Leah Goldstein stood at the window of her opulent house in Knightsbridge, staring at the street below. Still, her thoughts were in Boston, thousands of miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic. With the expected arrival of a granddaughter in a few months, she could not help but think of her daughter, her dearest, Deborah. Leah was concerned, but her thoughts went beyond the usual reflections of a mother.
In fulfilment of some peculiar celestial logic, Leah’s lineage followed a particular pattern: Every woman in her maternal ancestry bore only one daughter. This divine principle did not apply to the male progeny, and a mother could have several sons, but there was always only one daughter.
There was a conspicuous purpose to this scheme of fate, as all the women who had existed in her bloodline were destined to serve as instruments of change in the realms of their times. They stood up against evil in their surroundings; not everyone succeeded, and some paid the ultimate price for their convictions.
These ladies fought against a diverse array of social injustices, declining morality, and discrimination based on belief, race, gender and social status, as well as raw brutality and cruelty against humanity. The complexity of challenges and magnitude of struggle varied from generation to generation—every woman, distinct from the subsequent, faced a unique set of struggles, adding to the complexity of their experiences.
Leah sat on the living room sofa and sipped her coffee. Suddenly, her tragic childhood memories unfolded as if a particular part of her brain was stimulated to start a movie reel as she swallowed the hot drink.
She put the cup on the table beside her, rested her head on the sofa, and closed her eyes, feeling the weight of their legacies on her shoulders.
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“Mama, Mama! Look what Papa has brought for me!” the 6-year-old Leah shouted in Yiddish, clinging to a doll as her father lifted her.
Symeon Poznanski was a lawyer, a noted politician from the Socialist General Labour Bund, and a member of the Polish parliament.
“Symeon, you are spoiling her. She has enough toys even though I have given away so many already.” Leah’s mother, Ewa, came swiftly down the staircase to greet her husband, who arrived from a trip to another town.
Taking Leah from her husband, she spoke gently to her daughter, “ What did Rabbi Jacobovitz tell the children in the school last week?”
“We must save for the rainy day!” Leah exclaimed rhythmically, and her mother nodded in unison as she held her, both looking at each other.
“So, tell Papa to save money for your dowry instead of wasting it on buying toys for you all the time,” Ewa lightly pinched Leah’s nose as she sent the message to Symeon.
Ewa was an attractive woman in her early thirties. Because of her blonde hair and blue eyes, she looked more like a Christian Pole than of Jewish descent.
Her two brothers attended a religious school to study Torah, while she enrolled in a public school. Most Jewish religious scholars of the time held that women could not understand the actual teachings of the Torah and Talmud.
At school, she took a fancy to Polish literature and became very articulate in the Polish language. Still, her life took a turn when she met and became friends with the legendary Sarah Schenirer.
She then championed religious education for Jewish girls, helped establish schools that combined Jewish education with a modern curriculum and was determined to show that women could decipher Jewish sacred texts as well as men.
Ewa was active in her social circle. She was an energetic member of Ognisko Kobiet, a Jewish women’s group that looked after the families of veterans of Poland’s fight for independence about twenty years ago.
At a girls’ school opening, she met Symeon. He heard her debating women’s rights in Yiddish with a rabbi, then in Polish with a Catholic priest.
They married the following year and settled in Warsaw. Her brothers ran a Yiddish theatre, some restaurants, and a printing press. They all lived in a wealthy area of Warsaw with a predominantly Jewish population.