June 11, 1947
Emma Gottheil, one of the first and most important female Zionist leaders, dies at her New York home at the age of 85. Born in Beirut in 1862, she was sent to Paris in 1874 to further her education, and the rest of her family moved to France soon after. She was an exceptional student, becoming fluent in several languages with a primary interest in French literature. She married at a young age and had three sons. She lost one of her sons and her husband, becoming a widow in her 20s.
She met Richard Gottheil, a professor of Semitic languages at Columbia University, in 1898. Gottheil, whose father, Gustav, was a Reform Rabbi at the city’s Temple Emanu-El, was an early Zionist supporter. The couple married, and Emma moved with her husband to New York in 1891. She lectured on French literature at Columbia and worked as a translator.
In 1898, she and Richard, then serving as the first president of the new American Federation of Zionists, attended the Second Zionist Congress as official delegates. The Second Zionist Congress endowed women who paid their membership dues with equal voting rights at a time when women did not have the right to vote in the United States. Emma impressed Theodor Herzl during the Congress, and he invited her to sit on the stage and translate his messages into French, Italian and English.
After the Congress, Herzl encouraged Emma Gottheil to recruit more American Jewish women to the Zionist cause. When she returned to New York, Gottheil held meetings at her home for groups of young women, mainly immigrants from the Lower East Side. Calling themselves Daughters of Zion, the group studied Zionist and Jewish subjects and eventually adopted the name Hadassah in memory of Gottheil’s mother.
Within a few years, several Daughters of Zion groups, some of which also called themselves Hadassah, formed in the city. One such group was established at New York’s Temple Emanu‐El, where Gottheil’s father‐in‐law had been the rabbi. In 1906, Judah Magnes succeeded Rabbi Gottheil as the congregation’s leader. Magnes, like the Gottheils, was an early supporter of the Zionist movement, and his views helped shape the chapter as he encouraged its growth. In 1909, Magnes encouraged Henrietta Szold, who had just returned from a trip to Palestine and was eager to engage in practical work to help Jews there, to join the Hadassah group at Temple Emanu-El.
Szold was nearly twice the age of most of the members. She became the group’s leader and engaged many of her peers, including Gottheil, to help shape the group’s work. In 1912, the new Hadassah held its first meeting at Temple Emanu-El with Gottheil among the organizers.
Emma continued in a leadership role for Hadassah, hosting meetings in her home and overseeing projects. She also deepened her involvement in Zionist fundraising activities, organizing both the Keren Hayesod women’s division and the Women’s League for Palestine. The latter focused on raising money for education and social projects of benefit to young women in Palestine.
In 1940, Gottheil received the French Cross of the Legion of Honor for her work on Franco-American relations.