by Kate Stewart
This rabbi was Fritz Cohn, but he now went by the name Franklin. After his stint in Gera, he had lived in Berlin for three years, trying to help Jewish children get out of Germany. In 1939, with his wife and two-year-old daughter, he escaped to New York, where he lived with his brother and sold ties until he found a position at a synagogue in Walla Walla.2 Rabbi Cohn spoke at the conference that weekend and inspired the West Coast women of Junior Hadassah with his songs (some of which Ruth remembered from Gera), humor, and deep belief in Zionism. Later he helped the women write their resolutions and gave a special speech for the new officers, which included Ruth. She had just been elected the Pacific-coast regional secretary and the treasurer of the Seattle branch.3
Two weeks later, Ruth explained how this convention dramatically changed her life:
When I then became “Convention Chairwoman,” I really hoped that I would meet more people that way. But I was entirely overwhelmed with how many people I really got to meet!
1. I know many more people than I did before and if you asked other people what they thought of me it would be “she is an active girl, good worker, ran the convention,” etc.
2. Although it is just a small thing, and I shouldn’t pay much attention to it, it nevertheless doesn’t make any difference. I saw my picture in the newspaper, which naturally amounts to a lot of people having respect for me—and not to go on being as disrespected as I was before, rather more, should I say, “personality” or a small “big shot.” The whole change in my current “social life” is in part probably due to this mention of me and also my having changed somewhat. I step out more self-confidently, am not as timid, talk to everyone and do things as if I know what I am doing.4
Just before the conference, Ruth’s uncle Carl had asked Ruth if she had heard of a Rabbi Franklin Cohn. Looking back on the strange coincidence, she explained:
One of my uncles was the President of the Conservative Synagogue…. and their rabbi was leaving and they were looking for a replacement. This is where it gets funny….uncle comes home one night for dinner and asks me if while in Germany had I ever heard of a Rabbi Franklin Cohn! I nearly laughed in his face…. nothing seemed funnier at the time than to think of a German Jewish Rabbi to be named Franklin…. however, common sense took over and I suggested he ask the applicant if his name was Fritz Cohn and if he ever had a congregation in a little town not far from Leipzig called Gera. It so happened, as a ten-year-old I was impressed with a Rabbi Fritz Cohn, you won’t believe this, because he rode a bicycle…. and he used to take some of us kids on Sunday morning bicycle trips instead of having Sunday school! And lo and behold…. yes indeed…. he was the guy who applied for the vacancy and obviously, how could uncle resist my good common sense and my persuasive powers…. and he got the job!5
Ruth was thrilled that Franklin would now be the rabbi of Herzl’s Congregation Synagogue. Less than a year earlier, she had described her disgust with the former rabbi and synagogue leadership: “I simply could not understand how these grownups could stand up and speak in front of 300 people about a God in which I haven’t believed in 10 years and then speak praises and bless each other, and tell people who have absolutely no clue to stand up and say something in order to seem important.”6
Cohn would soon become a mentor and a father figure. He seemed to be the only adult in Seattle who really understood her. Ruth confided in him about how sad she was that she didn’t fit in with the Rubinsteins, especially her aunt Dora: “I told Rabbi Cohn all the things that are going on with me. It could be good—and it could be not so good—in any case, if anyone can understand me, it is Cohn—and if I can speak openly to anyone, it’s also him.”7 Less than two weeks later, she wrote about how nice it was that her aunt was being friendlier. She asked Cohn if he had spoken to her, and indeed he had. Ruth wrote, “In any case, it seems to have helped! Who knows for how long?”8
Hillel Cohn, Franklin’s son, who also later became a rabbi, was just two years old when his family moved to Seattle, but he has vivid memories of Ruth. He recalls that she used to come over to the house frequently for dinners and holidays, often with a group of German Jews who grew even closer during the war. At the request of Rabbi Cohn, Ruth started teaching Sunday school even though she felt she was unqualified. Hillel recounted a notorious story about his older sister, Aviva, who was assigned to Ruth’s class. When Ruth chastised her, a rabbi’s daughter, for her bad behavior, Aviva slapped Ruth across the face. Hillel is happy to report that Aviva eventually outgrew her infamous stubborn streak. Hillel and the Cohn family remained in touch with Ruth until she died.9
