Zionist Giant
Hadassah honors the "diminutive
doyenne" of the American Zionist
world.
JULIA GOLDMAN
Special to The Jewish News
Ak
1991: When the Gulf War broke out, Hadassah women, decided to convene a
national board meeting in Israel while the bombs were falling. Charlotte Jacobson
picked up her gas mask.
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1951: On her first trip to Israel, Jacobson visited a Hadassah project at Sejera.
8/7
1998
66 Detroit Jewish News
sk 20 people to name the
greatest living Zionist lead-
ers, and Charlotte Jacobson
will top the list.
So posits Marlene Post, national
president of Hadassah, the Women's
Zionist Movement of America, to
explain why the organization has bro-
ken with tradition in bestowing on one
of its own this year's Henrietta Szold
Award — an honor previously reserved
for politicians and prominent scholars.
The July 14 presentation during
Hadassah's 84th annual convention in
Manhattan linked the lifelong volun-
teer with Harry Truman, Golda Meir
and Elie Wiesel.
But Jacobson, who first took to the
streets of her native Bronx in protest of
British "closed door" policies in
Palestine, has less in common with pre-
vious honorees than she does with the
award's namesake.
Szold, the founder of Hadassah, was
a dynamic activist who dedicated her
life to what Jacobson calls the
"upbuilding" of Israeli society and the
strengthening of Jewish education in
America.
And although they never met,
Jacobson as president of Hadassah in
the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day
War, reopened Hadassah Hospital on
Mt. Scopus, whose cornerstone had
been laid by Szold. The hospital had
been cut off in the battle for Jerusalem.
Jacobson's award coincides with the
launching of the Hadassah Leadership
Academy, a three-year program aimed
at grooming future leaders from the
vanguard of Hadassah's 300,000 mem-
bers.
It also coincides with the group's re-
examination of post-state Zionism in a
book titled, Zionism: The Sequel. But
Jacobson says that although its meth-
Julia Goldman writes for the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency.
ods and techniques have changed,
Hadassah's philosophy of supporting
Israel and encouraging Jewish commit-
ment endures.
Now, serving as an honorary vice
president of Hadassah, Jacobson looks
back on a volunteer career that began
in the mid-1940s when, as a young
wife, she walked into her first Hadassah
chapter meeting.
Since then, she has devoted her life
to the organization, where the spry
octogenarian still works every day, gar-
nering a long list of honors and awards.
She served as Hadassah's national
president from 1964 to 1968, the first
female president of the Jewish National
Fund, the chair of the American
Section of the World Zionist
Organization, a member of the execu-
tive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and
was recognized by the WZO for her
work with young and disadvantaged
Israeli immigrants as a World Patron of
Youth Aliyah.
Seymour Reich, the former presi-
dent of the American Zionist
Movement, calls the diminutive
doyenne of American Zionism a giant
in the Zionist world.
"She may not have always assumed
presidencies, but her voice was always
heard," Reich says of Jacobson, who is
known as a tenacious and articulate
advocate for social issues — from
medical care and vocational training in
Israel to women's rights and intrareli-
gious communal dialogue.
"When there's a discussion of inter-
est to her, the debate may have been
ensuing for 15 or 20 minutes when
Charlotte will pop up her hand and
invariably wins the day."
Jacobson led a Hadassah delegation
to the Soviet Union in 1966, at the
request, she says, of the Israeli govern- -
ment. After that visit, during which she
and her group all wore visible Stars of
David at a time when that wasn't done,
Jacobson was among those who pushed
for the creation of the National
Conference on Soviet Jewry, overcom-