Book review http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602027.html
BELLA ABZUG: An Oral History By Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 320 pp. $25 "I couldn't stand the screaming," historian Amy Swerdlow remembers about Bella Abzug. "She was just so aggressive -- assertive doesn't do it -- aggressive and carrying on." That from Gloria Steinem. Journalist Doug Ireland recalls "those volcanic eruptions of Abzugian temper." "She got so angry that she punched me," colleague Ronnie Eldridge reports, "on Fifth Avenue in front of De Pina's. That was the only time she ever really hit me." This is how the feminist congresswoman's friends, the ones who stayed loyal to her all her life, remember her. Abzug was born in the Bronx of Russian Jewish immigrants who told Bella and her sister they could do anything they wanted when they grew up, and Bella took this seriously. She raised money for the Zionist state-to-be when she was just a little kid, trolling the subways with a Mason jar. When her father died, she went to the synagogue every day for a year to sing kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead. Except that only guys are supposed to do that, and she was a girl, and only 12. She went on to Hunter College, where she excelled, and then to Columbia Law School -- one of the first women to be admitted there, and she was Jewish to boot. >From the very beginning of her adult life, she had trouble working for anybody and soon MORE http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602027.html Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
