"I grew up as a Jewish girl in Peoria, Illinois. I grew up isolated and feeling… the burning injustice of the subtle and not so subtle anti-Semitism that was the experience of my generation… the irrationality of being barred from sororities, fraternities, and all the other things, like country clubs, that you were barred from as Jews. I think that the passion against injustice that I have had all my life must have come from that. Then, too, I grew up in an era when Jews, if they could, would try to pass. You'd shave off your nose… you'd change your name. When I went to Smith, some wealthy girls from Cincinnati would… hold their hands behind their backs so they wouldn't talk with their hands. And when there was a resolution to open the college to any of the victims of Nazism and to ask President Roosevelt to undo the quotas that kept the Jewish refugees from coming here, the Jewish girls from Cincinnati didn't vote for that resolution. I, who was just a freshman from Peoria, Illinois, with hayseed in my hair, was horrified. I had this burning feeling, all that I am I will not deny. It's the core of me. I had this feeling as a Jew first. First as a Jew before I had it as a woman. All that I am I will not deny. And if I've had strength and passion, and if that somehow has helped a little bit to change the world or the possibilities of the world, it comes from that core of me as a Jew. My passion, my strength, my creativity, if you will, comes from this kind of affirmation… I knew this, in some way, though I was never religious as a Jew, and did not feel alien in the male culture of Judaism at that time… You can see why so many Jewish women particularly gave their souls to feminism, when you think of all these girls brought up by the book, brought up to the book, to the worship of the word, as our brothers were. When you think of all the passion and energy of our immigrant grandmothers, in the sweatshops without knowing the language! When you think of mothers rearing sons to be doctors, and coping with all the realities of life! When you think of all of that passion, all of that strength, all of that energy, suddenly to be concentrated in one small apartment, one small house as happened with Portnoy's mother! …A lot of women realized they were not alone and we broke through the feminine mystique. A lot of women began to say, “All that I am I will not deny.” The personhood of woman is really what the Woman's Movement is all about. And once we said we are people, no more, no less… we could… apply to ourselves human freedom, human dignity, equal opportunity: all the things that should have been our human and American birthright…. And we who started the Movement did it with the simple concepts of American democracy. But we applied those concepts to our situation as women, to our unique experience as women. We applied them not to an abstract blueprint for some future generation, but here and now to the dailiness of life as it’s lived. And I always thought that the unique aspect of the Woman's Movement …comes from the unique experience of women. Later, as my children, my own son and my spiritual daughters (some of whom are in this room), began to educate me on Jewish theology, I discovered that it's also profoundly Jewish…” https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/113244/
In 1966, Friedan, by then a national celebrity, went to Washington to attend a national conference for women in politics. She was not impressed. On a visit to the White House, she listened as President Johnson welcomed the conference-goers by addressing “the distinguished and very attractive delegates.” It was as if the President “figuratively patted our heads,” Friedan later remembered. For some time, Friedan had resisted the pleas she’d been receiving from Murray and others to lead a proposed new organization, which some activists had begun to call the “N.A.A.C.P. for women.” Friedan, with an unusual degree of self-awareness, had been initially skeptical that she had the temperament to lead it. But at the time there was no other feminist with either her national profile or her political credibility. If Betty didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to happen. Her experience at the conference convinced Friedan that the federal government would not act on women’s rights on its own. It needed external pressure. The night after the White House visit, Friedan invited several conference attendees to an informal meeting in her suite at the Washington Hilton, where the conference was being held. Those women brought along others; in all, about twenty women were crammed into the room. Retellings of the meeting use varying euphemisms to convey the fact that many in attendance were drunk. A number of the women had just returned from a boozy reception at the State Department. “Everybody was feeling rather good by this time” was how Catherine Conroy, a union leader, put it, because their State Department hosts had been “very generous with the liquor.” At Friedan’s meeting, the women kept drinking, filling paper cups with alcohol from the suite’s minibar. Murray spoke first, clutching a yellow legal pad. They had gathered the women here for a purpose, she said. She proposed “an independent national civil rights organization for women” with “enough political power to compel government agencies to take seriously the problems of discrimination because of sex.” The proposal did not go over as well as Murray and Friedan had hoped. Some women thought they could still effect change from within existing structures. Others were miffed at what they perceived as Murray and Friedan’s presumptuousness. A woman named Nancy Knaak spoke up: “Do you think we really need another women’s organization?” At this, the room exploded into shouting. Friedan’s voice rose above the din. “Who in the hell invited you?” she yelled at Knaak. “Get out! Get out!” she continued. “This is my room and my liquor.” Knaak refused to leave; Friedan locked herself in the bathroom. Thus, amid a drunken fight, the National Organization for Women came into the world. “Women,” Friedan would later write of the scene. “What can you expect?” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/the-women-of-now-how-feminists-built-an-organization-that-transformed-america-katherine-turk-book-review-betty-friedan-magnificent-disrupter-rachel-shteir
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"I grew up as a Jewish girl in Peoria, Illinois. I grew up isolated and feeling… the burning injustice of the subtle and not so subtle anti-Semitism that was the experience of my generation… the irrationality of being barred from sororities, fraternities, and all the other things, like country clubs, that you were barred from as Jews. I think that the passion against injustice that I have had all my life must have come from that. Then, too, I grew up in an era when Jews, if they could, would try to pass. You'd shave off your nose… you'd change your name. When I went to Smith, some wealthy girls from Cincinnati would… hold their hands behind their backs so they wouldn't talk with their hands. And when there was a resolution to open the college to any of the victims of Nazism and to ask President Roosevelt to undo the quotas that kept the Jewish refugees from coming here, the Jewish girls from Cincinnati didn't vote for that resolution. I, who was just a freshman from Peoria, Illinois, with hayseed in my hair, was horrified. I had this burning feeling, all that I am I will not deny. It's the core of me.
