Francine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping Tradition [REBROADCAST]

0:00On Friday nights, I go to synagogue. It's where I feel grounded, surrounded by familiar faces. I notice the security now, the planning, the presence, and because it's there, we can simply be together. We can pray, sing, and feel at home. This is my New York. Safe, strong, connected. When you give to UJA, you help protect that sense of belonging. Learn more at uja.org. Welcome to the five books where each week we talk with a Jewish author about five books that are near and dear to them. My name is Tali Rosenblatt Cohen and today I'll be talking with Francine Claigsburn about her book, Henrietta Zold, Hadassa, and the Zionist Dream. She just got to be forgotten, is that happened to women mostly, possibly? And it breaks my heart because she did the people of Hadassa now, they do remember. But nobody else does that. I'm happy to have with her to live as a woman.

1:08Francine Claigsburn has had a tremendous impact on the story of American Jewish women and on me as one of them. I feel lucky to have known Francine since I was a teen and I've long admired her as a writer, a thinker, and also as a deeply warm and delightful person. Born in 1931, she's the author of more than a dozen books, including Lioness, Golda May Ear and the Nation of Israel, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 2017. In 1978, she was one of three women and 11 men appointed by the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to a special commission to study the issue of ordaining women as rabbis, and she became known for her activism in this arena. Fun fact, Francine was the first woman to carry a Torah at the Western Wall. She has been a columnist for the New York Jewish Week and moment is a contributing editor to Lilith and is on the editorial board of Hadassa magazine. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, Mismagazine, and many other national publications.

2:08In this episode, we'll hear about Henrietta Zoltz, vision for an inclusive Zionism. She felt that the Jews and Arabs could live together peacefully. You know, this is a land that belongs to both of them. She cared very much about the Arab population. And Francine will share the story that sparked her feminist activism. I went to one of the big shot men and I said, you know, I'm getting paid less than the other senior editors, and it's been a long time and maybe, but a very timid way, maybe I could become senior editor. And he said, well, we've talked about it, the wee being one man and who around the organization. We've talked about it, but you know, you look so cute when you're angry that we thought we'd just keep you this way a little longer. This episode was one of our first in December of 2024. When we recorded the interview, Francine graciously hosted me in her New York City apartment, complete with a table full of snacks.

3:09If you hear Siren or Horn in the background, I hope you'll feel that you were sitting there alongside us. Hi, Francine. Hi. Thank you so much for joining me here on the five books. It's my pleasure. And hosting me here in your beautiful apartment. Thank you. You recently published Henry Ed is old, Hadassah, and the Zionist Dream. It's part of the Yale University Press Jewish Live series and it was also selected as a Natan notable book. So for listeners who may not be familiar with Henrietta, can you give us the highlights of her accomplishments? Well, she's best known as the founder of Hadassah, but she did before that and after that, she did other things. Before that as a young woman, she started a night school for immigrants coming from Eastern Europe that became the model of night schools and schools with the help immigrants assimilate to the United States. So that was she did as a young woman in high school. And then she was the editor, the first editor, but they called her secretary, which I always get angry about, but the first editor of the Jewish Publication Society, then she studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary and had a very painful love for one of the professors Louis Ginsburg that didn't work out.

4:29He rejected her, she went into a great, she went to Palestine, what was then Palestine on the Ottoman control and saw poverty there, saw hospitals that were very badly run, but also so settlers there, all very taken with that, came back, but didn't get over this terrible love and rejection by this professor. And she went into a great depression that lasted several months and then with strong will and resilience, she pulled herself out of that depression and decided it was time to start a national Jewish women's Zionist organization and that's when she started the Hadassah. And under her leadership Hadassah grew very quickly from just a few chapters to many chapters to becoming the most powerful and important Zionist women's Zionist organization in America, but one of the most important women's organizations Jewish or not in the United States.

5:32They took as their mission creating healthcare for the people in the Land of Israel and then under the design of the World Zionist organization, she became the head of their education department and revolutionized education in the Land of Israel and it became a really good system that she was in charge of. And what was called the Vardlo, me, the National Council, she was in charge of all their social work, social work department, she started a social work department, she started a social work school, she had an earlier started a nursing school and she again revolutionized how social work was done in Israel was now beautifully organized under her supervision. And from there at the age of 70 she took on what she considered her most important position, which was she headed what was called the Euthelia, it was the beginning of the 30s, World War II was about to break out, Nazism was already spreading throughout Europe and under her guidance, young people, boys and girls were rescued at first from Germany and resettled in the land in Palestine, the land of Israel.

