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“Any Other Girls in This Whole World Like Myself” Jewish Girls and Adolescence in America During the winter of 1889–1890, the editors of the nationally circulated weekly Jewish Messenger decided to sponsor a written symposium on the topic of “The American Jewess.” In a publication that had always run numerous articles by, about, and for women, this idea was not particularly surprising. Other Jewish periodicals had carried out similar projects, and during the 1860s, Jewish Messenger itself had run a series of articles on “The Religious Education of Our Females.”1 The editors contacted a number of Jewish women and asked them to comment on the status of the American Jewess. As the introduction to the published symposium explained, “the question was thus worded so as to elicit the opinions as to her education from every point of view—the religious, intellectual , social, and economic.” The introduction went on to explain that Jewish Messenger’s motive for organizing this discussion was a firm belief in “the desirability of the Jewess taking a more active part in the American synagogue.”2 A consideration of American Jewish women’s status would provide ample evidence that women were ready, willing, and able to take their place in American Judaism—indeed, that they had already done so to a considerable degree. The symposium ran for four consecutive weeks in March 1890. The women who contributed to the Jewish Messenger symposium were a varied lot. Some, such as educational administrator and communal activist Julia Richman and playwright Martha Morton, were nationally prominent.3 Others, such as public school principal Ella Jacobs and Young Women’s Union founder Fanny Binswanger, were highly visible in their local or regional Jewish communities.4 Some lived in cities with large Jewish communities and some did not. Some of the contributors 1 19 were married and some were not. Some were traditionally observant and some supported radical reform in Judaism. What they shared was a devotion to the Jewish community and a conviction that women should not only have a prominent place in that community but in fact were essential to building and shaping it. For all the writers, the key to present and future success in this vital endeavor was the next generation of American Jewish women. Jewish girls, they argued, were the most important members of the American Jewish community. Girls bore the responsibility and the privilege of shaping the future. The original topic about the American Jewess was interpreted by virtually every symposium contributor as a question about Jewish girls in America. The writers invested Jewish girls’ broadly defined education with significance beyond their own coming of age. The girls’ personal and collective struggles to define an identity reflected the struggle of the American Jewish community as a whole to maintain a particular ethnic identity and religious culture while still aiming for integration into American society at large. As they had already been for at least thirty years, Jewish girls in America would serve as both guardians of tradition and agents of acculturation. The contributors to the symposium drew on a variety of approaches to these weighty matters. As Richman explained, “The American Jewess must be regarded as a triangular unit, which requires development in three directions lest the harmony of the whole be destroyed.” Any American Jewish girl must necessarily deal with nationality, religion, and gender simultaneously.5 Like Richman, most of the symposium contributors wrote not only out of their professional or social expertise but also out of their own past experiences as Jewish girls in America. A few of the writers believed gender was the fundamental consideration and stressed preparation for womanhood above all else. Annie Nathan Meyer, who had the previous year been among the founders of Barnard College, stated baldly, “I do not know that I advise any particular training for Jewish young ladies beyond the best that can be had for all young ladies.”6 Others, including Richman, agreed that the American Jewess was “first, a woman,” but argued that as womanhood itself was undergoing such dramatic change, all American girls would grow up into a world greatly enlarged for women as the century drew to a close. Writing from Richmond, Virginia, Binswanger believed “the American Jewess stands in the same relation to the changing conditions of our time as do her sisters of other faiths.” For Binswanger as for others, girls’ compre20 | “Any Other Girls . . . Like Myself” [18.188.61.223] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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