Through her work in Junior Hadassah, Ruth found a tight circle of female friends. The president of the branch, Shirley Berliner, and Ida Fink, who had been president in 1937, took Ruth under their wing and invited her out with other members to eat at restaurants downtown, where they often talked about Hadassah until after midnight. She described one of the organization’s meetings: “On Sunday morning Shirley Berliner had about 20 girls to breakfast to talk about the Hadassah. As it turned out, girls who don’t come to meetings come when they are invited to breakfast. And if you sit next to them, you can inspire enough enthusiasm and strength of will. We had met what you could almost call a successful leader.”10 Although on the surface she was starting to feel comfortable with these new friends, her emotions underneath were roiling:
It makes no difference how funny I am in company here or how good my “company” is and how much fun we have together—as soon as I think back to my time in the Bund—I feel my old wounds deeply—and I feel foreign here although I have “friends”—and I know that many people like me and have consideration for me—I perform for them—and no one notices that it is “done” and isn’t natural. I often feel ready to stop and start bawling—but I don’t think that anyone would believe it […] but after a short time one begins to live the role and becomes a different person until it’s no longer just an imagining—that’s how it goes with me!!!11
With her job, her commitment to Junior Hadassah, and a full slate of other Jewish-related activities, Ruth was extremely busy, which she previously noted meant she didn’t have time for writing in her diary. When she last wrote of Felix at the end of September 1942, she described her ambivalence toward him: “What disturbs me is that he is so steady—never overjoyed, never angry . . . I simply can’t tolerate mediocrity—either good or bad—witty—happy or sad—for my entire life I have avoided ‘the golden middle’—and here I can find a perfect example.”12 In her appointment book on October 4, she wrote: “Felix left on Coventry.”13
In November the Seattle branch of Junior Hadassah started a study group under Rabbi Cohn’s tutelage. Meeting bimonthly, the group learned basic Hebrew and about Jewish history, culture, literature, as well as the role of Palestine to protect Jews fleeing Europe now and in the future.14 While this group would have added even more meetings to Ruth’s busy schedule, she enjoyed the opportunity to learn from Rabbi Cohn and show off her own rigorous knowledge of Jewish and European writers she had studied since childhood. Because Ruth was not attending college, this class surely filled an intellectual hole in her life.
Over the next few years, Ruth would have many different jobs, some of them part-time. After Sun Vacuums, she worked at the Washington Quilt Company, which made sleeping bags.15 With a new government contract to produce them for the military, the company was hiring many new employees. She had heard about an opening as a secretary at a local Zionist organization.16 This would have been her dream job, she admitted, but her family would not have approved of this line of work, and it was too late to apply anyway. In the meantime she would settle for earning money in businesses where she didn’t really see a future for herself in the long term.
Although the war prevented any substantial communication between Ruth and her parents, they sent brief messages through the Red Cross. In October 1942, Ruth wrote: “Everybody here well and sending regards to you. Thanks for your letter of early fall. Please le
t me hear from you soon.”17 They responded the following January: “Letter delighted. New apartment Gustav-Adolph-Strasse 7. Great longing to come to you. Undertaking all possibilities.”18 This address was Ruth’s Jewish high school, which had been converted into an incarceration center for Jews, known as a Judenhäuser.19 According to Leipzig’s city directories, Ruth’s family’s apartment was vacant for about a year but was later occupied in 1943 by a family named Meier. What exactly happened to her family’s furniture and belongings is unknown, but Jewish property across Germany was confiscated and distributed to German citizens as a vehicle to establish their loyalty to the Nazi state. Around 1942 Chaja became a forced laborer for the Leipzig fur company owned by Alfred Kielert.20 In April 1943 they sent the last surviving letter to Ruth, informing her that they had moved yet again to Packhofstrasse.21 The same month, The Transcript, Seattle’s local Jewish newspaper (formerly titled the Jewish Transcript), featured an article on the front page about the recent statement from the Inter-Allied Information Committee that Jews in Europe faced certain extermination in 1943.22 Although her concern for them surely grew as they were forced to move around Leipzig and she read increasingly terrifying news, Ruth channeled her energy into her Zionist work. If she couldn’t directly help her parents or sisters in any concrete way, at least she could contribute to current efforts to assist Jewish refugees and build the new Jewish homeland, where hopefully in the future they could all meet again.