6:46The whole of the whole of the land, the whole of the land and in the end she had an organization rescued thousands of young people during the whole of the cost and that she considered her greatest accomplishment and then she died in 1945 before the state of Israel was established. She had such an incredible life and her it seemed like everything that she touched looks like magically she organized it, she made it efficient, she made it happen, she brought these ideas to fruition, you spend so much time researching her, what were the things that you felt like you most appreciated about her? Well you sort of just touched on it, she was just a super organizer, I mean I don't know anyone who could come in and organize so well she began, one of the things she had done before she started her DASA was organized the papers of the Federation of American Zionists, the male Zionist organization. She said it was like cleaning out the Aegean stables, they were so messy, she organized them, she just had this brilliant touch for organization so I consider that really her greatest asset in that sense, she was also very modest about her accomplishments, she knew that what she did was important, she knew that her way was a light way and she insisted on her way.

8:10But she always had insecurities and was modest about her accomplishments and always sort of pushed them off to other people, she got complimented, well it was somebody else who did it and that was a very nice trait about somebody who was so accomplished, so she was a woman who had great will, great knowledge, modest the about the knowledge and yet the ability to get things done and you can't say that about many people. Yeah, as a native Baltimoreian myself, her name was a name that I knew but this, it felt like she was somebody that I should have grown up learning about in school and knowing so much more about I was so grateful for the opportunity to get to know her. Thank you. She was very famous in her own day and President Roosevelt was a president and wrote to her complimented her on New Zealand, feel mella, the Gwadia who was the mayor of New York gave her the keys to the city and then I don't know and is he all I think she still known because there's street's name for her but she just got to be forgotten.

9:17I don't know, is that happened to women mostly possibly and it breaks my heart because she did the people of Adasa now, they do remember but nobody else does and I'm happy to have what it's alive as a woman. Now they will. Book 1, a Jewish book from childhood, the Bible. I went to a very small Jewish day school called Shalamat School for Girls. There are eight girls in my class and the teachers with these fantastic, not everyone but many of them, fantastic women who in today's world would be heads of corporations or heads of universities or you know something more than teachers in a little girl school but that was a long time ago. One of them was the mother of Gwadia's in Cone who later became the chancellor of the Jewish theological seminary. The other was the wife of Saul Lieberman who was a great, great Tommy Scholar at the Jewish theological seminary.

10:23We didn't know anything about their sons or husbands, we just knew them. We knew Mrs. Lieberman one time, Dr. Lieberman, she we called her Dr. Lieberman also, but her husband came, she had all the girls in the class over for a meal. A little celebration of something and he came carrying the food and we looked so disheveled and we thought poor Mrs. Lieberman, she's married to the Shlumpy guy who knew that he was a great scholar because she was so scholarly in her own way. So learning with these women led to an enormous love of the text for me. This was in Brooklyn? Yeah, in Burrow Park. They're not there, they still exist but they're I think doing some play, so some Brooklyn now. I got my best education. When I look back I think my best education all around was a tax school, particularly my Jewish education. But it was combined for me. My parents were immigrant, my mother was born here but her family had been born in Russia, Russia.

11:28It was really Poland, they called it Russia in those days and my father was also an immigrant from there. He was the eldest in his family, a five brothers. My father was very, very Jewish, he was knowledgeable. He had studied in the Kade, he was a child. When he came to America, he became a businessman all his life. But he never forgot what he learned in the Kade. He knew the Tanakh practically by heart, all of the Bible. He knew most of the Talmud by heart. He was just a very brilliant man. So when I went to the Shalam school, I would come home at night. My father worked late just like seven o'clock at night. But then he would sit down with me and we would do my homework together as I later did with my daughter. But we went through all my Tanakh, my Bible comic assignments and that was my favorite part of the homework and a hill. Being alone with my father and going through these texts, these Jewish texts, which gave me, I suppose it's all, you know, you can psycho-analysis it's all an emotional connection of the texts and my father and these great teachers that made me love those texts so much.

12:42And they really shaped me. They became my connection to Judaism. I go to synagogue probably almost every week, not always. But the part of it that I really care about is the reading of the Torah, the reason I go basically. And I think that I got a lot of crazy stuff in our texts and they've got some bad stuff in them too. But they define us because they have some great values. And they define us as a people. This is our history. This is where we came from. This is what we believe in. These are the things we aspire to. These are the values we aspire to. We're caring for the poor, caring for the widow and I know often, leaving parts of our fields, little pieces of the edges of our fields, part of the weed are there for the poor to pick up. These are some of the values. And even the stories, everything went about heroes is flawed. And that's part of the wonder and the greatness of it that they are heroes but they are real people. And we can relate to them.

