Sonnenschein (née Jassol), Rosa
SONNENSCHEIN (née Jassol), ROSA
SONNENSCHEIN (née Jassol ), ROSA (1847–1932), early American Zionist and editor. Sonnenschein was born in Hungary but immigrated to America where she soon became prominent in literary circles, serving as special correspondent for several St. Louis and Chicago newspapers while attending the Paris Exposition.
At the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 she read a paper on the need for a literary journal for women, which was followed by her founding the first independent English-language Jewish women's journal in the United States, The American Jewess, which appeared from 1895 to 1899, when it was discontinued for financial reasons, despite the fact that it was supported by the National Council of Women and had many well-known contributors, including Israel *Zangwill, Max *Nordau and Isaac Meyer *Wise.
During her numerous trips abroad, she met Theodor *Herzl and became an ardent Zionist and was a delegate to the First Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897.
In 1864, she married Rabbi Solomon Hirsch Sonnenschein who was a rabbi in Prague and subsequently in New York, St. Louis, and Des Moines, Iowa. They were divorced however in the 1890s.
bibliography:
J.N. Porter, in: American Jewish History (1978), 78; J. Zausmer, Be-Ikve ha-Dor (1957); A. Lebeson, Recall to Life: The Jewish Women in America (1970), 228–33.
[Jack Nusan Porter]