New Jewish Hall of Fame: Women Who Made the Cut
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.
/ /
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
