Henrietta Szold

The American Jewish leader Henrietta Szold (1860-1945) founded Hadassah and organized the first Youth Aliyah projects, which were directed at rescuing Jewish youth from Nazi Europe.

Henrietta Szold was born in Baltimore, Md., on Dec. 21, 1860. Her father, Benjamin Szold, was a rabbi and an active leader in the movement for African American emancipation. During the wave of immigration to the United States by European Jews, the Szold household was well known as a place where guidance, advice, and assistance could be found.

Szold taught school in Baltimore, also directing an evening school for newly arrived Jewish immigrants. Between 1892 and 1916 she served as secretary of the Jewish Publication Society. Beginning in 1895, she edited the American Jewish Yearbook with Cyrus Adler. She first visited Palestine in 1909, writing from there that she was confident that Jewish redemption would come only through Zionism. To that end she dedicated the rest of her life. She emphasized the significance of Zionism as a solution to the problems of Jewish immigration and the cultural and spiritual development of Judaism. In 1912 she founded Hadassah, a women's Zionist organization, and guided its efforts to improve health conditions in Palestine.

In 1914 Szold was appointed by Justice Louis D. Brandeis to head the American Zionist Medical Unit for Palestine. Her party of 44 doctors, nurses, and administrative and medical engineers left for Palestine in 1918, along with supplies for a 50-bed hospital. In 1919 she founded a school of nursing in Palestine. In 1926 she was elected to the presidency of Hadassah and in the following year to the Zionist Executive as health and education minister. In 1930 she was elected to the National Council of Jews in Palestine and served as head of social welfare.

With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, Szold was designated to deal with the emigration of children from Germany to Palestine. She directed this work of the Youth Aliyah, as well as supervising accommodation of the children in Palestine. As a token of the high esteem in which she was held for these efforts, German immigrants in Palestine founded the settlement Kfar-Szold. In 1940 she was appointed to the Hadassah Emergency Committee, which was organized to deal with problems arising from the war. In 1941 she conducted a study of the occupational needs of young women and on this basis founded the Alice Seligsberg Trade School for Girls in Jerusalem.

Henrietta Szold was deeply concerned with Arab-Jewish relations and joined Ihud, a movement devoted to achieving mutual understanding between Arab and Jew. Her life and work in behalf of both Zionist and humanitarian causes are the very embodiment of selfless and dedicated creativity. She died in Jerusalem on Feb. 13, 1945.

Further Reading

Marvin Lowenthal, Henrietta Szold: Life and Letters (1942), is a serious and penetrating study. An enthusiastic and admiring portrait is in Elma Ehrlich Levinger, Fighting Angel: The Story of Henrietta Szold (1946). An interesting literary treatment of the Szold family is in Alexandra L. Levin, The Szolds of Lombard Street: A Baltimore Family, 1859-1909 (1960).

Additional Sources

Dash, Joan, Summoned to Jerusalem: the life of Henrietta Szold, New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Lowenthal, Marvin, Henrietta Szold, life and letter, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975, 1942.

(1860-1945). U. S. Zionist leader, founder of Hadassah and Youth Aliyah. Szold was born in Baltimore shortly after her family arrived in the United States from Hungary. From 1888 to 1898 she supervised and taught at a night school for immigrants, becoming in the meantime an ardent Zionist, and then in her forties became the first female student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Simultaneously she edited the early editions of the American Jewish Year Book, later becoming the managing editor of the Jewish Publication Society, and helped Louis Ginsburg compile his Legends of the Jews. In 1909 she visited Erets Israel for the first time, returning to America to lay the ground for the creation of the Hadassah Organization and becoming its president in 1914. In 1920 she returned to Palestine, this time permanently, supervising the installation of the Zionist Medical Unit sent by Hadassah and creating a network of medical facilities throughout the country, including the Jerusalem Nursing School. In 1934 the cornerstone of Hadassah Hospital was laid on Mount Scopus.

From 1926 Szold also held the health and education portfolio as one of the three executive members of the World Zionist Organization. Subsequently she joined the Executive of the Va'ad Le'ummi and organized Youth Aliyah for the rescue of Jewish children in Germany during the Nazi era. Despite her advanced age she greeted the children personally and escorted them to their new homes. Never marrying, she devoted much of her life to the welfare of the Jews of Palestine and died of pneumonia in the hospital she had been so instrumental in founding.

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1860 - 1945

Founder of Hadassah, the largest Jewish women's organization.

Henrietta Szold was the daughter of a modernist rabbi from Baltimore. After visiting Palestine in 1909, she resolved to bring modern medical care and hygiene to the area and to establish a health-care system to meet the needs of the Jewish community there. Szold was the first director of the Youth Aliyah.

Bibliography

Dash, Joan. Summoned to Jerusalem: The Life of Henrietta Szold. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

Geller, L. D., ed. The Henrietta Szold Papers in the HadassahArchives, 1875 - 1965. New York: Hadassah, 1982.

— MIA BLOOM

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