National Council of Jewish Women

The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) is an American, volunteer-based organization that works toward social justice, improving the quality of life for families, children and women based upon principles of Judaism. NCJW promotes individual rights and freedoms.

NCJW has pursued the three tracks of social service, advocacy for progressive government policies and programs, and philanthropy in support of projects benefitting women, children, and families and the public at large. NCJW’s coalition work in Washington, DC; Israel; and across the US enable it to effect public policy change on a wide range of domestic and international issues. NCJW runs an online action center to provide access to issue information, advocacy campaigns, and email updates enabling site visitors to learn more and speak out. NCJW’s State Public Affairs Network, a corps of trained volunteers, shares public policy expertise at the state level, taking the lead on issues of concern to NCJW and representing the organization in state capitals. NCJW currently has over 90,000 members, supporters, and advocates in the United States.

According to the NCJW website, NCJW was organized following the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where Jewish women were brought together under the leadership of Hannah Greenebaum Solomon to “shape the destinies” of American lives. Rebuffed by the Jewish men at the parliament from playing a substantive role, the assembled women sought to form an organization that would strengthen women’s connection to Judaism and build on that identity to pursue a wide-ranging social justice agenda. That agenda included advocating women’s and children’s rights, assisting Jewish immigrants, and advancing social welfare, as well as defending Jews and Judaism, advancing Jewish identity, and incorporating Jewish values in its work. According to Faith Rogow, author of Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women (1893-1993), the “NCJW was the offspring of the economic and social success achieved by German Jewish immigrants in the United States. As this community of German Jews matured and stabilized, it faced the same challenge to gender role definitions that had accompanied the Jacksonian Democracy a half century earlier." (Rogow 1995:2)

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