HBI Board Chairwoman Phyllis Hammer delivered these remarks about her late mother-in-law, Helen Gartner Hammer, during the inaugural Helen Gartner Hammer Memorial Lecture on April 9, 2014.

HBI Co-Director Shulamit Reinharz, Brandeis President Frederick M. Lawrence, HBI Board Chairwoman Phyllis Hammer, Author and Speaker Tamar Biala.
(Photos by Mike Lovett, Brandeis photographer)

I would like to tell you a bit about Helen Hammer so that you will understand why underwriting the scholar-in-residence program at HBI is such a fitting way to commemorate her.
If you were to meet Helen Hammer in her later years, you would have been charmed by her engaging manner, delighted by her quick wit but perhaps, above all, you might have been struck by her beautiful facial complexion. That smoothness of skin, however, belied a complex and difficult life.

Paradoxically, that smoothness also ‘symbolized’ her fierce determination to create for herself, a normal life, a smooth life.
Helen was born and raised in Tarnow, a city in Poland not far from Krakow. Always a brilliant student, with her near photographic memory and fluency in many languages, her dream was to go to university and enter the academic world. But that was not to be–WWll intervened. Instead, she spent those years first in the Tarnov ghetto working as an accountant in a “Shindleresque” factory and then in five concentrations camps–Plaszow, Birkenau, Auschwitz, Ravenbruck and Malchow. Then, she was forced to the infamous death marches across Poland and Germany at the end of the war. She was the lone survivor of her family.

Years later a newspaper reporter asked her about her war time experiences. She answered, “It would take me six years to tell you about them.”

In 1947, in Paris, she married another survivor, my father-in-law, Henry Hammer, and they left for America, and eventually settling in Annapolis, Md. Helen set about recreating her life. She learned a new language and honed her skills through voracious reading, eventually becoming a master crossword puzzler. She prided herself on speaking English fluently yet if you listened closely you could hear the soft accent that haunted her words. She continued to challenge her mind studying philosophy, literature and history.

But her deepest intention after the war was creating a family, another family. She had a child, Michael, and her child had children, Jessica, Alison, Dana and David. She fostered in them a love of learning and nurtured their intellectual curiosity. Her granddaughter, Jessica, said of her, “She lovingly taught me how to cultivate my mind–she has had an impact on my life in ways I didn’t understand until I was much older.”

I think it is safe to say that her message got across–her son Michael became a university professor and a best selling author. Her grandchildren span the academic, business and arts worlds–all the while deeply committed to their Jewish heritage.

In thinking about how to honor Helen’s memory, my late husband Michael and I felt strongly that we wanted to celebrate the life that Helen Hammer would have had, were it not for the Holocaust–a life of scholarship and community. What better venue than HBI whose very mission is to produce and promote scholarly research, artistic projects and community engagement in their exploration of the issues surrounding Jews and gender.

HBI gives life to Helen’s highest aspirations and for that I am grateful.

By Karyn Grossman Gershon

Karyn Grossman Gershon

Vlada, from Krivoy Rog, Ukraine, is representative of many of the women in the Project Kesher network when she says, “During my life, I have always thought that I would fear being Jewish in Ukraine. But, today, I am more fearful of simply being Ukrainian in my own country.”

As one of the early organizers of Jewish life in her community Vlada shares that, “I have always said prayers of peace for Israel. It is strange to be saying Jewish prayers of peace for Ukraine.”

Jewish women in Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine have been at the forefront of coalition building in their region and they find it ironic that their skills are now being called upon to facilitate dialogue between people in Russia and Ukraine, countries that were unified during their lifetime. Initially, Jewish women in the Project Kesher network, on different sides of the border, expressed anger at each other about the conflict.

Women in Ukraine, many who have been active in the Euromaidan protests, were angry that Russian women did not defend their right to affiliate with Europe. Some women in Russia believed that parts of Ukraine were historically Russian and, if the population wanted to rejoin Russia, they should be allowed to do so. Others, pounded by government propaganda 24/7, began to believe that widespread anti-Semitism was a legitimate threat.

During the past few weeks, the internal tensions have subsided as the women began to seriously listen to what each was hearing from their government and media; and what they were seeing in their own communities. They began to remember that they were not each other’s enemies and that they needed to take concrete actions to help re-stabilize the region.

Jewish women in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have realized that they do not have the ability to force the Russian government to be less aggressive in Ukraine but they do have the power to create public sentiment for restraint, diplomacy and ultimately, peace. Project Kesher activists have been posting programming ideas to promote a peaceful resolution on their websites.

In their roles as community leaders, teachers, social workers, etc., they are reaching out to school children, children in hospitals, youth groups, college students and other community leaders to stage peace protests, art programs for peace and community roundtables to discuss the situation. They retold the story of Esther at Purim to highlight the leadership role Jewish women have played in saving their people. They are gearing up for Passover and contemplating how their family can process the events in the region through the prism of the holiday.

