Promised Lands: Centering American Women’s Roles in a Jewish Homeland
Saturday, November 7 • 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
In 1922, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, first initiated the Bat Mitzvah as a rite of passage for Jewish girls. A lifelong supporter of women’s rights, Kaplan was influenced by his family, including his wife and four daughters, who helped shape his ideas about women, culture and Zionism. This was especially true of his second daughter, Hadassah Kaplan, who joined a small but influential cohort of American Jewish women who studied, worked and volunteered in British Mandate Palestine.
Promised Lands draws on a rich personal archive of diary entries, photographs and letters to follow Hadassah’s journey to Palestine and illustrate how travel shaped a cohort of American Jewish women who went on to shape American Jewry.
Sharon Ann Musher is Professor of History at Stockton University. She is the author of Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Promised Lands: Hadassah Kaplan and the Legacy of American Jewish Women in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (New York University Press, 2025), which was selected for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s Summer Book List and twice for Hadassah Magazine’s Shabbat Bookshelf. Sharon is also a granddaughter of Hadassah Kaplan Musher and a great-granddaughter of Mordecai Kaplan.
In 1922, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, first initiated the Bat Mitzvah as a rite of passage for Jewish girls. A lifelong supporter of women’s rights, Kaplan was influenced by his family, including his wife and four daughters, who helped shape his ideas about women, culture and Zionism. This was especially true of his second daughter, Hadassah Kaplan, who joined a small but influential cohort of American Jewish women who studied, worked and volunteered in British Mandate Palestine.
Promised Lands draws on a rich personal archive of diary entries, photographs and letters to follow Hadassah’s journey to Palestine and illustrate how travel shaped a cohort of American Jewish women who went on to shape American Jewry.
Sharon Ann Musher is Professor of History at Stockton University. She is the author of Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Promised Lands: Hadassah Kaplan and the Legacy of American Jewish Women in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (New York University Press, 2025), which was selected for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s Summer Book List and twice for Hadassah Magazine’s Shabbat Bookshelf. Sharon is also a granddaughter of Hadassah Kaplan Musher and a great-granddaughter of Mordecai Kaplan.