13:47And so I relate to the stories. I love the bell, big, big stories, but I also love the teachings. And I think that of everything we have of all our practices, whenever we have, it goes back to texts. What was it that Louis Finkelson said? When I pray, I speak to God, but when I study God speaks to me. It was probably pretty unusual for girls to attend a fully Jewish day school. It was a girl school. But there was a very small school. There weren't many of them. There weren't many of them. And none of my friends in their life had that kind of education. And I am so grateful to my parents. I know I have an older brother. I had an older brother. My beloved brother died some months ago. There was no question they would send him to the Aschirifah boys. Boy, it came my turn. My father, the same father who taught me so much said, and there wasn't much money. He said, you know, she's a girl. A girl doesn't need that kind of education. And my mother, to her credit, said, whatever he gets, whatever education he gets, she gets.

14:56And that was why I got that education. I am so eternally grateful for it. It would just shape my life, shape my thinking. And it's to this day gives me enormous pleasure. Did your mother have that education? No. My mother didn't have. She didn't know any of it. But she loved to listen to my father. When I got very old, and my father was a hundred when he died, my mother was 94. When I got very old, you know, he would repeat his stories. My mother would say, well, my memory is no good. I don't remember him telling that. And she would listen to it again and again. She loved the text that, you know, he spoke about, but she didn't know it. And my brother didn't take to it the way I did. My brother liked it. My brother became involved in Israel and made a life. He became the head of the American Jewish Congress. But he didn't have the religious feelings that I had. And he liked the text, but he didn't feel wedded to them as I did. I also wonder probably at a girl school, you spent much more time with the Tanakh with the biblical stories than in a in a boy school.

16:03I think that's a good observation on your part. They probably didn't spend that much time. And they didn't have, they had maybe one or two good teachers. It was a much bigger school than the girl school. But they didn't have, they didn't have the kind of teachers I had. And some of those male teachers were bitter. They used to hit the boys. Nobody ever hit a girl in the girl school. So it was a different atmosphere. And I don't think he came to love it the way I came to love it. And then you went to List College, right? No, it wasn't called this college in those days. I went to Brooklyn College in the daytime. Everybody in the world I went to Brooklyn College or City College. We all went to City College. There's no money. But then at that time, it was just called the Seminary College. You went to two different schools. You didn't go to one school that combined, like List College combines on the education between Columbia, Abba, and the Seminary.

17:08There you just went to whatever college you went to in the daytime. And then we went to the Seminary at night. I used to come at that point my parents had moved to Bell Harbor, which is in Queens. It's near Rockaway. Much bigger trip. So I used to come home maybe 10 o'clock at night sitting on the subway with a big tom in front of me for you. I'll do my homework now. So I'd sit with this big tom and open and we came to a... you had to take a bus when you had off from the subway to get it to my home. And I would wait on a dark corner in Flatfish for this bus to come carry my books. Never occurred to anybody to worry about me, to think about danger. Never occurred to us. I come home late at night, sit on the bus, sit on the chain with my tom and open. Never thought of anybody doing any harm to me. I love how much it sounds like that you absorbed of the text, like how much you still even just hearing about your father having memorized so much of it. That's so rare now.

18:13Yes. Who have absorbed it to that degree. I can't say I memorized it the way he memorized it. But he knew it when the last say that we had, he couldn't see he was blind at that point. And he knew that I got it by heart. So it didn't matter. He was an extraordinary. Book 2, a Jewish book from adulthood, Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wook. Now I'm really embarrassed I've chosen Marjorie Morningstar but I have to be honest. Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wook is not great literature. But it boypeases along. You don't want to put it down. And it's a story of a young woman whose name was Morgan Stern, changed it to Marjorie Morningstar because she wanted to be an actress. And then she met this man named Noel Herman who was also Jewish but had rejected everything Jewish and was filled with sarcasm.

19:16And you know irony and said that in the end Jewish girls all become what he called Shirley's that they conformed, they get big engagement rings and they get married and have children and whatever. Tiny rebellion they might have shown earlier disappears. He was very superior and she fell in love with him. Eventually she had a affair with him and she gave up which with those days was a big deal. Her virginity but in the end she realizes that he isn't really this great man. He never really gets to accomplish anything. And she marries a nice Jewish boy and indeed settles down and has children and lives in the suburbs. Herman Wook was Orthodox. He was valuing Jewish tradition. On the other hand he had one character look at her as a middle-aged woman and say she's nothing like this exciting woman she had been when she was young.

20:17So there was a someone who blunts on his part. But for me and not just me was all the girls in my generation. We fell for the bad boy. The man who had rejected the Judaism and often didn't treat us very nicely. They didn't really care. They were so sarcastic. I mean I was mainly in love with the son of a rabbi who had rejected everything Jewish. He himself wanted to be a musician. In the end he became a doctor which is what his parents wanted him to do so. But he was so sarcastic and so superior. There was a sense that we can be the person who can bring this person back to the tradition but we'll do it in a more sophisticated way than our parents had done it. It was just a pipe dream and never worked out that way. In the end I think I came to value those Jewish traditions. It wasn't something to make fun of all you're assurably.

