By Judith Rosenbaum September 17, 2009

The results are in from the National Museum of American Jewish History’s poll to select the 18 individuals to be featured in their “Only in America” Hall of Fame. The results are not too surprising. Of the 18, six are women, and their names are familiar to most: Henrietta Szold, Golda Meir, Barbra Streisand, Emma Lazarus, Estee Lauder, and Rose Schneiderman. If you follow the Jewesses With Attitude blog, you’ve probably heard of Rose Schneiderman, as she’s a favorite at Jewish Women’s Archive, but of the six women I would guess she has the least amount of name recognition, so I’m pleased that she made it into the final 18.

Six of 18 isn’t exactly equitable, but it’s respectable, especially given that the original list of 218 candidates only included about 40 women, and especially for this kind of poll, which relies heavily on name recognition and therefore tends to skew toward the most famous. The museum explains that the results combine the voting results (top person in each category) with the efforts of historians and curators to create a balanced and reasonably representative group.

Judith Rosenbaum is Director of Public History at the Jewish Women’s Archive, and a contributor to the Archive’s Jewesses With Attitude blog, which cross-posts weekly with The Sisterhood.

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