Henrietta Szold

Born in Baltimore to a German-speaking family, Henrietta Szold studied in public schools and received her Jewish education from her father, Rabbi Benjamin Szold, who was a rabbi in Baltimore from 1859 until his death in 1902. A schoolteacher, in 1889 she organized a night school for recent Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Szold then worked for several Jewish publishers and periodicals—including the recently formed Jewish Publication Society—before moving to New York City in 1903 to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary. She became increasingly involved in Zionist efforts after visiting Palestine in 1909, and in 1912 she helped found the New York chapter of the Daughters of Zion, later renamed Hadassah, whose first mission was to establish a medical clinic in Palestine—a goal achieved the following year when nurses Rose Kaplan and Rachel Landy opened a practice in Jerusalem. When health-care infrastructure rapidly deteriorated in Palestine with the outbreak of World War I, Szold played a crucial role in expanding Hadassah’s footprint in the region, coordinating the arrival of the American Zionist Medical Unit in Palestine in 1918. The temporary medical group evolved into the Hadassah Medical Organization—which remains active today—under her direction, following her settlement in Palestine in 1920. For the rest of her life, Szold remained involved in Zionist leadership both locally and internationally. In 1933 she became active in the newly established Youth Aliyah organization, which rescued several thousand Jewish children from Nazi Europe. Szold laid the cornerstone, in 1934, of the new Rothschild-Hadassah Hospital in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mount Scopus.