Henrietta Szold

Henrietta Szold (born Dec. 21, 1860, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—died Feb. 13, 1945, Jerusalem) was an American Jewish leader, who was a founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

Szold was of a German-speaking Hungarian immigrant family; her father was a rabbi. After graduating from public high school in 1877, she taught French, German, Latin, science, mathematics, and history at the Misses Adams’ School girls’ academy in Baltimore, Maryland, for 15 years. Having studied Hebrew and the Talmud with her father, she also taught classes in her father’s synagogue. In 1889 she organized a night class in American history and customs for newly arrived Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, and the experiment was so successful that several more classes were formed to meet the demand. In 1893 she helped a Baltimore immigrant group organize Hebras Zion, perhaps the first Zionist society in America.

Also in 1893 Szold became editorial secretary of the five-year-old Jewish Publication Society. During her 23 years in that post she was largely responsible for the publication of English versions of Moritz Lazarus’s The Ethics of Judaism, Nahum Slouschz’s Renascence of Hebrew Literature, and other works and for a revised edition of Heinrich Graetz’s five-volume History of the Jews. She worked on the American Jewish Year Book from its first issue in 1899 and from 1904 to 1908 was its sole editor. She also contributed articles to the Jewish Encyclopaedia. She was an early member of the Federation of American Zionists (organized in 1897), a member of the federation’s executive council from 1899, and a contributor to its monthly Maccabaean. After the death of her father in 1902 she and her mother moved to New York City, where she took courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

A trip abroad in 1909, including a visit to Palestine, confirmed Szold in the belief that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was of overriding importance. On her return to New York she involved herself more deeply in Zionist activities, becoming secretary of the Federation of American Zionists in 1910. On Feb. 24, 1912, she led the women of her Hadassah Study Circle, to which she had belonged since 1907, in forming the Hadassah Chapter of the Daughters of Zion; in 1914 the group’s name was changed to Hadassah, the Hebrew name for the biblical Queen Esther. The organization sent a team of two public health nurses to Palestine in 1913.

Szold traveled widely to organize chapters of Hadassah. Through the efforts of Justice Louis D. Brandeis and Judge Julian W. Mack she was provided a modest income in 1916 that allowed her to resign from the Jewish Publication Society and to devote full time to Zionist work. In 1918 she led in organizing the American Zionist Medical Unit—sponsored jointly by Hadassah, the Zionist Organization of America, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—and in forwarding its 44 doctors, nurses, other health personnel, and some 400 tons of equipment and supplies to Palestine.

In 1920 Szold went to Palestine herself. She worked indefatigably for three years to supervise and to raise funds for the unit, which in 1922 was reorganized as the Hadassah Medical Organization. She also organized and became first president of the Histadrut Nashim Ivriot (Jewish Women’s Organization). She returned to the United States in 1923. In 1926 she resigned as president of Hadassah, and she was again in Palestine in 1927–30 and from 1931 to her death. In 1931–33 she served in the Vaad Leumi, the executive committee of the Knesset Israel (Palestinian Jewish National Assembly). From its creation in 1933 she was director of the Youth Aliyah, an agency created to rescue Jewish children from Nazi Germany and bring them to Palestine. Late in life she founded Lemaan ha-Yeled, an institution dedicated to child welfare and research; after her death it was renamed Mosad Szold (The Szold Foundation). Szold died in Jerusalem, in the Hadassah-Hebrew University Hospital she had helped make possible.