21:19You're someone who really values that's meaningful in the world. Herman was I think Herman Wook's way of saying a lift mentioned an airhead. It sounds great and sophisticated and exciting. But in the end what really matters on the values that you hold and how you live your life. If you choose to accept Jewish tradition because it has meaning for you, that's not something to laugh at. I said, turn that. I didn't live a traditional life in the suburbs. I married a man who was being a medical school and I had to get a job and support him in medical school. So we lived in Chicago when the family lived in New York. We didn't have a child until much later. So it was not a traditional life. But the Jewish values remained with me. I think that this book affirmed those values for me. I didn't have to live in the suburbs but I could keep those values. An interesting thing I came to realize in much older later life, my friends are all writers. Most of them are Jewish, almost all of them are Jewish. But they're all writers.

22:26None of them had the background I had. None of them had the tradition and knew the tradition. But in a way, envy me, I used to have bachonic apologies. And they loved learning about chronicles. They loved to come here for Jewish holidays. They loved to learn this and this is something that they don't have and they will never have and they regret it. So things that were in Margie Munis, the Nollum and made fun of became the important stakes of my life, the important values of my life that actually are the values that other Jewish women who may have led the kind of lives that they weren't actresses but they became writers at young age. The Nollum and valued, they are missing something or they have always felt that they're missing something. So I think in that sense this book reaffirmed who I was. It wasn't in a shape, but it reaffirmed who I was. And it was a great read anyway.

23:28It's interesting because there's that thread where she comes back to tradition at the end. And there's also the thread where, you know, Herman Wook was maybe saying that that was a good thing for her. But he was also saying that like that big life that she thought she was going to lead was not for her. You did not take that part to heart. No, no, it didn't mean anything to me. I never wanted to be an actress. And I had that other life. I mean for me personally, you know, I had that other life because I got a job. My friends didn't do that. My friends got married. I got married young too, but they got married and settled down and many of the husbands when it was something that they did make fun of. She made fun of. Many of the husbands went into the father's or their grand father and those businesses, most of the husbands. So I did in a way I led the life that she wanted to leave. I didn't become an actress, but I became a writer. And through that, my writer friends became writers in different ways. I didn't go through this Jewish food. But for me, it was because I had the background. And even there, you know, my first job, my husband went to medical school in Chicago. So my job that I got was at World Book and Cyclopedia, which is published in Chicago.

24:44And very soon, I was given a position as acting senior editor in charge of religion articles because the editor in chief said, well, you know what, you know them well. So I worked with priests and others in other religions on the articles that they wrote because I knew I had such strong counting in my own religion. So it helped me very much in that way or so. So interesting. So I know you came to be the editor of the first Ms. Reader in 1973 and edited free to be you and me. Well, that came about because I was always taking jobs to, you know, to make enough money to put in through medical school. When we moved back to New York, the job I had was with the publishers of Look magazine. But we had a book division. And I was in the book division. But I got to know an editor, Pat Cobbine, and Look magazine. And then she got to became the editor of Ms. Magazine. And so when she began to be in the Ms. Magazine, she asked me to edit the anthology of early articles in Ms. Magazine, which I did. And then from there, they were doing free to be you and me. And they asked me to edit that book.

25:55Did they ask you like, I guess what I'm asking is how did the feminism streak sort of evolve for you for me? Well, started evolving back when I was working to support my husband back in Chicago. So I became acting senior editor. And I was acting senior editor for a long time because they never had a woman who was senior editor. And so finally I got up my courage, which for me was not easy to do. And I went to one of the big shot men there. The managing editor, I think he was. And I said, you know, I'm getting paid less than the other senior editors. And it's been a long time. And maybe I could, but a very timid way. Maybe I could become senior editor. And he said, well, we've talked about it. We being one man, who are in the organization. We've talked about it. But you know, you look so cute when you're angry that we thought we'd just keep you this way a little longer.

26:56So that was the beginning of my feminism. From that end or so, when we lived in Chicago, Marshall Field was the biggest department store there. The way Bloomingdale's is in New York. And at that time, even though I was the person who earned the income, and my husband was a student, I could not get a credit card because they would only give a credit card under a husband's name. They would not give a woman the credit card. And the funny thing was I had a very close friends at the inside of the video. And I said, we have to wake on Marshall Field, but this is a terrible thing. And they used to sneak out when I wasn't looking in the go to Marshall Field, because there was no place else to shop. So we went there. But so that I would say was the beginning of the feminism streak, but the real feminism began when the Jewish, the Irish seminary just started talking about the idea of ordaining women.

