Just as the women’s movement was a collective project, so too was this book. I am enormously grateful to the dozens of women’s liberationists and Jewish feminists who took this journey with me and whose stories fill this book. My deepest appreciation goes to Martha Ackelsberg, Arlene Agus, Rebecca Alpert, Nona Willis Aronowitz, Diane Balser, Ruth Balser, Evelyn Torton Beck, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Aviva Cantor, Irin Carmon, Phyllis Chesler, Michele Clark, Tamara Cohen, Vilunya Diskin, Joan Ditzion, Paula Doress-Worters, Marcia Freedman, Jaclyn Friedman, Laura Geller, Galia Golan, Linda Gordon, Maralee Gordon, Blu Greenberg, Gloria Greenfield, Miriam Hawley, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Amy Kesselman, Irena Klepfisz, Marya Levenson, Collier Meyerson, Cheryl Moch, Judy Norsigian, Grey Osterud, Jane Pincus, Judith Plaskow, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Judith Rosenbaum, Vivian Rothstein, Wendy Sanford, Susan Weidman Schneider, Alix Kates Shulman, Norma Swenson, Meredith Tax, and Marilyn Webb, as well as the late Rosalyn Baxandall, Esther Broner, Betty Friedan, Shulamith Firestone, Adrienne Rich, Esther Rome, Susan Schechter, Naomi Weisstein, and Ellen Willis.
My research for the book began in earnest during a fellowship year spent as the Goldstein-Goren Research Scholar at the Goldstein-Goren Center for American History at New York University. Thanks to Hasia Diner of the Center for this opportunity and for continued encouragement and to Shira Kohn and Rachel Kranson for a conference and subsequent book co-edited with Hasia: A Postwar Jewish Feminist Mystique: Jewish Women in Postwar America. My article for their anthology became a prelude to this book.
That article concerned the Jewishness of the Gang of Four Chicago radical feminists, Amy Kesselman, Heather Booth, Vivian Rothstein, and Naomi Weisstein. Their group conversations with me, emails, and correspondence exposed the richness of this topic and led me to probe the general topic further. Over the ensuing years, these women gifted me with their attentiveness and respect for this evolving history. I am fortunate that the other narrators in this book emulated the enthusiasm and engagement I encountered with the Gang of Four.
Thanks also to Stanley Aronowitz, Phineas Baxandall, Jesse Lemisch, Judah Rome, Nathan Rome, Laya Firestone Seghi, Aaron and Ruth Seidman, and Allen Steinberg for insights and memories of their family members. I am grateful to Wini Breines, Sandra Butler, Nancy Chodorow, Vicki Gabriner, Nan Geffen, Susannah Heschel, Robin Morgan, Rochelle Ruthchild, Ann Snitow, and Pamela Berger for sharing information and stories with me.
Participants in the “Women’s Liberation and Jewish Identity” conference that I organized in 2011 at NYU provided experiential accounts and generated a deep well of enthusiasm. In addition to the previously named women, I thank the historians’ panel composed of Ellen Du Bois, Linda Gordon, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Ruth Rosen, as well as Gloria Feldt, Idit Klein, Yavilah McCoy, Debra Schultz, and Chava Weissler for their participation. Thanks to Jennifer Young for providing assistance with conference logistics. The Spencer Foundation cosponsored the conference as part of its Initiative on Civic Learning and Civic Action; thanks especially to Susan Dauber.
The Jewish feminist seminar I convened for a year in Boston after the NYU conference, hosted by the Jewish Women’s Archive, also provided illumination. Thanks to Susannah Heschel for suggesting this follow-up and for the contributions of participants including Diane Balser, Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar, Paula Doress-Worters, Janet Freedman, Miriam Hawley, Yavilah McCoy, Keren McGinity, Gail Reimer, Judith Rosenbaum, and Susan Schnur. The opportunity to present portions of this book at seminars at the Center for Jewish History in New York, Brandeis University’s Mandel Center for the Humanities, the Seminar for Contemporary Jewish Life, the Close Looking Series of the University Archives & Special Collections Department, and Brandeis’s History Department Faculty / Graduate Student Seminar and at various sessions of the Association for Jewish Studies, the Association for Israel Studies, the Berkshire Conference for the History of Women, the Harvard Conference on Public Intellectuals, and the Stanford Conference on the Jewish 1968 and Its Legacies helped crystallize my ideas. Thanks to Janet Giele, Karen Hansen, Jonathan Krasner, Jon Levison, Tony Michels, Riv-Ellen Prell, Joseph Reimer, Jonathan Sarna, and Beryl Satter for their helpful comments. I also benefited from presenting material from the book at Brandeis’s BOLLI Program, the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center, and various synagogues. Comments of reviewers for NYU Press and for American Jewish History, where an article derived from the book appeared, were especially discerning.
