Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace

American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940

Melissa R. Klapper

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781479850594
• eBook ISBN: 9780814748954
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

Uncovers the powerful effects of 20th-century Jewish women's social and political activism on contemporary American life

Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Women's Studies

Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace explores the social and political activism of American Jewish women from 1890 to the beginnings of World War II.

Written in an engaging style, the book demonstrates that no history of the birth control, suffrage, or peace movements in the United States is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women's presence. The volume is based on years of extensive primary source research in more than a dozen archives and among hundreds of primary sources, many of which have previously never been seen. Voluminous personal papers and institutional records paint a vivid picture of a world in which both middle-class and working-class American Jewish women were consistently and publicly engaged in all the major issues of their day and worked closely with their non-Jewish counterparts on behalf of activist causes.

This extraordinarily well-researched volume makes a unique contribution to the study of modern women's history, modern Jewish history, and the history of American social movements.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations of Organization Names
• Introduction
• 1 “We Jewish Women Should Be Especially Interested in Our New Citizenship”: American Jewish Women and the Suffrage Movement
• 2 “I Started to Get Smart, Not to Have So Many Children”: The American Jewish Community and the Early Years of the Birth Control Movement
• 3 “We United with Our Sisters of Other Faiths in Petitioning for Peace”: Jewish Women, Peace Activism, and Acculturation
• 4 “They Have Been the Pioneers”: American Jewish Women and the Mainstreaming of Birth Control
• 5 “Where the Yellow Star Is”: American Jewish Women, the Peace Movement, and Jewish Identity during the 1930s and World War II
• Conclusion
• Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author