Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940 - Hardcover

Klapper, Melissa R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814748945 ISBN 13: 9780814748947

Publisher: NYU Press, 2013

Synopsis

Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Women's Studies

Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace explores the social and
political activism of American Jewish women from approximately
1890 to the beginnings of World War II.

Written in an engaging style, the book demonstrates that no history
of the birth control, suffrage, or peace movements in the United
States is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women's
presence. The volume is based on years of extensive primary
source research in more than a dozen archives and among hundreds
of primary sources, many of which have previously never
been seen. Voluminous personal papers and institutional records
paint a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and
working-class American Jewish women were consistently and
publicly engaged in all the major issues of their day and worked
closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist
causes.

This extraordinarily well researched volume makes a unique contribution
to the study of modern women's history, modern Jewish
history, and the history of American social movements.

About this title

About the Author:

Melissa R. Klapper is a professor of history, Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ.

Review:

"Melissa Klapper has made an outstanding contribution to a history that we thought we knew well, of some of the great women's struggles of the early twentieth century suffrage, peace, and birth control. However, she has changed that history by focusing on Jewish women's important participation in them. We learn not only of their contribution, but the antisemitism they encountered. Her analysis is nuanced and represents the very best of what women's history does, to understand the complexity of identity as women struggled to become citizens and political actors in the United States. This is a remarkable book." (Riv-Ellen Prell,Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota)

"Highly recommended." (R.C. Cottrell CHOICE)

"In this important volume, Melissa Klapper introduces readers to an overlooked generation of Jewish women and the causes they championed, particularly in the interwar eramost notably suffrage, access to birth control, and the international peace movement." (Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000)

"By illuminating Jewish women's contributions to mainstream social and political activism, the book fills an important scholarly gap . . . Klapper's work provides a window onto the broader topography of turn-of-the-century progressive reform. This variegated lens on the way gender and ethnicity inflected Jewish women's progressive reform stands as a major contribution to the historical record, providing a compelling view on a broad constellation of activist foci and the manifold ways in which they were connected ideologically. That Klapper contextualizes her stories of individual activists with rich big-picture analysis makes this book an excellent choice for teaching. . . . The author ultimately provides an eloquent and detailed set of answers no only to the question, 'what's Jewish about American Jewish women's activism?' but also 'how are struggles for social justice forged in the politics of identity?' In other words, Klapper provides yet more eloquent historical proof that the personal has always been political." (Caroline Light H-Net Reviews)

"Klapper . . . conducted her research across the country, accessing primary sources such as Jewish newspapers, National Council of Jewish Women meeting minutes, letters and diaries. The result is the stories of many impassioned, educated and influential women who helped shape the early social and political movements." (Melissa Gerr Baltimore Jewish Times)

"[The] recent book, Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940, explore[s] the lives of those who focused on the great women's movements of the early 20th century: suffrage, birth control, and peace." (Jewish Exponent)

"In this illuminating account of campaigns for social justice, Melissa Klapper takes an important cohort of Jewish women and shows us how Jewishness mattered to their activism as well as how their activism influenced the world they lived in. This book provides the best explanation I have yet encountered for the more recent involvement of Jews in the social movements of the 1960s. It is a wonderful and inspiring read." (Alice Kessler-Harris,author of A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman)

"In this lucid and compelling narrative, Klapper captures both the personal dedication of individual women and the broad sweep of Jewish womens activism. By illuminating the complex activist identities and organizations forged by Jewish women in the early twentieth century, this book requires future scholars of feminism to engage more fully with ethnicity and religion and Jewish historians to incorporate more fully womens experiences." (Nancy A. Hewitt,author of No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism)

"Klapper writes to restore Jewish women to their rightful place in these histories as well as to insert women's activism into the panorama of American Jewish life. . . . This book is an opening, a gift, an invitation, and anyone who writes on these subjects after her owes the author a massive debt of gratitude for the map she has drawn." (The American Jewish Archives Journal)

"Klapper's work on the Jewish women who organized and helped fund the fight for suffrage, established birth control clinics in immigrant neighborhoods, and played a key role in the international peace movement is an example of the kind of careful scholarship that is needed to correct the imbalances in both Jewish and women's history." (Ellen R. Rothman Jewish Women's Archive)

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0814748945
• ISBN 13: 9780814748947
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 301