I have been fortunate to have a wonderful group of research assistants during the course of my work on this book. Thanks to the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and to Debby Olins, who directs its Gilda Slifka Intern Program, for arranging these summer assistantships and to Aislinn Betancourt, Leora Jackson, Danya Lagos, Amanda Sharick, Noaem Shurin, and Hannah Sutin for their energetic participation in varied tasks. The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program at Brandeis University sponsored Jara Connell’s and Kendra McKinney’s work as my graduate research assistants, and NYU’s Goldstein-Goren Program sponsored Adena Silberstein.
My colleagues in the American Studies Program and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Brandeis University have provided constant intellectual stimulation and support, as have faculty in the other programs with which I have been affiliated: the African- and Afro-American Studies Department, the Education Program, the History Department, and the Program in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation. I owe incredible gratitude to Angie Simeone, Charity Adams-Brzuchalski, Cheryl Sweeney and Melanie Zoltan of the American Studies Program for their assistance.
Librarians and archivists at the American Jewish Historical Society, the Robert Farber University & Special Collections Department at Brandeis, the Sally Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute, the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College, and the Tamiment Library at New York University provided expert assistance. Thanks also to Cassandra Berman for finding materials in the Brandeis Collections and to the women of the Redstockings Women’s Liberation Archives for Action. In London, Gail Chester, Jeanette Copperman, and Sheila Shulman provided useful perspectives on related issues. The staff of the Jewish Women’s Archive has been helpful in innumerable ways.
Joan Biren, Virginia Blaisdell, Janie Eisenberg, Jo Freeman, and Joan L. Roth have created an irreplaceable record of the women’s liberation movement in their extraordinary photos; I thank them for their help in this project. Filmmakers Mary Dore and Susie Rivo also generously shared photos of women’s liberation and Jewish feminist events. A special thanks goes to Virginia Blaisdell for her time and creative efforts concerning the book cover.
For over thirty years, I have been a member of a unique feminist biography group. The conversations I have had with Fran Malino, Megan Marshall, Susan Quinn, Judith Tick, Roberta Wollons—and now, from afar, Lois Rudnick—have greatly enhanced my well-being over this long period as well as the writing of this book.
Susan Ware, who was a member of a prior women’s biography group with me, read and commented on every draft of this book, as she has done with other of my books over many years. I have benefited enormously from Susan’s knowledge about women’s history and the task of writing women’s lives. I thank her for her intellectual generosity, her wisdom, and her sustaining friendship. Grey Osterud also provided remarkably insightful comments on the entire manuscript. Thanks to Gail Reimer for perceptive readings on the manuscript and to Evelyn Torton Beck, Stephen J. Whitfield, and Erica Harth for their helpful comments on various chapters. I am grateful to Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Louis Nemser, Barbara Haber, Nancy Gertner, Carol and Ilan Troen, Karen Klein, Pamela Allara, and Elinor Fuchs for their support and advice.
At NYU Press, Eric Zinner’s astute guidance and creative ideas, aided by Alisha Nadkarni and Dolma Ombodykow on NYU’s editorial team, helped bring the book to fruition. Andrew Katz provided remarkable copyediting. My wonderful Ph.D. student Sascha Cohen helped with proofreading.
My son-in-law Dan Meagher came to my rescue innumerable times in connection with the technical and photographic aspects of this project. Thanks to Dan for his skills and cheerful willingness to lend a hand.
My daughters, Lauren and Rachel, are always inspirations to me, especially when I think of the ways they reflect their generation’s feminist perspectives and their proud sense of themselves as Jewish women. Thank you to Lauren and Carl and Rachel and Dan for the gifts of Tillie and Max, who fill our lives with laughter, joy, and amazement.
My husband, Steve, my partner for almost fifty years, has always been ready to talk with me about the issues that frame this book, testing and challenging my theories, responding to my questions and enthusiasms. I owe him the deepest gratitude for his own enthusiasm and patience.