27:57I was not on the original group that abandoned it. Paula Hyman was a terrific person. She's no longer alive. She was on the group. But I was not. I was really still working and just working and worrying about money all the time. But once the seminaries started discussing the idea of ordaining women, they asked me to be on the commission to decide it all. I think two or three women on the commission and they were not in favor of it. And I just knew in my gut that I was in favor of having women ordained as rabbis. And that was really the beginning of my activism in that area. But in other words, it was only once you were appointed to the commission that it sort of became a bigger issue for you. Yeah, it came an activist. That's so interesting. And how were in your Jewish life, in your day to day Jewish life, going to shawl every Shabbat, what did that look like at the time? Well, we belonged to a conservative moment. So the conservative moment was more apt to have women, or read the half-togas, or read the Torah.

29:05You know, I was a whole different story. I served everything wrong in the Bible about women. But I finally came. I couldn't reject the text that I love so much because of the attitude to women. It was from a different time. And there were people who worked on that. Judith Haltman wrote wonderful things about reading the text. So I was angry about it, but I got over that anger. I came to accept that this was part of what it was, and you'd take what you want out of it. By the way, I edited free to be you and me about just about the same time. I think of the sevenies. Just about the same time, the whole question of women rabbis came up. So it was a dual thing. It was a secular and the religious at the same time. Very recently, the rabbi by synagogue said, he was using the AI chat by, of what would different people say about the ten commandments in the Bible.

30:05He asked the chat, what would Freud say, what would I say? But what would Francine Claixman say about it? It was a very good company. So the chat box, the AI came up with this very and very feminist attitude to the ten commandments. It's all written in masculine terms. So the AI said, given Francine Claixman's attitude to the ten commandments, it's a kind of negative. They're outdated because they're very anti-feminist. And so he asked what I thought of it. And my answer was, it's totally wrong. That is not at all what I would think about the ten commandments. I think ten commandments were revolutionary. The Sabbath was introduced, which nobody else had that, even for slaves. The values that were given there. But you can't judge everything ancient by today's standards. You can change, but you can't change the basic text so you can interpret them. And you can understand where they're coming from.

31:09You touched very modestly on your life as an activist. But I wonder if you could just tell me, what are the things you're most proud of, of having been involved in in that aspect? Well, the women were, once I'd say, I'm most proud of, because I really was allowed out there. And I really pushed for that very hard on that commission. And I won't name names, but somebody who I love, some professor at the seminary, left the movement because the women being ordained started his own movement. We remain friends, but it was never the same that I drugged my heart. But still, I wouldn't change that. I mean, I think in every way possible, women should have exactly, I just wanted to sound stupid, even say it, because we know that women should have equal rights with men in every way possible. I guess there were some things that women can't do, a man can't do that women do, but in every other way. And then I just think I gave so many talks about, we quality for women in Judaism, and equality for women outside of Judaism.

32:22And I guess if they made any impact, maybe they did, I'm proud of having stood up for women. And I'm still standing up. Yeah, they're definitely plenty that my generation takes for granted because your generation made a big stink. Yeah, that is true. I mean, my daughter is a physician, you know, went to medical school. Then I could have met her at school. I was supporting my husband in medical school, not that I was good in science, not that I couldn't make it. It never cost my mind, you know, that was going to be my career that mattered. It was always about his career. And now it's taken for granted, as you say, that women, and to any career that they want to, and that's a terrific result, a terrific result of feminism. Book 3, a book that changed your worldview, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Your question was also a book that I thought everyone would read. Yes, a book everyone should read.

33:24Well, that was part of, that was a large part of it, really. For me, the book is Imagine the World in which Franklin Roosevelt lost the election back in 1942, I guess. And Charles Lindbergh, who was this great pilot hero, won, but Charles Lindbergh was also an isolationist, someone who built an America first. Make America great again, those were slogans of those days. And he felt that that's what America should be. And he was anti-Semitic. And so the book doesn't have book, he uses his own name, which he's done in other places too. The characters are Philip and his brothers Sandy and his father Herman and Lindbergh and Roosevelt uses real names, but it's a work of imagination. And what the world would be like, the Jews were being sent to special colonies, or out of cities like New York or Chicago, to Kentucky or out west, so they would be trained to think more like, quote, Americans, be more assimilated.

34:33And actually, Philip's brother, that happens to him, he gets sent to one of these farms and he comes back looking down on everything Jewish. There are more and more restrictions on the Jews. And Lindbergh and real life, Lindbergh also admired Adolf Hitler. And in the book German, violin, German practices, they're being introduced into the United States. Firstly, it's a terrific book. Philip was a great writer, but I felt this book was very important. It was important to me when I read it because it opened my eyes back then. And it's important for everyone to read, to see what happens when a society allows itself to go to the extreme. I had an American society, and particularly in our time, when AI, Thomas Freeman wrote a terrific line of toilet in New York Times some weeks ago, not how AI is going to keep developing and become perhaps dangerous for the next generation.

