Welcome to Litsy!

Reading about my people always gives me such naches, & I love learning about those left out of the history books, so 2 for 2 here! Super interesting to read about lives of Jewish women back in colonial times alongside mostly Christians, & I liked seeing the focus on activism thru the generations. Did get a little bogged down w/too many ppl mentioned, a bit repetitive in the early sections. But fun & enlightening! Give a copy to your bubbe! 4/5 ⭐️

Serving three terms in Congress from 1971 to 1977, [Bella] Abzug announced, “We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it.” Later, addressing a conference on Jewish women‘s empowerment in Jerusalem, she exclaimed that it was high time that a woman became president of the United States: “She could hardly do worse than the men have done.”

😭😭😭

But public schools spotlighted Jewish difference. Bible readings from the New Testament, recitation of the Lord‘s Prayer, hymns exalting the Trinity, and passages portraying Jews in the harshest light in readers, geographies, and history books permeated many a classroom. A teacher had no compunction about telling a young girl, her very best student: “I am sorry for you...it is your misfortune, not your fault, that you are a Jew.”

😳😳😳

Born in Russian Poland, a self-described rebel at age 5, Ernestine Potowski learned to read the Torah & then to spurn its patriarchal teaching of ‘your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you‘ (Gen. 3:16). When she was 16, she refused to marry the man her father had chosen. She sued her father to keep the money she‘d inherited at her mother‘s death, which he‘d intended to use for her dowry. She won her suit & left Poland behind.

Time to learn a little more about my people 💜✡️ #nowreading