ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  How was the Emma Lazarus Federation different from other Jewish women’s organizations?

March 8 is International Women’s Day and this week we’re celebrating with a special program.

The Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women’s Clubs (ELF), a progressive women’s group, grew out of the International Workers Order (IWO).  It was formed especially to combat antisemitism and racism and to nurture positive Jewish identification through a broad program of Jewish education and women’s rights. The organization worked for civil rights and women’s rights and produced publications about many women who were active in these movements. In the 1960s, the ELF joined women’s rights organizations to support the Equal Rights Amendment and advocated for working women’s and minority women’s interests.

Jennifer Young holds an M.A in Anthropology, and an M.Ed in Curriculum and Pedagogy, specializing in how to teach history in museums. She has completed coursework and comprehensive exams for a Ph.D. in modern American and Jewish history at New York University.

She is the former Director of Education of the YIVO Institute, and has also worked at the New York Historical Society and the Tenement Museum. She wrote and produced the YIVO Institute’s college-level online course, “Discovering Ashkenaz.”

Her writing has appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Time.com and Publishers Weekly, among others, and her academic work has been published by several university presses and has appeared in major scholarly journals.