35:37And it's going to take world leaders working together, United States working with leaders of the rest of the world to know how to control this. And we can't pull back. So I really feel that this is a very important time for everyone to read this book. And you're about the same age as the narrator, Philip Ross, like a small child, when that was all, are there things that you remember about the politics of that time? At that time, Roosevelt did become, I mean, the end of the book ends with Roosevelt becoming president again. Roosevelt did become president, but there were up until then there was a very strong movement. And they even used terms like make America great again. And America first, that was what the movement was called. That was to keep the United States away from any foreign interference, not to be involved in any foreign wars. And there was a lot of anti-Semitism at that time. And they called Roosevelt, they said this was a Jewish war. They called Roosevelt, I think they called it a Rosenfeld, you know, a Jewish name.

36:47That he's being lured into this European war, World War II with Tokyo by the Jews. You know, the anti-Semitism, when you look back, we're society today, we're struggling with anti-Semitism again today. But when you look back, it was pretty awful. We didn't realize, I mean, it was so much better for my parents than a Europe had been, we didn't sort of think much about it. But my brother had a close friend who wanted to go to medical school. He was a brilliant guy. Couldn't get into any medical school. They had a quotas on Jews. There were places Jews couldn't live and they were restricted. And it was awful at that, in that sense. But we sort of, we lived that life. We didn't think that much about it. I mean, I think child, I guess, it didn't affect me that much. My father and my parents were very upset about those things. But there was a segment of a large segment of society that felt, they were called isolationists.

37:49America had to keep out of foreign wars and foreign affairs. We had to just do what was good for America. And it would have been a disaster. Had we not entered World War II? Hitler would have probably won that war. And it would have then come to the United States. I mean, we'd helped save the world and save ourselves by fighting that war. But that was a very, very strong feeling at that time. And worth was reflecting that feeling in his book. Book 4. The Book You're Reading Now. The Propagandist by Cecil DiPri. Somehow, you know, the war has never left me. I didn't live in Europe. But my husband came from Belgium as a child. He, if he looked at all that, made his films World War II books that he used to read. So I'm reading a book called The Propagandist by Cecil DiPri. It's a novel, but it's based on her own life. She's a historian.

38:54And it's the story of, it's a true story, but she's fictionalized it. And how her parents were complicit on the German invasion of France. And German take over France during World War II. And the Propagandist was her mother who used to make propaganda posters that loitered Hitler and the Germans. And one post-a-made fun of people who were great heroes in the French resistance. And she was a child. And she was just listening to this stuff and, you know, totally know what was going on. But she got to understand later. There were large numbers of people who really liked having the Germans take over. And were anti-Semitic and thought it was great. All that the Jews would be sent away, get rid of them all. So the novel is based both on its own story.

39:54And the story of her mother, particularly her mother, she calls her Lucy in the novel, is very clever. I haven't finished a book yet, but she's very clever. And when the Allies liberate Paris, she kind of manages to switch sides. But the narrator really condemns the mother. And it sounds like a fascinating book. Book 5, The author's latest book, Henry At His Old, Hadassa, and The Zionist Dream by Francine Claigsbrun. So as you started to talk about in the beginning, her lifespan is pretty amazing. She's born in Baltimore in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War. And she dies in British Mandate Palestine in 1945, just before Israel became a state in 1947. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about Hadassa and her Zionism. Okay.

40:54She speaks about Zionism before Herzel speaks about Zionism. And her Zionism comes from a place of her knowledge and attachment to religion and Judaism. So if you could give us a little bit of context for that. Well, for that, Twitter, that Judaism is a way of life. It's not just a creed, it's not just a religion, it's really a way of life. And from her point of view, a way of life means that Jews are a people. It's a whole gestalt as a were. And therefore, as a people, they needed to be a homeland. And then, you know, it was only one homeland that they could possibly go to when that was the land of Israel, which she said, run like a red thread to all of Jewish literature. From her point of view, she didn't think that everybody had to settle there. She didn't, when she started her Dassa, I mean, that was one of the sort of genius spots of it. The women of Dassa didn't have to go live there personally. They could be great Zionists by helping, by supporting and raising money for and creating hospitals and healthcare for the people in the land of Israel.

42:06That was also a form of Zionism. She saw Zionism as a Israel, or they didn't call it Israel, then it was the land of Israel as a cultural center to Jews throughout the diaspora. And they didn't have to live there. It was based on the teachings of Akhara Am, who was Ashagan's mother, a great Jewish essayist. From Akhara Am's point of view, the Jews didn't have to live there. It could be a center from which culture came and spread out. And therefore, if you were in Hadasa, you could read the people who were writing at the time. She encouraged Dassa women to learn Hebrew. I don't know how many did do that. But you could be very devoted, and you could be a Zionist by not living in Israel itself. She did a terrific thing with Hadasa. Hadasa women were just, for the most clear, the middle-class women who had, you know, traditional lives.

