S. Jastrow Chapter records housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Rita Shapiro, current president of the Great Plains Region of Hadassah, said in a telephone interview Aug. 6 that the Kansas City, Mo., chapter was started in 1913, making it the first chapter west of New York.)
Milwaukee’s chapter appeared in 1920, eight years after Hadassah’s founding, according to “The History of the Jews of Milwaukee” (1963) by Rabbi Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd P. Gartner.
In a telephone interview July 23, Rena Safer, who has served in many Hadassah leadership roles — locally, regionally, and nationally — quipped that her involvement began “in utero.”
Her parents were living in British Mandate Palestine at the time of her birth; and her father, Milton Scheingarten, worked as an architect on the original Hadassah Hospital project at Mt. Scopus in 1935-37.
When in her teens, and living in Linden, N.J., Safer said she was active in Young Judaea, a Zionist youth organization sponsored jointly at that time by Hadassah and the Zionist Organization of America.
Founded in 1909, Young Judaea is the oldest Zionist youth movement in the United States. According to its Handbook for 1927-28, among the chief aims of this organization is to “cultivate habits of service and cooperation in the cause of Zionism and of the general Jewish community.”
Beginning in July, Young Judaea became an independent organization. Hadassah, which had been Young Judaea’s sole sponsor since 1967 and had supported the movement for more than 25 years before that, will provide transition funding for three years, according to a July 3 JTA report.
Judy Kaplan, in an oral history interview July 26 at the JMM, said her maternal grandfather had been an “ardent Zionist,” and that Zionism was a force in the life of her mother, Esther Shapiro Cohen, who in turn became a leader in Hadassah in Milwaukee.
“In 1920 (my mother) was invited to spend six weeks in New York with Henrietta Szold,” Kaplan said, and upon her mother’s marriage in 1923, she joined the Milwaukee chapter of Hadassah. Kaplan described membership in Hadassah as “part of the genes of my family.”
Interviews with Hadassah members around Wisconsin revealed that commitment to the organization often spanned generations within families.
In an oral history interview at the JMM on July 26, Judy Eglash of the Milwaukee chapter traced family membership in Hadassah through six generations, from her great-grandmother through her own grandchildren.
Safer said she is part of five generations of Hadassah members, beginning with her mother, through her great-granddaughter.
Barbara Temkin, a past president of the Madison chapter, said in a telephone interview July 20 that her connection to Hadassah was twofold.
As a young child in Pittsburgh, Pa., she was aware that her mother and paternal grandmother were involved. As an adult, living with her husband in Madison, she found that her mother-in-law, Sylvia Temkin, was deeply involved, serving as president of the Madison chapter at the time.
A younger member, Michele Roitburd, current co-president of the Milwaukee chapter, said in a telephone interview July 26 that family ties provided her connection to Hadassah.
“My mother, Helen Eglash, and my aunt, Judy Eglash, were members since the 1960s, and both were chapter presidents,” she said. “My mother made me a life member as a child, and both my daughters are life members.”
Some of the younger women now active in Hadassah expressed desire to see their own children eventually become involved.
Melissa Barmore, current president of the Madison chapter, said in a telephone interview July 25 that her commitment to Hadassah had been inspired by her late grandmother, Eva Deutschkron, a Holocaust survivor who had a very strong feeling for Hadassah, seeing it as a supporter of Israel and as a connection to other women.
“My daughter is almost 10 years old,” Barmore said. “I want to involve that generation, too — like my grandmother did with me. A seed was planted. It was in the forefront of my mind.”
Peggy Yee, current co-president of Hadassah’s Milwaukee chapter, said she hoped her own active participation would impress her children.
“I have a 10-year-old daughter,” she said in a telephone interview July 27. “I want to show my children volunteering. I want to model this for kids.”
Source of social life
Family ties were not the only reason women belonged to Hadassah.
Debbie Minkoff is a past president of the Madison chapter and of the Great Lakes Region, and still serves on Hadassah’s national board.
She said her husband’s family — which was very active in the Madison Jewish community — did not pressure her to join when she and her husband settled there after their marriage.
“What appealed to me (about Hadassah) was that there was room for a lot of creativity,” she said in a telephone interview July 26. “You could run with your passion. It was totally different from my work life in a science lab — that’s another thing that made it attractive.”
She recalled, for example, organizing a three-day trip to New York City in the late 1990s, including tours of the United Nations, Ellis Island, the Jewish Museum and the Tenement Museum. “I loved planning it,” she said, “and we all learned so much.”
