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Preface In 1976, the Women's Division of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago asked me to speak on the role of Jewish women in American history. It seemed to be an appropriate request. I am an historian of American women who is Jewish. However, there was one serious problem. I was not a specialist on the lives of Jewish women in America. But the subject intrigued me; it appeared to be a natural synthesis of my interests in women and in the group of women of which I am a part. I accepted the invitation and proceeded to investigate the sources available on the subject. I soon discovered that the material, especially secondary-source information, was sparse. Male historians of Jewish America paid little or no attention to women. My experience in researching women's history, of course, should have prepared me for that fact. I had to decide how to pursue the topic. During the course of my research (the speech became the beginning and not the end of my efforts ), a few books were published on Jewish American women. They have been a helpful introduction but did not deal with the themes and issues that came to interest me. While Consecrate Every Day used both primary and secondary sources, its contribution, I believe, is in its presentation of broad categories of the public experiences of Jewish American women: the focus upon volunteer activists, factory workers, writers, and professionals. I am particularly interested in those Jewish American women who publicly discussed the role that Judaism played in their lives. As in most human endeavors, many people partiCipated in the making of this book. Friends and colleagues discussed the subject with me, read the manuscript at various stages, and offered constructive criticisms of it. Professor Lawrence Fuchs of Brandeis University was an early and helpful reader; Professor Melvin Urofsky of Virginia Commonwealth University was a later and helpful reader. I thank both of them for their penetrating and important viii Consecrate Every Day comments. The three anonymous readers for the State University of New York Press also deserve acknowledgement as I found their questions and concerns very useful. This book is dedicated to my mother, my sister, and my friend, three Jewish American women who are living examples of the harmonic synthesis of Judaism and modern American life. Ultimately, I am solely responsible for the interpretations and viewpoints expressed in these pages. June Sochen Northeastern Illinois University ...

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