43:12And they had to learn to raise money, to sacrifice some things themselves, look to use themselves, or donate money. They had to learn to speak in public to attract other women. They had to learn eventually how to speak to world leaders, because Hadasa dealt with leaders from all over the world. So for Hadasa women, this was a talk about women's liberation, we're talking about feminism. I always see, Henry, and now I see her as a pre-feminist as a well. She didn't speak to myself as a feminist as such, but she certainly advocated and advanced women's rights and women's views of themselves as worthy and equal to men. And she created with Hadasa a terrifically strong organization, and terrific women, who, in my opinion, these women would become well-amountals.

44:13They were volunteers, they didn't get paid for their work. They'd do it as an egg, and do it as an egg, and they'd get paid for their work. But they saw their grandparents, their great-grandparents, mother-to-girls, their mothers, speak out, take active roles, and make change. And I think that was a terrific model for them. So I think we have to give the original Hadasa women and Hadasa women. And today, I'm still doing terrific things. A great little credit, more credit than I think they've been given people's opinion. Hadasa ladies, you know, as middle-class women, middle-class, middle-class, they really do a heck of a lot. On the Henry Edges leadership, Hadasa hospitals had to accept patience and step of all religions and creeds, so they were Muslims and Christians, and you wish all equal, treated equal to the state that's still true. Treated equally and staff members of all religions, and that was part of Hadasa. She, she cared very much about the Arab population.

45:22She cared very much about their health and their equality, and really worked to see that the Jews cared about them as well. Yeah, that was such an interesting part of her story in Israel was her vision for what the Jews in Palestine and Israel could look like. Can you tell us a little bit more about her kind of political ideas or what she envisioned as an ideal vision? Yeah, she really believed in a by-national state. Now, which she feel that way today, I don't think so, but it was different times. She felt that the Jews and Arabs could live together peacefully. You know, this is a land that belonged to both of them. Jews as well, I mean, she fought in the Arabs for not recognizing that there was enough room for the Jews on the land as well, but she fought in the Jews for not recognizing the Arab aspirations. There wasn't great nationalism yet in her time on the Arab Papa. There was some, and she felt that they could limit a state, share a state where neither is the majority, or even if they have a majority, neither is the rule under the age of total equity in running the country.

46:35And she wasn't alone in this modern movement, the great Jewish philosopher was a great leader in that movement. And she felt that relate to all of her life to the end of her days. And she actually argued with her DASA when they supported the idea of just a Jewish state. She felt this should be by-national. As I say, that was different times. And there was nobody on the Arab side who agreed with her. After she died, there was one Arab leader who agreed with her, who felt, yes, the Arabs should join, which she was in a bind-ashtole state. And he was assassinated by members of his own family, who felt he had arid and misjudged. So it was, you know, in her day, it was different times, and she felt this was possible. Which she feels is possible today. I don't know. But I think today she might very well support the idea of two states living side by side. I think she would go for that. That's many of us too.

47:37I want to go back to her younger life. You talked a little bit about her assorted romance with Louis Ginsburg, who is the leader of Jewish Theological Seminary. Why do you think that story has clung to her the way it has? Well, part of it, I have to say, was her fault. The part of it was her fault because when Louis Ginsburg rejected her, she would say that whole story first again. Louis Ginsburg was a great professor of talent at the Seminary, and she was older than the other students. She was in her early 40s. They were all in the H-20s or so. She was 13 years older than Louis Ginsburg. She was a professor of talent, brilliant professor, and she felt madly in love with him. She knew she was older than he was, and she knew that she would come up with this. So she kept trying to keep it under wraps as long as she could. But then when his father died, he put out his heart to her, and she felt that there was a change in his attitude that he now saw her as a person.

48:44He didn't matter how well she was. Love told her she loved him. She felt that she saw the love light in his eyes. When he came back from a vacation in Europe, and he said he wanted to speak to her, she thought he was going to propose marriage. Instead, he said, you will be happy to know that I am engaged. He had had a whirlwind courtship with a beautiful, much younger woman, and she had accepted his proposal of marriage, and he got engaged with Dale. That was a terrible, terrible blow, but to answer your question, so she let everybody know. It's not that she kept her son-of-a-tosself. The whole world knew everyone she knew. She told how Ginsburg betrayed her or how awful she felt. So it was no secret. We made part of seminary law, as it were. I think people still see it that way. Also, part of those times was this was the poor old maid in the hands of a young man.