As often as not, however, the desire to be a member was in response to what friends were doing. As Safer put it, “Women join Hadassah because someone they know asked them to.”
Zetley recalled joining the group in Milwaukee in 1949 because “most of my friends were there.” She said the group of about 22 young women met in each other’s homes, and that “great friendships formed” that have continued to the present.
Being new to a community also prompted some women to join, especially when they were made to feel welcome.
“When I was new to Sheboygan, I received a call from the membership chairman at the Sheboygan chapter,” said Debbie Intravaia, in a telephone interview July 25. “She asked me to come to a meeting, and I said yes. I had no idea what Hadassah was.
“At the meeting, the recording secretary was ill, and I was asked to take notes. I became secretary, and two years later I was co-president. I became president the next year.”
Phyllis Garelick, president of the Fox Valley (Appleton) chapter of Hadassah for 16 years, likewise identified Hadassah as an important link for newcomers to the community.
“In Appleton, women joined the synagogue, the sisterhood, and Hadassah,” she said in a telephone interview July 24. “There were no other Jewish institutions in the community.”
Social and social
For participating members, social life in the organization has, from the beginning, quickly become linked with activities deemed socially constructive and educational.
Cecile Schein, president of the Madison chapter, in a speech to Hadassah’s Midwest Regional Conference, Nov. 20-21, 1937, recalled one of the earliest activities of the Madison chapter, a sewing circle that, during World War I, made layettes and other articles for Palestine.
“We were working with our hands for the babies of Palestine — for the new generation which was to redeem the land,” Schein said.
On April 15, 1951, the Wisconsin State Journal announced a Hadassah donor luncheon in Madison to feature fashions from Israel. This social event promoted the output of the Hadassah Institute of Fashion and Design in Jerusalem, which had opened the previous year, to prepare students for a dress industry which would tap the untouched markets of the Middle East.”
The opportunity to support and engage in socially constructive work, and to broaden their educational horizons, has continued to attract women to Hadassah to the present.
Hadassah chapters in Wisconsin often sponsor educational programs, such as health initiatives, in their own communities.
Libby Miller, 84, a longtime president of Hadassah’s Green Bay chapter, said in a telephone interview July 30 that one of the outstanding programs of the Green Bay chapter in the late 1990s was a health seminar put on in conjunction with the local YWCA.
“We covered all areas of medical care,” she recalled, adding that one of the participating doctors was Spanish-speaking, to accommodate the Hispanic women in the community who attended the program.
“Hadassah Cares” was an education program initiated in 1992 to promote breast health awareness among American women of all ages. Safer said that the Milwaukee chapter ran a corollary program, “Check it Out,” which went into local high schools to teach girls to do breast self-examination, and to distribute instruction cards to hang in the shower.
Hadassah women around the state said that study groups and book club-type meetings also were especially popular for their generation.
In response to Israeli statehood, for example, the Madison chapter announced in its Bulletin of October 1948 that the Study Group topic for the year would be “The Relation of the American Jew to Israel.”
Hadassah Medical Organization
The establishment of medical institutions in Israel is the role with which Hadassah is most often identified, and perhaps best exemplifies the social consciousness of the organization.
Wisconsin members commonly cited the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) as a prime focus of the fundraising done by their chapters.
Providing medical resources was not, however, coincidental with the creation of Israel, but a goal Hadassah set for itself during its earliest years and continues to pursue down to the present.
On that fateful trip to Palestine in 1909, Szold witnessed starvation and disease, prompting her to set for Hadassah the biblical mission of Aruhat Bat Ami — the Healing of the Daughter of my People.
One of the guiding principles governing Hadassah’s medical mission, which remains to this day, was that it serve everyone, without regard to race, creed, or ethnicity.
In 1913, the year after Hadassah was founded, the organization sent two nurses to Palestine. They treated destitute patients in their homes and started eye treatment for children in the Jewish schools.
By April, 1914, they had treated approximately 5,000 children, 20 percent of whom were afflicted with trachoma. By 1936, Hadassah eye clinics had given 1.5 million treatments. (These figures come from an article published in the Capital Times in 1937, in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s files.)
In 1918, Hadassah sent an American Zionist Medical Unit to Palestine. Composed of 45 doctors, nurses, dentists, and sanitary workers, this unit essentially laid down the roots of what would become the modern Israeli healthcare system. The doctors included the father of Clarice Borodkin, who would become a Milwaukee chapter member.
Numerous public health programs — including an infant welfare project; a school hygiene project that checked children and virtually eliminated scalp and skin diseases; and a school luncheon and nutrition program — were pioneered and originally run by Hadassah. All were supported by funds raised by chapters in Wisconsin and across the nation.
