biography
pronunciation:
[sold]
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1860–1945)
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| biography:
| Educator, reformer, and Zionist leader, born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, the daughter of Benjamin Szold. Raised by her father to speak several languages, she graduated from a Baltimore high school and then taught for almost 15 years at a private academy for girls in that city, while also teaching in her father's synagogue. She became active in assisting the integration of Jewish immigrants into the USA, and organized a night-school to help them become ‘Americanized’ (1889–98). Using the pen name Sulamith, she contributed articles to the Jewish Messenger in New York City. She was editor of the Jewish Publication Society (1893–1916) and the most active editor of the American Jewish Year Book (1904–8). After her father died, she and her mother moved to New York City (1903), where she continued as an editor. Disappointed in love, she took a trip abroad and visited Palestine (1910), and from then on was devoted to Zionism, in general the settling of Jews in Palestine, and in particular to improving the health of the inhabitants of Palestine. She had been a member of a Zionist society in Baltimore since 1893, but now she organized and became first president of the national Hadassah (1912–26), and became the first woman member of the Palestine Zionist executive of the World Zionist Organization (1927). She spent many of the years 1920–45 in Palestine or in travelling to Europe to facilitate the immigration of Jews, especially those faced with the growing menace of the Nazis. Continuing her activities into her eighties, she received countless honours, none more significant than ‘mother of the Yishuv’, referring to the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Although an ardent Zionist, she always hoped to foster friendly relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. |
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