I had this feeling as a Jew first. First as a Jew before I had it as a woman. All that I am I will not deny. And if I've had strength and passion, and if that somehow has helped a little bit to change the world or the possibilities of the world, it comes from that core of me as a Jew. My passion, my strength, my creativity, if you will, comes from this kind of affirmation… I knew this, in some way, though I was never religious as a Jew, and did not feel alien in the male culture of Judaism at that time…
You can see why so many Jewish women particularly gave their souls to feminism, when you think of all these girls brought up by the book, brought up to the book, to the worship of the word, as our brothers were. When you think of all the passion and energy of our immigrant grandmothers, in the sweatshops without knowing the language! When you think of mothers rearing sons to be doctors, and coping with all the realities of life! When you think of all of that passion, all of that strength, all of that energy, suddenly to be concentrated in one small apartment, one small house as happened with Portnoy's mother! …A lot of women realized they were not alone and we broke through the feminine mystique. A lot of women began to say, “All that I am I will not deny.” The personhood of woman is really what the Woman's Movement is all about. And once we said we are people, no more, no less… we could… apply to ourselves human freedom, human dignity, equal opportunity: all the things that should have been our human and American birthright….
And we who started the Movement did it with the simple concepts of American democracy. But we applied those concepts to our situation as women, to our unique experience as women. We applied them not to an abstract blueprint for some future generation, but here and now to the dailiness of life as it’s lived. And I always thought that the unique aspect of the Woman's Movement …comes from the unique experience of women. Later, as my children, my own son and my spiritual daughters (some of whom are in this room), began to educate me on Jewish theology, I discovered that it's also profoundly Jewish…”
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/113244/
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For some time, Friedan had resisted the pleas she’d been receiving from Murray and others to lead a proposed new organization, which some activists had begun to call the “N.A.A.C.P. for women.” Friedan, with an unusual degree of self-awareness, had been initially skeptical that she had the temperament to lead it. But at the time there was no other feminist with either her national profile or her political credibility. If Betty didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to happen. Her experience at the conference convinced Friedan that the federal government would not act on women’s rights on its own. It needed external pressure.
The night after the White House visit, Friedan invited several conference attendees to an informal meeting in her suite at the Washington Hilton, where the conference was being held. Those women brought along others; in all, about twenty women were crammed into the room. Retellings of the meeting use varying euphemisms to convey the fact that many in attendance were drunk. A number of the women had just returned from a boozy reception at the State Department. “Everybody was feeling rather good by this time” was how Catherine Conroy, a union leader, put it, because their State Department hosts had been “very generous with the liquor.” At Friedan’s meeting, the women kept drinking, filling paper cups with alcohol from the suite’s minibar.
Murray spoke first, clutching a yellow legal pad. They had gathered the women here for a purpose, she said. She proposed “an independent national civil rights organization for women” with “enough political power to compel government agencies to take seriously the problems of discrimination because of sex.”
The proposal did not go over as well as Murray and Friedan had hoped. Some women thought they could still effect change from within existing structures. Others were miffed at what they perceived as Murray and Friedan’s presumptuousness. A woman named Nancy Knaak spoke up: “Do you think we really need another women’s organization?” At this, the room exploded into shouting. Friedan’s voice rose above the din. “Who in the hell invited you?” she yelled at Knaak. “Get out! Get out!” she continued. “This is my room and my liquor.” Knaak refused to leave; Friedan locked herself in the bathroom. Thus, amid a drunken fight, the National Organization for Women came into the world. “Women,” Friedan would later write of the scene. “What can you expect?”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/the-women-of-now-how-feminists-built-an-organization-that-transformed-america-katherine-turk-book-review-betty-friedan-magnificent-disrupter-rachel-shteir
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