By 1937, Hadassah was supporting a 190-bed hospital in Jerusalem, non-sectarian, with an x-ray institute, a radium institute, an ambulance service, and the Henrietta Szold School of Nursing.
It was also maintaining hospitals in Safad, Tiberias, and Haifa, and was building the Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital, the medical center of Hebrew University, at Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem.
“The road to the hospital on Mt. Scopus went through Arab villages, and from 1948, it came under Arab attack,” said Safer. “One major attack (April 13, 1948) killed Haim Yassky (HMO Director-General at the time). The Mt. Scopus hospital was evacuated, and Hadassah set up (five temporary) clinics around Jerusalem.”
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Mt. Scopus was returned to Israeli authority, and Hadassah undertook extensive renovation of its hospital at Mt. Scopus. It was rededicated in 1975.
In 1961, Hadassah found and purchased land for a new hospital on the other side of the city, at Ein Kerem. Next month, Oct. 15-18, when Hadassah members, their friends and families, gather in Jerusalem to celebrate the organization’s centennial, the celebration will include the dedication of the new Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower at Hadassah-Ein Kerem.
Wisconsin chapters of Hadassah contribute significant financial support to the expansion of Hadassah Hospital facilities in Jerusalem, said Rita Shapiro, president of the Great Plains Region — encompassing chapters in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Iowa — in a telephone interview Aug. 6.
The same humanitarian impulses led Szold, during the 1930s, at age 75, to take on directorship of Youth Aliyah. This branch of Hadassah eventually rescued some 30,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe.
The support for Youth Aliyah among Wisconsin’s Hadassah chapters was strong. Speaking to Hadassah women in Waukegan, Ill. in 1937, a member of the Madison chapter told of a recent exhibition of drawings and models made by young people in Europe who had been brought into Youth Aliyah.
“We saw a youth parting from his parents and entering a training camp in Germany,” she said, describing the scene. “Teachers were ready to greet him. You would have marveled at the earnestness with which he entered the preparations for his new life away from his parents.
“Perhaps you would have experienced a little sadness and perhaps you would have wept a little, even as the youth’s parents did in the portrayal, when you saw his joy at being chosen to leave for Eretz Yisrael with the next group. What a thrill this youth seemed to get when he was on the boat, singing Hebrew songs. An when he landed, the protecting hand of Henrietta Szold led him to the welcoming land of Eretz Yisrael.” (The speech — speaker unidentified — is in the WHS files of the Jastrow chapter records.)
After Israeli statehood was achieved, humanitarian efforts among local chapters in Wisconsin continued. Around 1948-49, the Madison chapter held a clothing drive — in which only new apparel was solicited — to benefit some 70,000 newcomers to camps in Israel. The announcement of the drive explained the rationale behind it:
“We believe the new citizens of Israel deserve the best we can give them. We are not dispensing gifts by sending them new clothes; we are giving them one more tool with which to remake their own lives. That is one reason we want only new clothing.” (The announcement, undated, is in the WHS files of the Jastrow chapter.)
Leadership cultivated
“You who are starting this year, with the 40th anniversary (of Hadassah in 1952), will soon learn that we are not an ordinary organization,” a chapter member told attendees at the Madison Hadassah membership luncheon at Temple Beth El, Sept. 14, 1951. “You will find us a group of dynamic women who cultivate every opportunity for self-expression and the development of our talents.” (The speech — speaker unidentified — is in the WSH files of the Jastrow chapter.)
This statement reflects a long history in which Hadassah has attracted women with leadership potential and has cultivated their skills.
Kaplan said her mother, Esther Cohen, trained three generations of Milwaukee Hadassah members.
“It was rigorous,” Kaplan said. “We had to practice. We had to know the material and how to present it. We had to know how to dress appropriately.”
Zetley confirmed that she herself was a beneficiary of Cohen’s training. “We listened to everything she told us,” she said.
Cohen, who rose to be first from the Great Lakes Region to serve on Hadassah’s national board, was a role model for the younger women, as the Szold sisters before her had been, and as women such as Judy Eglash, Rena Safer, and Debbie Minkoff are today.
Safer said leadership sessions are a regular part of Hadassah’s national conferences. “We believe in mentoring, both in formal and in informal ways,” she said, adding that one of the personal highlights of her own service to Hadassah were occasions when “women said I was their model.”
Barmore, president of the Madison chapter and herself a younger member, said, “The younger women learn from the mentorship of the older women. The passion and history of the chapter makes you want to be involved. The desire of the older women for our Hadassah chapter to continue. They’re encouraging, and they’re willing to accept change.”
