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How adventurous Jewish women’s travels upended Jewish norms
In 1922, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, first initiated the bat mitzvah as a rite-of-passage for Jewish girls. Characterized as a lifelong supporter of women’s rights, Kaplan’s family, including his wife and four daughters, played a role in shaping his ideas about women, culture, and Zionism. This was especially true of his second daughter, Hadassah Kaplan, who joined a small but influential cohort of American Jewish women who studied, worked, and volunteered in British Mandate Palestine.
Promised Lands provides a window into the lives of American Jewish women in both New York City’s Upper West Side and Palestine during the interwar period. By tracing Hadassah’s journey, the volume offers a sense of what drew this generation of adventurous women to Palestine, and helps us to understand their impact on American Jewry. Drawing on a rich personal archive of diary entries, photographs, and letters, Sharon Ann Musher displays how unconventional women like Hadassah Kaplan were able to challenge cultural norms and experiment with ideological commitments while still remaining “good” daughters, wives, and mothers. Their knowledge and experience in volunteering, philanthropy, and education within the United States helped them to build Jewish institutions and communities abroad, and to center Zionism in American Jewish education, institutions, and identity. Crafting a compelling portrait of an influential Jewish woman, Promised Lands showcases the legacy of Hadassah Kaplan and her fellow travelers on American Jewish life.
"Musher draws from a variety of sources, including Kaplan’s writings, travelogues, correspondence, and oral history interviews. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Promised Lands brings Hadassah Kaplan’s story to life through her own words and Musher’s detailed research … a compelling and thought-provoking read that sheds light on a remarkable woman and leaves readers with much to ponder about the meaning and potential of inquisitive travel, then and now."
"A deeply researched biography that sheds light on the life of a trailblazing Jewish woman, her groundbreaking family, and the influence of American Jewish women on Zionism."
"Musher has written an insightful, colorful, and loving account of a key stage in her grandmother’s formative years…. She has written a fascinating book, which I am glad to have read."
"A valuable study of the phenomenon of women’s solo travel as well as changing political perspectives and social mores between the 1930s and today."
— Sara Jo Ben Zvi
"Restores a vital missing piece to Jewish historiography: the role of Zionism in empowering American Jewish women. In lovingly telling the story of her remarkable grandmother, Hadassah Kaplan, Sharon Ann Musher has given a new generation of American Jews the gift of memory. Here you will find part of the answer for why the Jewish people came to overwhelmingly embrace Zionism as a repository of the Jewish future."
— Yossi Klein Halevi, author of Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation
"Sharon Ann Musher has made excellent use of an incredibly rich family archive to tell the tale of the fateful year her grandmother Hadassah Kaplan spent in Palestine at the height of the Great Depression. She sets her grandmother's journey in the context of American women's history, American Jewish history, and Zionist history and applies her acute analytical skills to her own family history in the process. The book also showcases the many ways in which women fostered meaningful Jewish life and culture throughout the twentieth century."
— Melissa R. Klapper, co-author of Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940
"Historian Sharon Musher’s engrossing reclamation of her grandmother’s journey to Palestine in the fateful year of 1932-33 opens a distinct angle of vision on many dimensions of American Jewish womanhood and meanings of Zionism before the State of Israel. Reconstructing Hadassah Kaplan invites readers to travel with this articulate, insightful, adventuresome, and emotionally vibrant twenty-year-old on an illuminating trip into the past."
— Deborah Dash Moore, author of Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York
"Sharon Musher brings her grandmother to life on the page with extraordinary passion, thoughtfulness, and grace."
— Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink
"In Promised Lands, Sharon Ann Musher crafts an original and intimate account of her grandmother Hadassah Kaplan’s remarkable journey from Manhattan to British Mandate Palestine."