Henrietta Szold
*Alexander Ganan – National Library of Israel, Schwadron collection

In some countries such as Ethiopia , Mothers are celebrated for 3 days. Since Holocaust Remembrance Day is coming up, we thought it apropos to highlight Henrietta Szold who although had no children of her own, saved countless children’s lives. The Jewish population of Israel used to celebrate Mother’s Day on Shevat 30 of the Jewish calendar, which falls between 30 January and 1 March. The celebration was set as the same date that Henrietta Szold died (13 February 1945) 

Henrietta Szold was born in Baltimore, Maryland, December 21, 1860. She was the daughter of Rabbi Benjamin Szold of Hungarian birth, who was the spiritual leader of Baltimore’s Temple Oheb Shalom. She was the eldest of eight daughters, and her younger sister Adele Szold-Seltzer (1876-1940) was the translator of the first American edition of Maya the Bee.

In 1877, Henrietta Szold graduated from Western High School. For fifteen years she taught at Miss Adam’s School and Oheb Shalom religious school, and gave Bible and history courses for adults. Highly educated in Jewish studies, she edited Professor Marcus Jastrow’s Talmudic Dictionary. To further her own education, she attended public lectures at Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Institute.

In 1896, one month before Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), Szold described her vision of a Jewish state in Palestine as a place to ingather Diaspora Jewry and revive Jewish culture. In 1898, the Federation of American Zionists elected Szold as the only female member of its executive committee. During World War I, she was the only woman on the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs.

In 1899, she took on the lion’s share of producing the first American Jewish Year Book, of which she was sole editor from 1904 to 1908. She also collaborated in the compilation of the Jewish Encyclopedia.

In 1902, Szold took classes in advanced Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. However, its rabbinic school was restricted to males. Szold begged the school’s president, Solomon Schechter, to allow her to study, he did only with the provision that she not seek ordination. Szold did well at the seminary, earning the respect from other students and faculty alike. 

Her commitment to Zionism was heightened by a trip to Palestine in 1909, at age 49. Here, she discovered her life’s mission: the health, education and welfare of the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community of Palestine). Szold joined six other women to found Hadassah, which recruited American Jewish women to upgrade health care in Palestine. Hadassah’s first project was the inauguration of an American-style visiting nurse program in Jerusalem. Hadassah funded hospitals, a medical school, dental facilities, x-ray clinics, infant welfare stations, soup kitchens and other services for Palestine’s Jewish and Arab inhabitants. Szold persuaded her colleagues that practical programs open to all were critical to Jewish survival in the Holy Land. She founded Hadassah in 1912 and served as its president until 1926.

In the 1920s and 1930s, she supported Brit Shalom, a small organization dedicated to Arab-Jewish unity and a binational solution. In 1933, she immigrated to Palestine and helped run Youth Aliyah, an organization that rescued 30,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe. In October 1934, Szold laid the cornerstone of the new Rothschild-Hadassah-University Hospital on Mount Scopus.   Szold was the oldest of eight daughters and had no brothers. In Orthodox Judaism, it was not the norm for women to recite the Mourners’ Kaddish. In 1916, Szold’s mother died, and a friend, Hayim Peretz, offered to say Kaddish for her. In a letter, she thanked Peretz for his concern but said she would do it herself.

On February 13, 1945, at age 84, Henrietta Szold died in the same Hadassah Hospital she helped to build in Jerusalem. She was buried in the Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Kibbutz Kfar Szold, in Upper Galilee is named after her. The Palmach, in recognition of her commitment to “Aliyat Hanoar” Youth Aliyah, named the illegal immigration (Ha’apalah) ship “Henrietta Szold” after her. The ship, carrying immigrants from the Kiffisia orphanage in Athens, sailed from Piraeus on July 30, 1946, with 536 immigrants on board, and arrived on August 12, 1946. The passengers resisted capture, but were transferred to transport for Cyprus.

In 1949, Hadassah inaugurated the Henrietta Szold prize, which was awarded that year to Eleanor Roosevelt.[14]

The Henrietta Szold Institute, National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, located in Jerusalem, is named after her. The institute is Israel’s foremost planner of behavioral science intervention and training programs.

Public School 134 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in New York City is also named after her.

In Israel, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the day that Szold died, on the 30th of Shevat.

In the northwest corner of Szold’s home city of Baltimore, Szold Drive, a short street in a residential neighborhood with homes built in the 1950s, is named after her as well. The northernmost part of the street is in Baltimore County.

In New York City, Szold Place, formerly Dry Dock Street[18] runs from East 10th Street to East 12th Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.

In 2007, Szold was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. (Article From Wikipedia)