Difference between revisions of "Hadassah (The Women's Zionist Organization of America) - excerpt from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, 1986"
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[[Hadassah]] (a Hebrew word for ‘myrtle,’ the name of the biblical Queen Esther) was established in 1912 when a twelve-member group of the Daughters of Zion Study Circle decided to expand into a national organization, under the leadership of [[Henrietta Szold]]. Their twin goal at the time was to foster Zionist and Jewish education in the United States and to begin public health nursing and nurse training in Palestine. [[Henrietta Szold]] leadership and ideas led to the creation of the Zionist organization with the largest membership in the world, now said to number 370,000 in the United States and Puerto Rico. | [[Hadassah]] (a Hebrew word for ‘myrtle,’ the name of the biblical Queen Esther) was established in 1912 when a twelve-member group of the Daughters of Zion Study Circle decided to expand into a national organization, under the leadership of [[Henrietta Szold]]. Their twin goal at the time was to foster Zionist and Jewish education in the United States and to begin public health nursing and nurse training in Palestine. [[Henrietta Szold]] leadership and ideas led to the creation of the Zionist organization with the largest membership in the world, now said to number 370,000 in the United States and Puerto Rico. | ||
| − | [[Henrietta Szold]] started her first career as a teacher and educational administrator in Baltimore, where she taught school for sixteen years and organized and ran a night school for Russian Jewish immigrants. Her second career, as the secretary of the editorial board of the [[Jewish Publications Society]], lasted twenty-three years. Then, in 1916, at the age of fifty-six, she began her third career, as ‘a full-time propagandist for Palestine and a vigorous booster of Hadassah.’<ref name=”Sochen”> June Sochen, Consecrate EvelY Day: The Public Lives of Jewish Women. Albany: SUNY Press, 1981 <ref/> In 1920, she went to Palestine, and except for a three-year stay in New York, she remained in Palestine until her death in 1945. The vigorous membership organization Szold created has been continuously involved in Zionist activities and fundraising since its founding'; unlike the other American Zionist organizations, it did not experience a decline in membership after 1948. | + | [[Henrietta Szold]] started her first career as a teacher and educational administrator in Baltimore, where she taught school for sixteen years and organized and ran a night school for Russian Jewish immigrants. Her second career, as the secretary of the editorial board of the [[Jewish Publications Society]], lasted twenty-three years. Then, in 1916, at the age of fifty-six, she began her third career, as ‘a full-time propagandist for Palestine and a vigorous booster of Hadassah.’ <ref name=”Sochen”> June Sochen, Consecrate EvelY Day: The Public Lives of Jewish Women. ''Albany: SUNY Press'', 1981 <ref/> In 1920, she went to Palestine, and except for a three-year stay in New York, she remained in Palestine until her death in 1945. The vigorous membership organization Szold created has been continuously involved in Zionist activities and fundraising since its founding'; unlike the other American Zionist organizations, it did not experience a decline in membership after 1948. |
==Structure and Funding== | ==Structure and Funding== | ||
Revision as of 09:07, 24 September 2014
This page is an extract, reproduced with permission, from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1986. [1]
Year established: 1912 President: Ruth Popkin Address: 50 West 58th Street, New York, NY 10019 Publications: Update, Headlines, Hadassah Magazine
General Background
Hadassah (a Hebrew word for ‘myrtle,’ the name of the biblical Queen Esther) was established in 1912 when a twelve-member group of the Daughters of Zion Study Circle decided to expand into a national organization, under the leadership of Henrietta Szold. Their twin goal at the time was to foster Zionist and Jewish education in the United States and to begin public health nursing and nurse training in Palestine. Henrietta Szold leadership and ideas led to the creation of the Zionist organization with the largest membership in the world, now said to number 370,000 in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Henrietta Szold started her first career as a teacher and educational administrator in Baltimore, where she taught school for sixteen years and organized and ran a night school for Russian Jewish immigrants. Her second career, as the secretary of the editorial board of the Jewish Publications Society, lasted twenty-three years. Then, in 1916, at the age of fifty-six, she began her third career, as ‘a full-time propagandist for Palestine and a vigorous booster of Hadassah.’ Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag
Israel Support Work=
Like other American Zionist organizations, Hadassah performs two general tasks: it provides information on Israel to the American people, and it raises funds for specific programs in Israel. By far Hadassah's most important role since its establishment has been supporting and creating health institutions in Israel, particularly the Hadassah University Hospital and the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. In addition, Hadassah has helped create schools of nursing and dental medicine, outpatient clinics, and community health centers.35 It is also involved in raising funds for a variety of other programs in Israel, including Youth Aliyah, a vocational training program for disadvantaged Jewish youth in Israel. Hadassah is one of the largest organizational contributors to Youth Aliyah in the world.40 In cooperation with the Absorption Department of the JA and the Israeli Ministry of Labor, Hadassah has built six day care centers.
Hadassah also identifies itself as "an integral partner of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and it is the JNF's ‘largest single contributor ... in the world.’[2] Since 1926, Hadassah has committed itself to the support of twenty JNF special projects and now supports a new JNF project every three years. On the American scene, Hadassah provides
- Factual information on the development and security of Israel to the American public.
In practice, this information is often a reiteration of official Israeli pronouncements enhanced through Hadassah's public standing and medical connections. On 18 July 1982, for example, while Israeli planes were bombarding Beirut, Hadassah sponsored a full-page ad in the New York Times signed by eleven medical doctors from, leading universities and medical centers. Under the heading, these members of the Medical Advisory Board of Hadassah would like to share the following facts with the American people: The text of the ad indicated that the 1975 civil war in Lebanon had devastated the health care system, specially in the south, and that in 1976 the Israeli government and organizations like Hadassah had stepped in to provide badly needed health care to the people in southern Lebanon. These statements did not mention the massive Israeli devastation of an existing health care infrastructure that had been effectively provided by the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Lebanese National Movement since 1975.
At the sixty-ninth annual convention in August 1983, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, U.S. permanent representative to the UN, opened the first plenary session and received the Henrietta Szold Award, Hadassah's highest honor. The convention banquet was addressed by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Meir Rosenne, and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware. Costa Rica's permanent representative to the UN, Jorge Urbina, was presented with a Hadassah citation ‘for his country's friendship to Israel and for transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.’[3]
Like other Zionist organizations, Hadassah pays particular attention to youth. According to ‘Facts about Hadassah,’ Through its youth movement, Hashachar (The Dawn) with its Youth Judean summer camps, year-round clubs, leadership training seminars and Israel programs, Hadassah offers young people a varied program of Jewish identity within a Zionist framework. A national peer-led youth movement, it has 8,000 members on two levels: Young Judea, for boys and girls 9 through high school; Hamagshimin (the l<'ulfillers) whose college age through 30 members provide Zionist centers on college campuses and aliyah support groups. Younger members receive the Young Judean, oldest Jewish children's magazine in the United States. Camp Tel Yehudah, the national senior leadership camp and five regional Young Judea camps are summer extensions of Hashachar. [4]
Hadassah's Zionist Youth Movement reports that over two thousand students have signed up for its six Young Judea Camps, and that in 1983 eight hundred enrolled at Camp Tel Yehuda. Hadassah also sponsors summer leadership training seminars and "Destination Israel" summer tours for teenagers. [5]
Notes
- ↑ This page is reproduced by permission of the Institute of Palestine Studies, granted on 25 February 2014. The Institute retains copyright of all material.
- ↑ Hadassah, "Facts About Hadassah," May 1983.
- ↑ WCUZ, "69th Annual Convention Report."
- ↑ Hadassah, "Facts About Hadassah."
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs named”Sochen”