In the past months, Jewish women in the Project Kesher network have asked for support to learn mediation skills to facilitate dialogue across borders and opportunities to bring together leaders at neutral sites to strategize about how Jewish women can help stabilize Ukraine and Russia and continue to make strides in advocating for women and girls.

The rights of women and girls are almost always an afterthought in this region and have certainly not been a priority under the Putin administration or the last two administrations in Ukraine. Issues like domestic violence, trafficking and rape have barely begun to be addressed in any satisfactory way and will likely get worse as the economies in these countries are impacted by the current situation.

While Jewish women share the frustration and fears of others in their region, many are trying to regain some control over their quality of life through the framework of their Jewish identity and the social activism skills they have developed in the past decade.

Karyn Grossman Gershon is the Executive Director of Project Kesher, the largest funder of Jewish women’s programming in Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. Through Project Kesher’s support, Jewish women in this region have created a network of more than 180 Jewish women’s groups and 90 interfaith coalitions that work to build Jewish identity, promote gender equality and advance civil society.

By Lila Kagedan

I have learned that change comes ever so slowly to Orthodox synagogue life, but it does happen. When I was 12 years old, my shul launched a search for a new rabbi. My father, who was on the search committee, gave me an important job. He had me prepare questions to quiz the job candidates based on the weekly Torah portion. I diligently chose the toughest questions. I felt like my voice mattered as part of the committee in an Orthodox synagogue that seldom saw, much less heard, the voices of women in the community.

Ultimately, this rabbi became my teacher in several different educational settings and we butted heads to the say least. We argued over my ability to do rituals and celebrate my bat mitzvah in the manner in which I wanted. We argued about learning Talmud in high school. We argued about the role of women in the synagogue, politics, and we continued to argue about parsha questions. We pretty much argued for more than a decade. Then, I readied myself for what I thought would be the biggest argument of all: when I revealed to him that I had been accepted to get smicha /ordination as a student at Yeshivat Maharat.

While I saw this as the ultimate compliment to his years of teaching me as I was truly committing myself to a life of service and learning, I knew that there were limits and this would be the “last straw.” I decided that year on Rosh Hashana to casually mention my course of study after shul one evening. When I did, he didn’t really react. It was clear to me that I had crossed a line and that was that. It saddened me that he could not see my commitment to study as a positive, but I had long lived in a world where women’s learning was of little interest so I certainly was not shocked.

A few weeks later he said to my youngest brother, possibly jokingly or maybe he was testing the waters, “So your sister is going to be a rabbi?” It was clear to me that this was a positive step and I decided to pursue as many halachic conversations with him in casual short ways after services as possible when I visited home. I was never certain where he stood on the matter of ordination and we never discussed it.

This past Thanksgiving/Chanukah, this very same rabbi invited me give a talk at the shul on halacha and ethics relating to inclusion for differently abled persons. I was shocked. No woman had ever spoke about halacha in the shul setting before. I thought he disapproved of my studies and me. The invitation had been a simple email, no drama, no pomp just a simple and direct email invite.

When he introduced me at the lunch prior to my talk with over 100 people in attendance, he used the most complimentary of terms to describe my studies and I returned the compliment by introducing myself as his long-time student. It was an amazing, groundbreaking moment for the shul, but most all, it just felt normal. As the audience filed out of the room after the talk, the rabbi came up to me and challenged a few of my points and we talked some of them through. I thanked him for the invitation and told him that I would be sending him an invitation to my ordination ceremony when the time came. We both wished one another a Shabbat Shalom and I thanked him for being my teacher for several years.

Change can happen when you least expect it and in the most surprising ways. Patience would not have achieved this goal. The passage of time would not have brought me to this place. What brought me here was more than a decade of facing the issues and pursuing these goals. That’s what yielded these results. It would turn out to be a season of milestones for women in the shul of my childhood. After years of advocacy, women danced with a Torah for the first time on Simchat Torah and will read from the Megillat Esther on Purim. Now it is time to focus on what we want to do next.

Lila Kagedan in a student at Yeshivat Maharat and a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Her beloved father, Ian Kagedan referenced in this article, passed away on Feb. 17. May his memory be a blessing.

As part of a collaboration between the HBI’s Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law and the School of Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, supported by the Bridging Voices Program of the British Council, we present a series of invited reflections on the intersection of Gender, Religion and Equality in Public Life from activists and scholars around the world. Contributors have been asked to reflect upon the ways in which conflicts over gender, religion and participation impact their work and inform their understanding of events in the news. They are particularly asked to consider how religious norms around gender shape civil policy making, adjudication and women’s capacity to fully participate in public political and ritual life.