Jewish Contributions to Humanity

#22 in
in a
a series
#26
series

How Three Jews
Helped the World
Hear, Think and Feel.

EMILE BERLINER (1851-1929).

Recreation Coordinator Daniel Parker, Oak
Park Mayor Marian McClellan and Oak Park
Recreation Director Laurie Stasiak

guards in place, “for the first time in Oak Park’s history, our
pool began hosting separate swim hours for females and
males,” Stasiak said. (See box for 2018 hours.)
The special accommodation was appreciated not only
for reasons of religious tradition.
“Some women and girls may prefer to swim without
being in the presence of men. And, vice versa, men and
boys may prefer to swim without being in
SCHEDULE FOR the presence of females,” DeSantis said.
The change proved “hugely popular,”
GENDER-SEPARATED McClellan
said. “Usually we get 50 people
SWIMMING using the pool” at sessions, but Stasiak
Female-only swim times are relayed that sometimes more than 200
Mondays and Wednesdays, came out.
The new season will offer expanded
7:30 to 9 p.m. and Sundays,
female-only, male-only and adult-only pool
10:30 a.m. to noon. times and the addition of water aerobics
and swimming instruction classes. The lat-
Male-only swim times are ter was requested to accommodate those
Tuesdays and Thursdays, who have never learned to swim for lack of
7:30 to 9 p.m. gender-separated classes.
McClellan said Oak Park received at
least 40 thank-you notes last year “from
grateful residents who could finally use
their pool.”
To quote a few:
“It was so nice to be able to swim laps and have a great
time with other ladies from our community.” — Nechama
K.
“My entire family really enjoyed the beautiful pool and
splash.” — Ettie S.
“I really appreciated the fact that you worked to accom-
modate the needs of the Jewish community.” — Chana D.
“Gender-separated swimming bridges a programming
gap we’ve had in the past,” Stasiak said. “We listened to
the community and made it happen.” •

Screens cover
gates to the pool
as well.

b. Hanover, Germany. d. Washington, D.C.
He helped us hear the world more clearly.
Emile Berliner, a German-born Jew, immigrated to Wash-
ington, D.C. in 1870, and then moved to New York, where
he worked temporary day jobs and studied physics at night
at the Cooper Union Institute. He was fascinated by Alexan-
der Graham Bell’s telephone, but saw that its transmitter was
weak, and designed an improved microphone. The American
Bell Telephone Company bought the rights to the microphone
and then hired Berliner. In 1887, while working for Bell from his
home in D.C., Berliner invented and obtained a patent for a “Gramophone,” a new type
of recording device that recorded and reproduced sound via disc records instead of wax
cylinders, a revolutionary technology that changed the world of audio. In 1895, he launched
the Berliner Gramophone Company with a $25,000 loan from some businessmen. His
other inventions include acoustic tile, which improved the acoustics of concert halls across
America and the world, and also one of the earliest versions of the helicopter.

FRANZ BOAS (1858-1942).

b. Minden, Germany. d. New York City.
The father of anthropology.
Known as the “Father of American Anthropology,” Boas in
fact received his university degrees in physics and geography,
graduating in 1881. During a yearlong scientific expedition in
1883 to Baffin Island in northern Canada, where he studied the
culture and behaviors of the Inuit people, sparking his interest in
the study of how people and groups live, or anthropology. Boas
moved to New York City in 1886, where he took up teaching and
editing positions, and studied American Indian culture. He became Columbia University’s
first anthropology professor and created its anthropology department, pioneering research
into physical anthropology, linguistics, cultural anthropology and archaeology. He rejected
the idea that race has anything to do with cultural differences and, in that vain, was a vocif-
erous opponent of Hitler. Following the Nazis’ rise to power, they rescinded Boas’s Ph.D.
and burned his influential book, The Mind of Primitive Man. Boas’s belief that behaviors and
environment, not race, are what differentiates cultures, remains hugely influential to this day.

RENE CASSIN (1887-1976).

b. Bayonne, France. d. Paris, France.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1968.
The father of international human rights.

A lawyer by training, Cassin was severely wounded while
fighting for France in World War I. Between World War I and
World War II, Cassin was France’s representative to the League
of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations), where he
sought to promote disarmament and reconciliation among the
European powers—an effort that shattered as Nazism, Fascism
and Communism spread across Europe. After the war, Cassin
joined Eleanor Roosevelt and a handful of other dignitaries in drafting the Universal Dec-
laration of Human Rights, which the UN General Assembly approved in December 1948,
marking the first ever worldwide definition of human rights and universal freedoms. That
document eventually became part of the International Bill of Human Rights, which is of-
ficial international law. In 1968, Cassin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work
on the declaration.

Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel

jn

June 7 • 2018

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