West End Synagogue: Deborah Dash Moore: A Century of Jewish Women in American Politics

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A Century of Jewish Women in American Politics
Originally published in Women's League Outlook 70:4 (Summer 2000)

Deborah Dash Moore

November 1992. As the polls closed, California voters made history that year. For the first time, two women would represent a state in the United States Senate. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer held hands aloft in their shared moment of victory. But more united them than their common Democratic party affiliation and identity as women. Unremarked by most observers of the two races at the time was the fact that both Boxer and Feinstein were Jewish women. Not only were they Jews, but both saw their Jewishness as integral to their politics and their lives. How did American Jewish women reach such a point of successful activism that two Jewish women could represent the most populous state in the Union? The answer to that question lies not only in the particular accomplishments of Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer but also in a longer history of Jewish women's involvement in American party politics. First, the particulars.

For all of their commonalities, Feinstein and Boxer differed in their politics and Jewishness. Brooklyn-born and educated Barbara Boxer migrated to northern California in 1965, bringing her liberal leanings with her in her suitcase. Before arriving in Marin County, Boxer had already organized tenants in her apartment building to persuade a recalcitrant landlord to make necessary improvements. She had also suffered from sexual harassment in college and rebuff in her initial efforts to become a stockbroker. Nevertheless, the war in Vietnam and the assassinations of 1968 catalyzed her politicization, and she ran for office for the first time in 1972. Undeterred by her loss, she eventually secured a position on the Marin County Board of Supervisors and then went on in 1981 to become its first female president. The following year she won election to Congress, where she focused on feminist issues. The 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings, specifically the charges of sexual harassment brought by Anita Hill, galvanized Boxer, who led a group of seven Congresswomen over to the Senate to demand full consideration of Hill's charges. Boxer decided to run for the Senate the following year. Her feisty liberalism, with its roots in Brooklyn Jewish culture transplanted to northern California, places Boxer outside the mainstream of American politics. It is a place she is comfortable with as a Jewish woman.

A member of Hadassah like her fellow senator from California, Dianne Feinstein grew up in San Francisco, the daughter of a well-established California Jewish family. Her father's brother introduced her to working class populism and took her to City Hall to watch meetings of the Board of Supervisors. Educated at a convent school to please her mother, whose family included members of the Russian Orthodox church, Feinstein went to Stanford University. Bitten by the political bug, she joined the Young Democrats. Like Boxer, she married and had a child, only to discover that her husband didn't want her to pursue a professional career. After divorce and a second marriage to Bertram Feinstein, she gained the freedom to enter politics. Feinstein also became the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. After a decade of political strife that included two assassinations, Feinstein ran for mayor. She served two terms, from 1979-1987, working hard to heal the conflict, fighting crime, and boosting the city's economy. She made an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1990, and then won election to the Senate to fill an unexpired term in the memorable year of 1992. Two years later she won a full term of her own as Senator. Unlike Boxer, Feinstein joined the Centrist Coalition of moderate senators and seeks the mainstream of American politics.

Behind the extraordinary success of these pathbreakers can be found the equally significant activities of earlier pioneers, Jewish women in politics who paved the way for others to follow. These include the California congresswoman, Florence Prag Kahn, whose motto was: "There is no sex in citizenship and there should be none in politics." Kahn arrived in 1925 in the House of Representatives after a special election to fill her Republican husband's seat, but she stayed for over twelve years by winning five elections in her own right. The first woman to sit on the Military Affairs Committee, she introduced legislation that brought air fields and bridges to San Francisco. Ironically, Kahn opposed women's suffrage before California adopted it in 1911. Active in Jewish life, she supported both Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women.

Kahn's path to political power via her husband contrasts vividly with that of Bella Abzug, the energetic congresswoman from New York whose campaign slogan was "This woman's place is in the house -- the House of Representatives." Abzug followed no man, paving her own way as a Jewish feminist leader from the early years, when she insisted on saying kaddish for her father who died when she was thirteen, to later married life, when she earned a law degree and pursued a career defending unionists and politically unpopular figures. Elected to Congress in 1970, Abzug symbolized dramatic changes for women. Her commitments to justice -- she cast her first vote for the Equal Rights Amendment -- paralleled her dedication to Jewish life, especially to Israel. Abzug never lost her childhood zeal for Zionism and vigorously defended Israel in International Women's forums, insisting that Zionism was a liberation movement.

Of course, most politics is local, not national, and Jewish women's activism at the neighborhood level set the stage for the relatively small number who would achieve national renown. Annette Greenfield Strauss managed to attract widespread attention in her local triumph. She was elected mayor of Dallas in 1987, the first woman and first Jew to hold that position. Strauss was born and bred in Texas. After earning a master's degree in sociology and psychology at Columbia University, Strauss married and moved to Dallas, eager to work. When she could not find a paying job, she volunteered for the United Jewish Appeal. Her skill in fund-raising brought her attention and eventually allowed her to enter politics. She moved from serving on the city council in 1983 to the position of mayor, before returning to volunteer activism.

Jewish women entered politics to solve problems they faced as wives and mothers, as workers and daughters. Radical ideologies inflected their understanding of why they suffered: why kosher meat cost too much, or why they endured constant pregnancies; why they worked endlessly and earned so little, or why large companies discriminated against them. Both socialism and anarchism recruited working-class, immigrant Jewish women and schooled them in politics, teaching them the values of solidarity, organizing, direct action, militancy. Jewish women's organizations taught middle-class, second generation women similar lessons. If you wanted to change the world, even make modest improvements, then you needed to learn how to exercise power. Men were not going to step aside for women; women would have to push their own agenda to the forefront.

Some of that agenda can be seen in the host of political causes espoused by Jewish women, from consumer protections to birth control, from civil rights to peace movements. Feminism itself as a political movement owes much to such Jewish women activists as Betty Friedan, who never ran for public office but wielded significant power through the National Organization of Women. The choices open to Jewish women for political involvement cover a wide range. Jewish women follow no one line in politics, though often common concerns unite them.

Madeleine May Kunin, Vermont's first woman and first Jew to serve as governor for three terms, articulates in her autobiography the special link between Jewishness and politics: "On some level that I do not yet fully understand," she writes, "I believe I transformed my sense of the Holocaust into personal political activism. This was the source of my political courage. I could do what the victims could not: oppose evil whenever I recognized it." Kunin continues: "The United States of America would protect me. I lived in a time and place when it was safe for a Jew to be a political person, to speak, to oppose, to stand up." Born in Switzerland in 1933, Kunin arrived in America in 1940, a step ahead of the Nazis. Marriage and children occupied her along with community organizing to solve local problems. In 1972, she ran for the Vermont legislature and won. After serving two more terms, she ran as a Democrat for lieutenant governor, surviving under a Republican governor. After failing in a bid for the governor's seat in 1982, she succeeded in 1984. Three terms in office ended in 1991, when Kunin returned to private life. By then she had amassed an impressive record of achievements in education, environment, family court, budget cuts and tax increases. Most significantly, Kunin promoted feminism, advanced women by appointing many to executive and judicial positions, and used the symbolic power of her office to inspire women.

Looking backwards at a century of Jewish women's political activism, the triumph of November 1992 seems less surprising. Jewish women entered both margins and mainstream of American politics, exerting an extraordinary impact on American society. Energy, resourcefulness, a commitment to persevere in the face of obstacles, and visions of a better world sustained and propelled Jewish women to engage in politics. Unlike the apathy that infects many segments of American society today, enthusiasm characterized Jewish women's approach to politics. The road was never easy, but if the task needed doing, Jewish women could be found ready to face the challenge.