On May 19, 1943, all the endless meetings, fundraising, dances, and seminars paid off for Ruth when she was elected president of Seattle’s Junior Hadassah. In The Transcript she made a brief statement about her plan for the year: “‘Twice as much in wartime,’ the national slogan for [J]unior Hadassah workers, will be stressed here, Miss Rappaport stated, adding that there will be no summer recess in the work of the group, but that dances, picnics, fundraising affairs and study groups will be continued throughout the year.”23 Her photograph appeared in The Transcript in June along with an announcement of the installation ceremony for the new officers. Just a few weeks later, The Transcript announced that the Junior Hadassah branch was being placed on the national roll of honor for fulfilling and exceeding all its fundraising quotas over the past year.24
Ruth had big shoes to fill, but she was up to the task. In addition to being elected president of Junior Hadassah, she was elected in the summer of 1943 as president of the Seattle Zionist Youth Commission. This appears to have been an umbrella group that coordinated events among Seattle’s various Zionist youth groups, which had proliferated during the war. The first event she planned as president for both groups was a youth breakfast with Judge Louis Levinthal, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, one of many events held in his honor while he visited Seattle.25
Since May the national president of Junior Hadassah, Naomi Chertoff, had wanted to visit the West Coast to check up on the growing branches there.26 Ruth got to work planning many events for Chertoff’s Seattle visit. A letter from Ruth to Chertoff was the first of many in her collection of papers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that, beginning in 1943, reveal her mastery of English, her wordplay, and her emerging screwball sense of humor. Responding to Chertoff’s profuse thanks to Ruth for planning such a good tour and being a gracious hostess, Ruth wrote, “Trying to make a good conceited egotist out of me? Sorry, you just can’t do it. I criticize others as well as myself too severely.” She thanked Chertoff for all she had learned from her in such a short time. Chertoff would be one of many older Jewish women, often single, who would guide and influence Ruth during her Zionist work. They would also serve as role models to her for how to navigate the working world as a single woman.
In this letter, Ruth also wrote a detailed summary of the chapter’s business and explained the friction between herself and Shirley Berliner, the former president:
I am having no end of trouble with her. I guess I should give the chairmanship to someone else, but, 1st of all, I don’t have anyone capable for the job right now, and secondly, prior to Shirley’s regional presidency, that is at the nominating meeting she made a faithful promise not to let the Seattle membership suffer. Well, you had all the girls keyed up, and as far as I am concerned they are much more cooperative when I ask for something, but membership, which I decided to leave entirely to Shirley’s responsibility…I can honestly say I have tried to cooperate, and be tactful, and your letter really came as an SOS to keep me back from doing something drastic…Because Shirley complained to Rabbi Cohn about me, and he definitely is one of my severest critics, since he knows I can take it, and he felt that I was right in whatever I said or did. Shirley just hasn’t come down to earth yet… I just can’t think of a possible remedy any more, than maybe, to always let Ida talk to Shirley when I want anything done.27
She closed with a dejected comment that Seattle’s Zionist community was at an all-time low, with bickering among the different groups. She hoped she would be able to attend the upcoming national Junior Hadassah convention, if she could find the money for it.