And leadership skills learned at Hadassah transfer. Minkoff is current president of the Jewish Federation of Madison. Kaplan said she used her Hadassah training in a professional way, as associate director for State of Israel Bonds (1985).
In addition to the mentorship provided to younger members, Hadassah founded its own Leadership Academy in 1998, aimed at creating new leaders for Hadassah and the Jewish community.
Membership decline
In 1951-52, 11 active Hadassah chapters existed in Wisconsin, with membership ranging from 31 in Janesville to 2,883 in Milwaukee. The total membership for the state was 4,041.
The files of the Jastrow chapter give the breakdown as: Milwaukee, 2,883; Racine, 166; Kenosha, 154; Madison, 269; Janesville, 31; Beloit, 39; Sheboygan, 111; Fond du Lac, 54; Appleton, 142; Stevens Point, 41; Green Bay, 151.
Today, Hadassah’s national organization lists four active chapters in Wisconsin, in Fox Valley, Green Bay, Madison, and Milwaukee. The total membership for the state today is estimated at between 1,670 and 1,800.
In emails Aug. 3, Barmore said the Madison chapter currently has 453 members, and Lisa Putterman, treasurer and office administrator of the Milwaukee chapter, said current membership here numbers 1,200.
Garelick in Fox Valley (Appleton) and Miller in Green Bay said that, at present, their chapters meet only as book clubs. Miller specified that attendance in Green Bay ranges from eight to 18 women. Garelick said the Hadassah women in Appleton are elderly, and Hadassah activity is done in conjunction with the synagogue sisterhood there.
“The young women today are working, or, if they’re not working, are into fitness, taking care of kids, helping out at school,” said Garelick. “It’s a different time — technology has changed things — women don’t join anymore.”
Intravaia, in Sheboygan, attributed the decline in membership there to demographics. “A lot of women here made their children life members. But, those children live out of state — they’re not here. It’s a story of an aging population — we don’t have a lot of young people up here, and many older members have passed away. The younger women who are here have young children, and many work.”
Roitburd, one of the younger women in the Milwaukee chapter, said she essentially holds down two full-time jobs — one is paid employment, the other is chapter co-president, a voluntary post.
“Why do I do it? Sheer devotion,” she said. “I was recording secretary for years. When Peggy (Yee) came in (to the chapter), we became friends. We felt we needed to convince people that Hadassah was not only a mothers’ organization — not only for old people. There was nobody to take over, and we felt it was not fair to continue the burden (of leadership) on the older women. So, Peggy and I took over. We’ll probably be doing it for years to come.”
In accounting for the dwindling membership, some would argue that Hadassah does not hold the same importance for many of the younger women today as it did for their mothers and grandmothers before them.
Safer observed that there are those in the younger generation, for example, who have a different perspective on Israel.
“The younger generations have never known a world without Israel,” Safer said. “The older women knew personally of the Holocaust and how important it was to have Israel — and for the first 25 years we worked hard to support it. Israel was under attack constantly in those early years.
“But since the 1967 war, there’s been the Arab issue and the disputes over the settlements, and some in the younger generation think of Israel as being the oppressor.”
Minkoff suggested that specific projects that Hadassah supports in Israel have more potential appeal to younger women than recruitment based on Hadassah’s traditional support for Israel in general.
In addition to the significant financial support Wisconsin chapters provide for the expansion of Hadassah Hospital facilities in Jerusalem, they support such other institutions as Hadassah College Jerusalem, one of Israel’s top-ranked smaller colleges, and three Hadassah Youth Aliyah villages, where young immigrants and Israel’s underprivileged youth are housed, fed, educated and nurtured.
The interviews with the young Hadassah women who have taken on leadership roles in Milwaukee and Madison revealed that they have been seeking novel ways to attract new members.
Barmore said she was seeking to bring younger women into the Madison chapter by talking to them, asking, “What is going to make you want to join and participate?”
She said they are not looking for book clubs. “They want activities that are simple, quick, light, spontaneous — such as movies and wine tastings. Scheduling is also a big factor in getting people to come.”
At the regional level, Shapiro said, “It’s a different world today — women are working, and our chapters have little if any paid staff anymore — it’s all volunteers.”
Acknowledging that membership levels are a concern, she said the regional offices of Hadassah are now actively exploring strategies for bringing younger women into the organization.
Lynne Kleinman, Ph.D., a retired teacher and journalist, is working with a group developing “Jewish Neighbors in Wisconsin: A Web-based Curriculum,” a project of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc.
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