FOR WOMEN

From Sarah To Go cla

KIMBERLY LIFTON

Staff Writer

We will meet our sisters at
the port dressed in white as if
donned in a kittel. We will
put on all white as a sign of a
female kittel. We will put
blue ribbons in our hair and
we will march as a Magen
David.

T

aken from the diary of
a woman of German-
Jewish descent in the
1890s, the words describe
how a group of immigrant
women were going to pre-
vent their Russian and
Polish sisters from becoming
victims of "white slavery."
Men were greeting the
emigres at the docks in
Boston, New York City,
Brooklyn and Philadelphia,
and deceiving them by sug-
gesting they were employers
offering "family situations."
The immigrant women,
who had hoped to find
husbands at the docks, fell
prey to these men, who gave
them room and board, no
money, and often forced
them into performing sexual
acts.
It was an era of laissez-
faire politics, and the Ger-
man-Jewish women decided
to empower themselves. As a
sign of unity, from 1891
through 1903, groups of
former immigrants — dress-
ed in their white kittels,
wearing signs printed in
Russian and Polish with the
word sister — met every boat
coming to America. Jewish -
women stopped being sold
into slavery.
Women took the women
into their homes, teaching
them necessary skills to sur-
vive in the land of oppor-
tunity.
"One of the most impor- .
tant efforts of the Jewish
woman has been helping
other Jewish women," says
public policy consultant
Ellen Cannon, who was in
Southfield last week speak-
ing at the 42nd annual
Jewish Welfare Federation
Women's Division institute.
"We've got to stop
apologizing for Jewish polit-
ical power," Cannon says.
"No other group has worked
as hard as we have and
apologized for it."
Cannon's facial expres-

Ellen Cannon
has devoted her
life to the history
and politics of
Jewish women.
Now she is
organizing for
social change.

sions depict a passion for
Jewish women as she
mesmerizes her audiences
with unfamiliar tales of
history. Her audience last
week was standing, the
women holding hands, ready
to make a difference.
The women talked with
Cannon, saying they were
ready to get involved with
today's issues of anti-
Semitism, child abuse, re-
productive choice, racism,
literacy, homelessness and
poverty.
A Jewish feminist, she
reads from diaries of women
living in the late 1700s and
early 1900s. A political
scientist, she tells stories of
grassroots efforts by Jewish
women who brought about
change.
The first collective efforts
to help others, she says, were
started by Sephardic women
in North Carolina in 1799.
There, the first soup kitchen
was established.
And in 1902, two women —
Mary Schwartz and Grace
Stern — organized a kosher
meat boycott in Brooklyn. At
least 37,000 Jewish women
protested an 11 percent hike
in the prices of kosher meats
by refusing to buy the pro-
ducts. And within three
weeks, butchers reduced the
price of kosher meat in
Brooklyn by 13 percent.
She speaks of abortion,
saying she has never met
anyone for it. Choice,
however, is different, she
says. Choice is an issue of
privacy. She talks about ag-
ing and the problems of the
"sandwiched generation"
who take care of their
children and their parents.
She addresses just a few of
her own 37 targeted issues

a

Ellen Cannon captivates her audience with historical tales of Jewish women.

for women in the 1992 presi-
dential election.
"No single Jewish woman
can make a dent without a
framework," Cannon says.
"We are our sister's keeper.
"We have just begun,"
Cannon says. "Women join-
ing together can make a
difference. The issue is con-
tinuity. There is not a thing
Jewish women have been
asked to do in the past that
we can not do in the future."
The future, she says, lies
in involvement in the
government, which has
slowly been giving more con-
trol to the states.
By trade, Cannon is a pro-
fessor of political science at
Northeastern Illinois and
Roosevelt universities in

Chicago. She also travels
throughout the country, lec-
turing on American-Jewish
politics, women and
Judaism, anti-Semitism
within the feminist move-
ment, black-Jewish rela-
tions, Jewish literature and
Jewish theater.
She lectures at the Dawn
Schuman Institute for
Jewish Learning and is a
National Public Radio polit-
ical commentator and pro-
ducer. Now she is working
on a book about mainstream
Jewish women — including
those of Hadassah, the Na-
tional Council of Jewish
Women, synagogue
sisterhoods and ORT.
Cannon, 40, was raised in
a traditional Jewish family

on the lower east side of New
York City. Her first lan-
guage was Yiddish. And she
has devoted her life to the
history and politics of
Jewish women. Her reason
is basic.
"I love being Jewish,
that's what I'm all about,"
Cannon says. "And I adore
being a Jewish woman."
When Cannon was 12, her
parents explained that many
of her relatives had perished
in the Holocaust. Her late
mother was a 1 4th-
generation member of a
European artist colony,
where her great-great
grandfathers were chief
teachers.
Her parents said she must
be committed to the well-

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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