Voting rights, reproductive freedom, and world peace. These are issues of today. They both unite us and divide us. Politicians build their political careers either in direct support of these principles or dance around the fact that all their political clout will limit access to them.
American Jewish women have a long history of involvement both as advocates and activists on behalf of these basic rights. Here in Fort Wayne, Jewish women have been at the forefront of advancing equal rights and opportunities for women and the larger community. At the turn of the 20th century, Minnette Baum brought all forms of social services to our community and to Israel, mirroring the energy and expertise of Jane Addams’s Chicago Hull House. In 2011 and 2012, women from Congregation Achduth Vesholom joined with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation to host a series of community discussions focusing on immigration, worker’s rights, same sex marriage and public education.

Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace tells the exciting and complex history of American Jewish women who wanted to be both good Jews, good women, and good citizens. They were on the front lines of all the feminist movements during the first decades of the twentieth century. They embraced social and political activism. They spoke out as Jews and as feminists. Until Melissa Klapper’s book was published their voices have never been accurately and fully recorded.

Klapper states: “Jewish women in the United States and Europe achieved recognition during their own time as major players in the suffrage and especially in the birth control and peace movements, yet standard accounts of women’s activism barely mention them”.
I heartily and proudly recommend this account of our Jewish feminist history.
 
- Harriet