Ruth went to the convention, but she had to quit her job (probably at the Washington Quilt Company) in order to go. She traveled to Cleveland, her first major trip since moving to Seattle. In addition to meeting up again with Naomi Chertoff, Ruth met the rest of the national officers, as well as Zionist leaders, including Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. The program included mass meetings on underground Zionist groups in Europe, ideas for branch activities, screenings of Zionist films, and Palestinian music programs. Ironically enough, Shirley Berliner chaired a luncheon honoring branch presidents.28
Perhaps most importantly, Ruth connected with other young, serious-minded women for whom Zionism wasn’t just a vehicle for teas and dances. During discussions, she would have felt free to speak her mind on this topic that she felt so passionate about, instead of trying to suppress her outrage and urgency just to not offend anyone, like she did in Seattle. Remarkably, she was able to reconnect with a childhood friend from Leipzig, Ruth Reicher.29 Reicher may have also belonged to the Habonim there. Besides the two Ruths, there were other European refugees at the convention who were able to convey to the American-born members what they had gone through there as children or teenagers and how vital a new Palestinian state was for the fate of European Jews. Ruth no doubt had a thrilling time at the convention, and this opportunity to network with such influential Jewish leaders might have made all the local grunt work worth it.
While Ruth was at the conference, Zeanna Berliner (likely Shirley’s sister or cousin) was appointed acting president while Ruth was away, and sent letters updating her on the progress of the Seattle branch. She wrote that she and the acting membership chair, Edith, had plans to recruit fifteen new members. Although she told Ruth that she’d do anything she needed, Zeanna also reassured her how much she loved being president, how good she was at it, and how Ruth had nothing to worry about.30
After the convention in Cleveland, Ruth visited Rappaport relatives who had moved from New York to Washington, DC. Photographs she captured of her aunt Bertha and cousins Marvin and Selma show the family exploring the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Vernon. Ruth probably still had twinges of regret that she hadn’t lived with the Rappaports—they seemed to have had a relaxed, fun time together. When she returned to Seattle, Ruth looked for a job while she helped care for one of her ailing aunts. As she reported in a letter to a friend, when she got back the whole town was “in a mess” about recent bills in Congress concerning Palestine. The various Seattle Zionist groups could not agree on whether to support them.31
Ruth took a new job in April 1943 at the Medina Baby Home, which had been founded in 1921 as both an orphanage and a home for unwed pregnant women.32 In a series of five articles written for the Seattle Times over 1944, reporter Anne Swensson detailed the huge rise in unwed pregnancies during the war and how Seattle’s adoption agencies were overwhelmed. Stable families who wanted to adopt were difficult to find in wartime, and doctors an
d even classified ads facilitated adoptions that agencies couldn’t assist with.33 Ruth described her job as “wonderful, fascinating.”34 Even though she was still just a typist, she sometimes helped with casework by visiting homes of adoptees, a task that gave her a vastly different work experience than she had had at her previous jobs.
Ruth wrote to a friend about another new job as the private secretary for the owner of Grunbaum’s Furniture Company. She described her new boss:
He is of “GERMAN JEWISH ORIGIN” strictly REFORM, strictly AUTOCRATIC, in a group of 250 employees I believe I am the only one who is not afraid of him, and talks right back to him when I feel I am right (I can afford it for two reasons, I don’t give a damn about the job and he is a friend of my uncles). However, he is the most alert man I know at the age of between 65 to 70. No error escapes him. He still talks either German or French to me. He is strictly anti-Zionist, but helps finance an exclusive Jewish Golf and Country Club in Seattle, thinking he is a philanthropist.35
Ruth wrote that many of the employees were refugees from Europe, and she was ashamed of their petty behavior, jealousy, and gossip. She genuinely liked one woman who had lived in Berlin and Switzerland and had Zionist leanings. Although the job was good experience, with convenient hours and location, if any other more interesting job came along, she’d take it. After the excitement of the convention, getting back to real life seemed like a letdown. “Seattle seems so dull to me now,” she complained, “or rather you always feel like bumping your head in a stone wall.”36