Kohut, Rebekah (1864–1951)

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Kohut, Rebekah (1864–1951)

American social welfare leader and educator. Born Rebekah Bettelheim in Kaschau, Hungary, on September 9, 1864; died in New York City on August 11, 1951; youngest daughter and third child of three daughters and two sons of Albert Siegfried Bettelheim (a rabbi and physician) and Henrietta (Wientraub) Bettelheim (a teacher); attended high school and normal school in San Francisco; attended the University of California, San Francisco; married Alexander Kohut (a rabbi), on February 14, 1887 (died 1895); stepchildren: eight.

One of five children, Rebekah Kohut was born in Hungary and immigrated to America with her family in 1867. Her father Albert Bettelheim, who was also a physician, served as the rabbi of a synagogue in Philadelphia until 1869, when he took over a Reform temple in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother Henrietta Bettelheim , who died in 1870, was the primary role model for young Rebekah. One of the first Jewish women in Hungary to become a schoolteacher, Henrietta had been viewed as a radical in her day. "Her example inspired me," Kohut wrote in her autobiography My Portion (1925), "led me as a young girl to seek out all kinds of less sheltered activities, into which I entered with all the ardor of a cause, and I know I felt very brave and heroine-like to myself."

In 1875, the family moved to San Francisco, where Rebekah attended high school, normal school, and took courses at the University of California. It was at this time that she discovered her life's work. "It appeared to me that my real mission in life should be as a worker in the front ranks of American Jewish womanhood," she wrote. Thinking at first that she might forego marriage in order to devote herself to social service, Rebekah altered her plans somewhat upon meeting Alexander Kohut, a Hungarian rabbi 22 years her senior, and a widower with eight children. She married Kohut in February 1887 and moved to New York, where, in addition to caring for her ready-made family, she handled her husband's correspondence, translated his sermons for publication, and organized the women of the synagogue. Ignoring mild protests from her husband, she joined the New York Women's Health Protective Association and occasionally taught classes at the Educational Alliance, a school founded on New York's Lower East Side by a group of wealthy German-Jewish Americans. Life as she knew it changed abruptly in May 1894 when Alexander died, leaving her as the sole support of his family.

With characteristic resolve, Rebekah set out to establish a career as an educational and vocational expert. She lectured to groups associated with the Reform sisterhoods and taught confirmation classes to young Jewish girls. In 1899, with assistance from philanthropist Jacob Schiff, she founded the Kohut School for Girls, which she ran for five years. In addition to her full-time job, Kohut became a driving force behind the newly founded New York branch of the National Council of Jewish Women. "At the time the Council was founded," she recalled in her memoirs, "participation by women in public life was still a new thing, and there was an excitement, a heady sense of independence, a thrill, a feeling that one was taking part in the best kind of revolution, even if it involved nothing more at the moment than parliamentary debates about hot soup and recreation for children."

Kohut also became a patron of Jewish scholarship, which she endowed through Yale. In 1912, she established the Alexander Kohut Memorial Collection, donating her husband's numerous volumes of Near Eastern literature to the college. In 1915, the Kohut family and the college together instituted the Alexander Kohut Memorial Publication Fund to support the Yale Oriental Series, and in 1919, the family established a research fellowship for graduate students in Semitics.

Kohut was also involved with employment planning and counseling for women, establishing the Employment Bureau of the Young Women's Hebrew Association in 1914. During World War I, she served as chair of the Employment Committee of the Women's Committee for National Defense, which served as a clearing-house for working women in New York. On the national level, she worked for the U.S. Employment Service and was a member of President Woodrow Wilson's Federal Employment Committee. She also served as the industrial chair of the National League for Women's Service.

Of her many activities, Kohut drew her greatest pleasure from her association with the National Council of Jewish Women, of which she served as president from 1894 to 1898. During the 1920s, the organization rallied to provide aid to Jews in Eastern Europe who had been devastated by the war. Kohut made numerous trips to Europe to view conditions firsthand and to determine how best to distribute aid. The council eventually grew to a membership of 600,000, a source of pride to Kohut, who called her sisters "conscientious, public-spirited women devoted to their communities and cooperating fully with other public bodies." In 1923, she was elected president of the World Congress of Jewish Women.

In 1931, Kohut was appointed by then governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to the New York State Advisory Council on Employment and to the Joint Legislative Commission on Unemployment. In 1934, at age 70, she returned to school administration, serving for several years as head of the Columbia Grammar School, a private boys' school. She also remained active in her organizations, including the National Council of Jewish Women, which honored her on the 50th anniversary of their founding with a banquet at the Hotel Commodore. Amid 900 guests, Kohut was presented with a check for $50,000, to be divided among her favorite charities. Rebekah Kohut died on August 11, 1951, at age 87.

sources:

Henry, Sondra, and Emily Taitz. Written Out of History: Our Jewish Foremothers. NY: Biblio Press, 1990.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.