Today, International Women's Day, reminds me of a turning point in

my own consciousness. A few years ago, I attended a lecture in Toronto at 

which New York author Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz encouraged the "building of 

bridges" between black and Jewish feminists. In the question period, a 

respected black activist stepped to the microphone and angrily chastised 

Jewish feminists for their absence from important anti-racist struggles.



        I approached her afterward and reeled off the names of a number of

Jewish feminist leaders who had waded into hotly contentious battles against 

racism.



        The woman looked startled. "But I don't think of you guys as Jewish," 

she explained, "You're just white!"



        The message stunned me. When we're on the "right side" of political

struggles, our ethnicity is wiped out. When we're parochial, insensitive or

dismissive of black sensibilities, we're identified as Jewish.



        How does this happen? (Bear with me; I really am circling around and

winding my way back to International Women's Day!) I think Jewish feminists

have to take some responsibility for their public invisibility as Jews. WE

take it for granted that our progressive politics spring in complex ways

from our Jewish identity, but how do we expect the larger community to know

about the Jewish past of dedicated social activism?



         That's why I can't resist  noting here that International Women's Day

evolved out of the ferment of Jewish women's left-wing trade unionism and

socialism in nineteenth century Europe and in turn-of-the-century New York

on the Lower East Side.



        It was young Jewish women in their teens or early 20s, Yiddish-speaking

immigrants,  who sparked the first general strike of the garment industry.

In 1909, led by Clara Lemlich, 40,000 women downed their needles and braved

the police truncheons.



        They were amazing, those tireless, fearless cap-makers, button-makers,

waistmakers, corset makers and cloakmakers. After long days in brutal

working conditions, they organized, preached, rallied, marched. They

conscientiously forged alliances with women of other cultures --- like the

Italian workers in  "white goods" or underwear  --- despite the male

leaders' indifference.



        Fiery orators, kindled with a passion for justice, they were forged

in the heat of multiple cruelties. They were doubly deprived:  the Jewish 

tradition revered learning --- but restricted it to a privilege for men only. 

And in the women's Polish or Russian birthplaces, secular schools were often 

closed to Jews. In New York, the male trade union leaders were too cautious, 

and too dismissive of the plight of women in the needle trades. Singed by

exclusion from every side, yet deeply loyal to their ethnicity and to the

working class, young women like Clara Lemlich, Paula Newman, Rose

Schneiderman and Fannia Cohn defied the male leaders and organized from the

grassroots up. They fought with equal fervour for better wages and for

education, culture and a more humane way of life for the workers. It was

Schneiderman who first  said "the worker must have bread but she must have

roses too" ---  James Oppenheim turned the phrase "Bread and Roses" into a

left-wing feminist anthem still sung today.



        I love to study the chronicles of those times, to read how the

housewives were activists, too, and how readily the garment workers made 

common cause with them. Speechifying to crowds of women from their tenement 

windows, the housewives organized strikes against high-priced kosher butchers 

and gouging landlords. And it was Lillian Wald, a pioneering social worker  

at the time, who invented the concept of rent control.



         Around this time, German socialist Clara Zetkin fixed March 8 as

International Women's Day. When she joined the Communists after World War

One, they accepted the holiday as their own. Not until the 1960s did the

contemporary women's movement take back the day from the Marxists.



         I'm proud to note that Jewish women have made stellar contributions 

to the modern women's movement, too --- Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Phyllis

Chesler, Bella Abzug and scores of other speakers, organizers, writers and

grassroots activists.



        No, when some of us campaign for social justice, it's not despite our

ethnic background --- it's BECAUSE we're Jewish. Secular or not, we share

in the prophetic tradition of idealism and in the outsiders' perspective.



        March 2 to 9 is Jewish Women's History Week, and this column is my 

way of celebrating.

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Michele Landsberg's column can be read on the Internet every Sat and Sun at

the Toronto Star's web site: http://www.thestar.com.





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