Other Things Being Equal

Introduction

INTRODUCTION BIOGRAPHY Born in San Francisco on 15 June 1865 to Simon and Annette (Levy) Wolf, immigrants from Alsace,1 Emma Wolf was the fourth of eleven children,2 She grew up in the upper-middle-class San Francisco neighborhood of Pacific Heights where she and her family were members of Congregation Emanu-EL3 Her father, considered "one of the most important Jewish pioneers of [Contra Costa] county/'4 died suddenly when Emma was thirteen , and it seems no coincidence, as editor of the American Jewess Rosa Sonneschein noted, that it was then that Wolf began writing: "Her literary genius developed at a tender age, which she has cultivated continuously since her thirteenth year/'5 In My Portion (An Autobiography) (1925), Rebekah Bettelheim Kohut describes her high school classmate and close friend: Another fine influence in those days was my friendship with my classmate, Emma Wolf, later a brilliant authoress noted particularly for her story, Other Things Being Equal She and I used to roam the sand hills together on botany excursions. . . . Saturday afternoons and Sundays we went over the hills of Saucelito and San Rafael, yellow poppies around us, carpets of maiden-hair ferns under our feet. . . . One of eight daughters, Emma Wolf, was handicapped from birth by a useless arm, but there was no defect in her mentality. Her memory was the most remarkable I have ever encountered. She could quote io INTRODUCTION with equal facility the texts of long poems or the fatality statistics of each of the world's great battles. . . . Those walks, indeed , did a great deal to stimulate our sense of beauty. But what meant most of all to me, perhaps, in those impressionable days of adolescence, was the exchange of innermost thoughts with my classmate. I had begun to doubt the worthwhileness of all the sacrifices it seemed to me that my father and his family were making for Judaism. What was the use of it all, I questioned. Why make a stand for separate Jewish ideals? Why not choose the easier way and be like all the rest? The struggle was too hard, too bitter. Emma Wolf was undergoing much the same inner conflict. It meant real suffering to both of us. The spiritual growing pains of adolescence are hard to bear. They cannot be laughed out of existence.... And as I meditated the thorny path which the Jew traveled, it seemed to me that if the Jew could assimilate with the Christian, many of his irksome trials would be eliminated, with no spiritual loss.6 Rebekah, ironically, went on to immerse herself in Judaism by marrying the prominent rabbi Alexander Kohut, a widowed Hungarian emigre with eight children. As his wife, she became intimately involved in the intellectual life of American Judaism. After his death in 1894, Kohut became more active in educational and service activities, and from 1894 to 1898 served as president of the New York section of the National Council of Jewish Women.7 Wolf's public life, on the other hand, was restricted by polio; she never married and led a relatively insular life, especially after being confined to a wheelchair. Wolf and her sisters were educated through normal school to become teachers; her sisters did become educators, but Wolf's polio kept her from putting her education to work in that way. Instead, she wrote, and, in doing so, extended her influence beyond the home. In Wolf's obituary in the 31 August 1932 San Francisco Chronicle, she is described as a literary figure whose home u was the mecca of a group who INTRODUCTION n looked upon her as an uplifting, far-reaching influence," Rebekah Godchaux in a letter to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle (31 August 1932) describes Wolf: "Emma Wolf—the frail, modest little woman, who, through illness, hardly ever left her room[,] • • . [a] writer, a poetess, a thinker, a philosopher[,] • • . [s]he gave each and every one the rare treasures of her heart and soul. She was able to adapt herself to all—from the simplest to the most eminent—who sought her company/' During the time that Wolf was writing, women's traditional roles were being actively questioned in the press and especially in the arena of women's clubs, a movement gaining momentum in the 1890s, Women's literary clubs, in particular, were popular throughout the country and provided a forum for the study and discussion...