I've long been been a supporter of Hadassah. There are several good reasons for this. Let me share just one of them at this time.
I have long admired Hadassah's founder, Henrietta Szold. Henrietta Szold (1860 - 1945) was a remarkably intelligent, capable, accomplished and inspiring woman. She was thirsty for knowledge and determined to acquire it. At a time when women were not permitted to study at my alma mater, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Ms. Szold insisted that she had the talent, skill, and perseverence to excell at the study of rabbinic texts. Through the sheer force of her will, Ms. Szold persuaded Dr. Solomon Schechter, the Seminary's charismatic leader, to allow her to take classes there. Unfortunately, the condition he imposed then we would today deplore: he made her promise not to seek rabbinical ordination. She agreed to this, and so although she proved herself to be not just a capable student but an exemplary one, she never received rabbinical ordination.
But Henrietta Szold wasn't just a a bright, learned woman; she was also a dreamer and a doer. And she was a committed Zionist. Even before Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State was published in 1896, she had written a pamphlet describing her vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Szold first visited the Land of Israel in 1909 and was immediately smitten. Within three years, she brought together a group of six other women and founded the Women's Zionist Organization of America. That founding meeting took place on Purim in 1912, which led the group to choose the name "Hadassah." ("Hadassah" is the Hebrew form of the name, "Esther," the heroine of the Purim story.) In 1920, Szold settled in the Land of Israel, and for the rest of her life she dedicated her energies to strengthening the yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in the Land of Israel). She was very active in rescuing and resettling Jewish children during World War II. She died before the war came to an end, in January 1945, at the very hospital she had worked so hard to establish, the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Hadassah has remained a strong, apolitical Jewish women's organization that has marshaled the tremendous energy of hundreds of thousands of American Jewish women to strengthen the state of Israel.
Why am I writing now about Hadassah? The reason is that I just saw a YouTube video of a classical flashmob concert that took place at the new Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower at the Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem.
Even if you don't have a soft spot in your heart for Hadassah and all that it has accomplished, even if you don't tend to associate the Nutcracker with the State of Israel, I think that you'll agree that there's something special about this video. You can access it here.
Click on the image to visit Temple Aliyah's website.
