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Memories of synagogues
“And in our synagogue in the old country there was a balcony completely shut off from the men, and that is where the women sat. Well, here they couldn’t afford such a thing, and after all we were a little more modern than that, and the women sat on one side and the men on the other.”
Rose Feldman Straus, oral history, 1977 Straus lived in Minot, North Dakota, after emigrating, with her family, from Latvia in 1909. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“[I]n about 1953, when Rabbi Rabinowitz came to the Adath Jeshurun synagogue, he, knowing that I was a poet, asked me to write material that could be used as supplementary material in services. That got me involved in a very long career... writing new liturgy... that could be acceptable to modern people and meaningful... to women. As I was writing, the Jewish feminist movement began to emerge, and it coincided with my ideas and feelings.”
Ruth Firestone Brin, oral history, 1986. Brin lives in Minneapolis, MN. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
top photo: Makeshift synagogue in a farmhouse, Devils Lake, North Dakota, about 1905. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, St. Paul.
inset photo Ruth Brin, poet and writer of liturgy, Minneapolis, about 1990. Courtesy of Ruth Brin, Minneapolis, MN.
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