Town Resolution Honors

Five Women Who Dared

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

BROOKLINE - The Town of Brookline recently passed a resolution honoring five special residents who dared to stand up for the rights of others in their lives.

“Be it resolved,” attested Town Administrator Richard J. Kelliher in the document, “that we, the Board of Selectmen, as the Town of Brookline’s governing body, congratulate Susan Maze-Rothstein, Betsy Shure Gross, Ruth Haskal, Anne Jackson and Vicki Gabriner on receiving this distinguished recognition and thank them for their outstanding contributions to our community.”

Maze-Rothstein, Gross, Haskal, Jackson and Gabriner are among honorees of the Jewish Women’s Archive Women Who Dared program, which began as a Purim feast in March 2000. In recognition of the heroic activism of Queen Esther, eighteen women were noted for similar achievement that year, and at 2001’s feast, eight more joined the distinguished group.

Maze-Rothstein is a leader on the Diversity Committee at the Driscoll School, which focuses on curriculum hiring, sponsors cross-cultural social and educational events and helps organize varied committees representing the school’s diverse community.

Gross, active in environmental and community preservation, founded the National Association for Olmsted Parks, and advocates for the preservation of open spaces, historic sites, and restoration of the Emerald Necklace.

Jackson, who participated in the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, is a civil rights activist who has worked within political and community efforts including civil rights and Holocaust education.

Haskal’s work as a health worker for the State of Massachusetts Department of Public Health included visiting prison tuberculosis hospitals in order to address multi-drug resistance to TB and to teach the staff how to obtain sputum specimens.

Gabriner, as a civil rights worker in the South, worked on voter registration, local and national elections, freedom schools and mass demonstrations seeking to integrate public facilities in the county courthouse. She was also executive director of the Sojourner Feminist Institute.

“A lot of the the study my family did when I was a child,” said Maze-Rothstein, “focused on exactly how Judaism,…in business, in agriculture,…make(s) things fair. What do we do for the strangers in our gates? Judaism holds the concept of marginalized people and actually has developed thought and writings around how we treat marginalized people.”

“I see my work as connected to Jewish justice values,” said Gross. Activism and commitment to environmental justice and social justice comes from the values in my family and the awareness of the constant threat of prejudice that I didn’t really understand until I was older.”

Other Women Who Dared honorees include child abuse expert Renee Brant, Founder and President of Action for Children's Television Peggy Charren, breast cancer activist Judi Hirshfield-Bartek and GLBT rights activist Shulamit Izen.

The mission of the Jewish Women's Archive, which held the Purim dinners in partnership with Hadassah/Boston, as stated by oral historian Judith Rosenbaum, is to “uncover, chronicle and transmit the rich legacy of Jewish women and their contributions to our families and our communities, to our people and our world.”

Its Women Who Dared Program, which is supported in part by a grant from the Dorot Foundation, similarly chronicles, in oral interviews and research, the legacies of Jewish women’s activism as it selects and honors community leaders who can serve as role models for successive generations. It hosts an online exhibit, and local events celebrating the human rights and social justice work of their designees.

"These five daring women illustrate the depth and range of Jewish women's

activism in our local community," said Rachel Sagan, Program Director, Women

Who Dared.

"It is exciting to not only honor these women, but to make their stories and

words available on our website on a permanent basis," said Dr. Gail T.

Reimer, JWA Executive Director. "This proclamation brings renewed attention

to five women who truly deserve it."

For more information on the Jewish Women’s Archive, please visit http://www.jwa.org.