Over the past weeks, I have been looking at the members of the Club—who they are, where the lived—and finally I am able to say what some of them look like.

With the help of the Maryland Historical Society and their Portrait Vertical File Collection,  I have been able to find some images of the women from this club. For this blog post I wanted to focus on one in particular, Henrietta Szold.

Miss Szold was a member of the Club from 1890-1894. The picture below was taken while she was still a member of the Club in 1893. Born in 1860 to Rabbi Benjamin Szold, Miss Szold was the only Jewish member of the club, making her, to our knowledge, one of the only—if not the only—member who was non-christian.

Miss Szold’s wikipedia page (which I linked above) talks about her legacy as a Jewish Zionist and the founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. It also talks about the many different roles she played in the Jewish community from Jewish education and being the first editor for the Jewish Publication Society. In 1933 Miss Szold emigrated to Palestine and was a part of Youth Aliyah, an organization that helped to rescue more then 30,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany.

In 1945 Miss Szold passed away in one of the hospitals that she helped to found in Jerusalem. She is remembered around the world for the work that she did.

In the entire Wikipedia article about Miss Szold, it does not mention once that she was a member of the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore. I think that because she was a member for such a short period of time, there was no mention of her membership. In general I think it is astounding that the ladies of the club let someone like Miss Szold in. These are women who have been known to hold discussions on why the Anglo-Saxon race is superior, as mentioned in Clara’s post. So the question must be posed, did Miss Szold leave once she realized the nature of the majority of the women in the Club, or was she asked to leave because of her religion?

Women like Miss Szold are few and far between in the Club, but it is important to try to find them and tell their story and also try to figure out their involvement in the Club. Miss Szold is remembered as a world renowned leader and activist but not as a member of the Woman’s Literary Club. We can only hope to bring recognition to the Club with the help of members such as Miss Szold.