The Jewish Woman’s Opportunity for Service

Noted for Service, the Jewish woman, especially in America, faces her greatest opportunities.

It has always been the same story for her. Her home has been the circle from which she has radiated influence. In a community sense, her service began there. First, the family, and then those nearest her door were the recipients of what she had to give. The sick neighbor, the poor relative, the destitute family all felt her thought and shared in her plenty to the measure of word or deed or gift.

In all this the life of the Jewish woman has been no different than that of women of other religions—only with the Jewish woman it has been more intensely ingrained, borne in upon her from the time as a little child she had to perform the duty of carrying gifts of clothing or food to the poor. To think of others is as natural to the Jewish woman as to breathe. She gives and has been trained for generations to give with all her heart going with it.

As time went on and the burden of household duties lightened, the woman found herself with more leisure. Simultaneously as communities grew, their needs became more complicated and what was a simple problem of direct charity ceased to react to simple means and organized efforts became necessary to meet the situations which arose. From ten or a dozen families who needed help, it became a problem of whole neighborhoods and brought in its train all the consequent problems of misery, disease, crimes and the need for constructive solutions of community as opposed to individual problems. This development has marked the growth of all communities and the same assumption of community responsibility has been necessary.

The Jews have always held that their problem is a peculiar one—and so it is. It takes a Jew to know and to help a Jew. Much more, it takes a Jewish woman to help a Jewish woman. Jewish problems have grown to world problems. The Jewish woman must face her share of the service needed to solve the riddle, from a world point of view. To meet the unknown that is awaiting us at the close of the war, the Jewish woman must prepare herself.

This is the dawn of a woman’s era. Women are finding themselves, testing themselves by new standards, trying themselves out by new efforts and finding widening ideals. Jewish women must take no small part in this development of women. Their unusual gifts of heart and intellect and spirituality are greatly needed and they will be galvanized by this wave of feminine activity. They will react in their own way—a Jewish way. They will have intense and gravely trying problems to meet for the sisters over the sea and their children. That will be the big service of rebuilding human lives and constructing a new edifice of hopeful, richly developed life on the fearful wreck of civilization. And they can do it. But Jewish women will need to awaken here in America. There will have to be more than an isolated few to help. They will have to develop unity of spiritual purpose and a knowledge of the best constructive effort offered in the broadest way. They will learn to be generous to those associated with them in work in order to give best to those who need. All that is being done now is but a preparation for the stupendous task that is only a very little way ahead.

American women are responding to the new meanings in the great opportunities that lie before women generally. Jewish women are more and more becoming part of the general movement for universal suffrage, and the activities that seek solution of community and of national problems. Without losing identity, and enriching all that they do, by their peculiar qualifications for personal service, Jewish women will seriously and with true inspiration set about making themselves ready to meet what will fall to their task. The close of the war, whether that implies a period of American participation or not, will bring its wreckage in its train. Whether the task is here in America, side by side with other women, or far away in other countries, the hands outstretched by Jewish women must be guided by intelligent heads. And they will be.