49:53That's changed. We don't think it was a poor old maid, and we think it was one, two different women. One of the things I speculate into my book is, what would have happened if she married Louis Gensberg? In those days, a woman's life pretty much revolved around her husband. Matilda Shekter was also a brilliant woman. She was married to Solomon Shekter, and her life revolved around Solomon Shekter, and they entertained seminary faculty and other people. That's who Matilda was. So when Henry and her sold, have ended up being Louis Gensberg's wife, and a seminary wife, rather than accomplished it. It's not her DASA. It's not her DASA, and accomplish all the great things she did to a real question. I'm sorry she had this tragedy. We were also sorry she had this tragedy with her. She was able to start a DASA. So I think that because she spoke about it so much, it became known. It was not in the seminary and became gossip.

50:54That clung to it all so because she never married, and an angel, women, didn't marry. So she was different. She was, you know, this single woman and there weren't that many of them of her caliber. I think that's probably why the story has clung to her as well. I don't remember the exact words that you used, but I know in the end you talk about a letter that she wrote to her friend, Jessie Samper, and she was maybe bemoaning the fact that she never became a mother in saying that the sort of details of mothering are what matter. And you points out that the details of everything else that she did were also the details that mattered. I thought that was such a point. She sort of looked down. I mean, it was a strange combination because as I said, she had a strong will and she wanted things done her way. And yet she looked down on her skills. She saw Jessie Samper was a poet and a writer. And so she admired Jessie's creativity, but didn't see her own fantastic organizational skills as also being tremendously important.

52:06And so in this letter, she talks about wasn't only about motherhood. She did regret that she didn't have children of her own. So it's been said. But she spoke about the details of motherhood and caring about details are really important for motherhood. But caring about details that she does really, it's just just work. It doesn't really count for that much. And she had caring about details is what made herself fantastic that she could organize everything so beautifully. And what was so incredible about her in the early days, one of the first things they did, Hadasa did, was create this medical unit they call it. It was a group of doctors and nurses and equipment that we being sent over to the land of Israel. And then when they had a direct, I went directly went on vacation for a while. And we had it went there to the land of Israel and took over this medical unit. Now, it was a woman who didn't even go to college, let alone medical school.

53:08And she did a fantastic job that everybody was sorry when the director came back because she was so much better at it. What she was brilliant and she had this incredible skill, but she didn't allow herself to recognize how really terrific her caring about details was. I do have very warm feelings to it. And we had a little bit of myself in her, this sort of lack of confidence and yet wanting to get things done new all the way. I also, in some ways, my life very small ways. But I paralleled Hadas because I had been on the publication committee of the Jewish Publications Society. She was the first editor called, as I said, called Secretary. I was also the only woman on that publication committee at that time. And there's a picture of me in the history of the Publications Society. And there I am, this young woman surrounded by men. I can't get over it.

54:08The world has changed so much. So I sort of relate to her. And I was a student at the Jewish National Seminary as she was. My first job in the whole world was working at the Seminary Library. Gerson Cohen was the librarian. We became very close friends. Gerson and his wife, Naomi, and my husband and I. But at the time, I mean, typical, I really did everything. And I always supported myself and wrote in my resume of myself as assistant to the librarian. And Gerson Cohen called me the girl with the circulation desk. So that was sort of explains what the times were like. Also, how well I could relate to Henrietta. Wow. Amazing. Well, thank you for sharing her with the rest of us. You wrote such a nuanced book that also felt like a propulsive plot. You know, you were excited to find out what was going to happen next. I loved reading it. I think everyone really should read it. And she should be known. And I think it's really a beautiful thing that you were the one to sort of bring her back to life a little bit.

55:14Thank you. Thank you so much, Francine. This was wonderful. Thank you. It was my pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us today for the five books. Our guest today was Francine Claigsbrun, a personal hero of mine. And so it was a gift to have this opportunity to talk to her. Today, she discussed her powerful biography, Henrietta's old Hadassa and the Zionist dream. If you want to share your thoughts, sparked by this episode, we'd love to hear about it. Drop us a comment on our Instagram at fivebookspod or to our email team at fivebookspod.org. And if you're a fan, it really helps other people find us if you leave us a review wherever you listen. We read and take every note to heart. We just received a kind review from a listener who said, the five books is my favorite podcast. I'm an avid reader and I love listening to author interviews to get additional insights from authors. I love how the podcast is a way for me to hear from authors about books I've read and loved. But it also introduces me to authors who weren't previously on my radar. I equally await each episode.

56:15We're delighted to be your literary matchmaker and appreciate you making the time to listen. Thanks for telling us what the show means to you. I'm Tali Rosenblatt-Koen. Our producer is Odelia Rubin, editorial support from Amy Fogel, music by Dove Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. Art by Alad Liftschitz of the Dove Abramsom Studio. Thanks especially to the Jewish Book Council. Thank you.