Henrietta Szold (December 21, 1860 – February
13, 1945) was a U.S. Jewish Zionist leader
and founder of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist
Organization of America.
In 1942, she co-founded Ihud, a political
party in Mandatory Palestine dedicated to
a binational solution.
== Biography ==
Henrietta Szold was born in Baltimore, Maryland,
the daughter of Rabbi Benjamin Szold of Slovak
birth, who was the spiritual leader of Baltimore's
Temple Oheb Shalom.
She was the eldest of eight daughters.
In 1877, she graduated from Western High School.
For fifteen years she taught at Miss Adam’s
School and Oheb Shalom religious school, and
gave Bible and history courses for adults.
Highly educated in Jewish studies, she edited
Professor Marcus Jastrow's Talmudic Dictionary.
To further her own education, she attended
public lectures at Johns Hopkins University
and the Peabody Institute.Szold established
the first American night school to provide
English language instruction and vocational
skills to Russian Jewish immigrants in Baltimore.
Beginning in 1893, she worked as the first
editor for the Jewish Publication Society,
a position she maintained for over 23 years.
"The sole woman at the JPS, Szold's duties
included the translation of a dozen works,
writing articles of her own, editing the books,
and overseeing the publication schedule.
In 1899 she took on the lion's share of producing
the first American Jewish Year Book, of which
she was sole editor from 1904 to 1908."
She also collaborated in the compilation of
the Jewish Encyclopedia.In 1902, Szold took
classes in advanced Jewish studies at the
Jewish Theological Seminary, However, its
rabbinic school was for men only.
Szold begged the school's president, Solomon
Schechter, to allow her to study, he did only
with the provision that she not seek ordination.
Szold did well at the seminary, earning the
respect from other students and faculty alike.
Her commitment to Zionism was heightened by
a trip to Palestine in 1909.
She founded Hadassah in 1912 and served as
its president until 1926.
In 1933 she immigrated to Palestine and helped
run Youth Aliyah, an organization that rescued
30,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe.
== Zionism and origins of Hadassah ==
In 1896, one month before Theodor Herzl published
his magnum opus, Der Judenstaat, Szold described
her vision of a Jewish state in Palestine
as a place to ingather Diaspora Jewry and
revive Jewish culture.
In 1898, the Federation of American Zionists
elected Szold as the only female member of
its executive committee.
During World War I, she was the only woman
on the Provisional Executive Committee for
General Zionist Affairs.
In 1909, at age 49, Szold traveled to Palestine
for the first time and discovered her life's
mission: the health, education and welfare
of the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community
of Palestine).
Szold joined six other women to found Hadassah,
which recruited American Jewish women to upgrade
health care in Palestine.
Hadassah's first project was the inauguration
of an American-style visiting nurse program
in Jerusalem.
Hadassah funded hospitals, a medical school,
dental facilities, x-ray clinics, infant welfare
stations, soup kitchens and other services
for Palestine's Jewish and Arab inhabitants.
Szold persuaded her colleagues that practical
programs open to all were critical to Jewish
survival in the Holy Land.
"In October 1934 Szold laid the cornerstone
of the new Rothschild-Hadassah-University
Hospital on Mount Scopus.In the 1920s and
1930s she was a supporter of Brit Shalom,
a small organization dedicated to Arab-Jewish
unity and a binational solution.
In 1942, she was one of the co-founders of
the Ihud party which advocated the same program.
== Personal ==
Szold never married, and to her great sadness
never had children of her own.
While she was in her forties, she had an unrequited
relationship with Talmudic scholar Rabbi Louis
Ginzberg.
He was fifteen years her junior, and he returned
her feelings only platonically.
After their relationship ended, she expressed
her sadness: "Today it is four weeks since
my only real happiness was killed."
Years afterward, she said: "I would exchange
everything for one child of my own."
== 
Death and burial ==
On February 13, 1945, at age 84, Henrietta
Szold died in the same Hadassah Hospital she
helped to build in Jerusalem.
She was buried in the Jewish Cemetery on the
Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.From 1948 to
1967, the Mount of Olives was cut off from
the rest of Jerusalem by the 1947–48 Civil
War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1949 Armistice
Agreements.
After Israel regained the region in the Six-Day
War, Kalman Mann, then-director general of
Hadassah Medical Center, went with a group
of rabbis to the cemetery to assess the condition
of Szold's grave.
They found that it had been paved over by
a road built by the Jordanians, who had also
vandalized many grave markers.
They were able to locate Szold's burial site
using a cemetery chart and "counting the indentations
in the ground".
The grave was later rebuilt and remarked with
a new stone marker in an official ceremony.
== Mourner's Kaddish ==
Szold was the oldest of eight daughters, and
had no brothers.
In Orthodox Judaism, it was not the norm for
women to recite the Mourners' Kaddish.
In 1916, Szold's mother died, and a friend,
Hayim Peretz, offered to say Kaddish for her.
In a letter, she thanked Peretz for his concern,
but said she would do it herself.
I know well, and appreciate what you say about
the Jewish custom; and Jewish custom is very
dear and sacred to me.
And yet I cannot ask you to say Kaddish after
my mother.
The Kaddish means to me that the survivor
publicly and markedly manifests his wish and
intention to assume the relation to the Jewish
community, which his parent had, and that
so the chain of tradition remains unbroken
from generation to generation, each adding
its own link.
You can do that for the generations of your
family, I must do that for the generations
of my family.Szold's answer to Peretz is cited
by "Women and the Mourners' Kaddish," a responsum
written by Conservative Rabbi David Golinkin.
This responsum, adopted unanimously by Conservative
Judaism's Va'ad Halakhah (Law Committee) of
the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel, permits
women to recite the Mourners' Kaddish in public
when a minyan is present.
Szold was religiously traditional, but advocated
a larger role for women in Rabbinic Judaism.
== Commemoration ==
Kibbutz Kfar Szold, in Upper Galilee is named
after her.
The Palmach, in recognition of her commitment
to "Aliyat Hanoar" Youth Aliyah, named the
illegal immigration (Ha'apalah) ship "Henrietta
Szold" after her.
The ship, carrying immigrants from the Kiffisia
orphanage in Athens, sailed from Piraeus on
July 30, 1946, with 536 immigrants on board,
and arrived on August 12, 1946.
The passengers resisted capture, but were
transferred to transport for Cyprus.In 1949,
Hadassah inaugurated the Henrietta Szold prize,
which was awarded that year to Eleanor Roosevelt.The
Henrietta Szold Institute, National Institute
for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, located
in Jerusalem, is named after her.
The institute is Israel's foremost planner
of behavioral science intervention and training
programs.Public School 134 on Manhattan's
Lower East Side in New York City is also named
after her.In 2007, Szold was inducted into
the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca
Falls, New York.In Israel, Mother's Day is
celebrated on the day that Szold died, on
the 30th of Shevat.
In the northwest corner of Szold's home city
of Baltimore, Szold Drive, a short street
in a residential neighborhood with homes built
in the 1950s, is named after her as well.
The northernmost part of the street is in
Baltimore County.
In New York City, Szold Place, formerly Dry
Dock Street runs from East 10th Street to
East 12th Street in the East Village neighborhood
of Manhattan.
== See also ==
Benjamin Szold
Robert Szold
Zip Szold
