Hillel Cohn, Franklin’s son, who also later became a rabbi, was just two years old when his family moved to Seattle, but he has vivid memories of Ruth. He recalls that she used to come over to the house frequently for dinners and holidays, often with a group of German Jews who grew even closer during the war. At the request of Rabbi Cohn, Ruth started teaching Sunday school even though she felt she was unqualified. Hillel recounted a notorious story about his older sister, Aviva, who was assigned to Ruth’s class. When Ruth chastised her, a rabbi’s daughter, for her bad behavior, Aviva slapped Ruth across the face. Hillel is happy to report that Aviva eventually outgrew her infamous stubborn streak. Hillel and the Cohn family remained in touch with Ruth until she died.9
Through her work in Junior Hadassah, Ruth found a tight circle of female friends. The president of the branch, Shirley Berliner, and Ida Fink, who had been president in 1937, took Ruth under their wing and invited her out with other members to eat at restaurants downtown, where they often talked about Hadassah until after midnight. She described one of the organization’s meetings: “On Sunday morning Shirley Berliner had about 20 girls to breakfast to talk about the Hadassah. As it turned out, girls who don’t come to meetings come when they are invited to breakfast. And if you sit next to them, you can inspire enough enthusiasm and strength of will. We had met what you could almost call a successful leader.”10 Although on the surface she was starting to feel comfortable with these new friends, her emotions underneath were roiling:
It makes no difference how funny I am in company here or how good my “company” is and how much fun we have together—as soon as I think back to my time in the Bund—I feel my old wounds deeply—and I feel foreign here although I have “friends”—and I know that many people like me and have consideration for me—I perform for them—and no one notices that it is “done” and isn’t natural. I often feel ready to stop and start bawling—but I don’t think that anyone would believe it […] but after a short time one begins to live the role and becomes a different person until it’s no longer just an imagining—that’s how it goes with me!!!11
With her job, her commitment to Junior Hadassah, and a full slate of other Jewish-related activities, Ruth was extremely busy, which she previously noted meant she didn’t have time for writing in her diary. When she last wrote of Felix at the end of September 1942, she described her ambivalence toward him: “What disturbs me is that he is so steady—never overjoyed, never angry . . . I simply can’t tolerate mediocrity—either good or bad—witty—happy or sad—for my entire life I have avoided ‘the golden middle’—and here I can find a perfect example.”12 In her appointment book on October 4, she wrote: “Felix left on Coventry.”13
In November the Seattle branch of Junior Hadassah started a study group under Rabbi Cohn’s tutelage. Meeting bimonthly, the group learned basic Hebrew and about Jewish history, culture, literature, as well as the role of Palestine to protect Jews fleeing Europe now and in the future.14 While this group would have added even more meetings to Ruth’s busy schedule, she enjoyed the opportunity to learn from Rabbi Cohn and show off her own rigorous knowledge of Jewish and European writers she had studied since childhood. Because Ruth was not attending college, this class surely filled an intellectual hole in her life.
Over the next few years, Ruth would have many different jobs, some of them part-time. After Sun Vacuums, she worked at the Washington Quilt Company, which made sleeping bags.15 With a new government contract to produce them for the military, the company was hiring many new employees. She had heard about an opening as a secretary at a local Zionist organization.16 This would have been her dream job, she admitted, but her family would not have approved of this line of work, and it was too late to apply anyway. In the meantime she would settle for earning money in businesses where she didn’t really see a future for herself in the long term.
Although the war prevented any substantial communication between Ruth and her parents, they sent brief messages through the Red Cross. In October 1942, Ruth wrote: “Everybody here well and sending regards to you. Thanks for your letter of early fall. Please le
t me hear from you soon.”17 They responded the following January: “Letter delighted. New apartment Gustav-Adolph-Strasse 7. Great longing to come to you. Undertaking all possibilities.”18 This address was Ruth’s Jewish high school, which had been converted into an incarceration center for Jews, known as a Judenhäuser.19 According to Leipzig’s city directories, Ruth’s family’s apartment was vacant for about a year but was later occupied in 1943 by a family named Meier. What exactly happened to her family’s furniture and belongings is unknown, but Jewish property across Germany was confiscated and distributed to German citizens as a vehicle to establish their loyalty to the Nazi state. Around 1942 Chaja became a forced laborer for the Leipzig fur company owned by Alfred Kielert.20 In April 1943 they sent the last surviving letter to Ruth, informing her that they had moved yet again to Packhofstrasse.21 The same month, The Transcript, Seattle’s local Jewish newspaper (formerly titled the Jewish Transcript), featured an article on the front page about the recent statement from the Inter-Allied Information Committee that Jews in Europe faced certain extermination in 1943.22 Although her concern for them surely grew as they were forced to move around Leipzig and she read increasingly terrifying news, Ruth channeled her energy into her Zionist work. If she couldn’t directly help her parents or sisters in any concrete way, at least she could contribute to current efforts to assist Jewish refugees and build the new Jewish homeland, where hopefully in the future they could all meet again.
On May 19, 1943, all the endless meetings, fundraising, dances, and seminars paid off for Ruth when she was elected president of Seattle’s Junior Hadassah. In The Transcript she made a brief statement about her plan for the year: “‘Twice as much in wartime,’ the national slogan for [J]unior Hadassah workers, will be stressed here, Miss Rappaport stated, adding that there will be no summer recess in the work of the group, but that dances, picnics, fundraising affairs and study groups will be continued throughout the year.”23 Her photograph appeared in The Transcript in June along with an announcement of the installation ceremony for the new officers. Just a few weeks later, The Transcript announced that the Junior Hadassah branch was being placed on the national roll of honor for fulfilling and exceeding all its fundraising quotas over the past year.24
Ruth had big shoes to fill, but she was up to the task. In addition to being elected president of Junior Hadassah, she was elected in the summer of 1943 as president of the Seattle Zionist Youth Commission. This appears to have been an umbrella group that coordinated events among Seattle’s various Zionist youth groups, which had proliferated during the war. The first event she planned as president for both groups was a youth breakfast with Judge Louis Levinthal, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, one of many events held in his honor while he visited Seattle.25
Since May the national president of Junior Hadassah, Naomi Chertoff, had wanted to visit the West Coast to check up on the growing branches there.26 Ruth got to work planning many events for Chertoff’s Seattle visit. A letter from Ruth to Chertoff was the first of many in her collection of papers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that, beginning in 1943, reveal her mastery of English, her wordplay, and her emerging screwball sense of humor. Responding to Chertoff’s profuse thanks to Ruth for planning such a good tour and being a gracious hostess, Ruth wrote, “Trying to make a good conceited egotist out of me? Sorry, you just can’t do it. I criticize others as well as myself too severely.” She thanked Chertoff for all she had learned from her in such a short time. Chertoff would be one of many older Jewish women, often single, who would guide and influence Ruth during her Zionist work. They would also serve as role models to her for how to navigate the working world as a single woman.
In this letter, Ruth also wrote a detailed summary of the chapter’s business and explained the friction between herself and Shirley Berliner, the former president:
I am having no end of trouble with her. I guess I should give the chairmanship to someone else, but, 1st of all, I don’t have anyone capable for the job right now, and secondly, prior to Shirley’s regional presidency, that is at the nominating meeting she made a faithful promise not to let the Seattle membership suffer. Well, you had all the girls keyed up, and as far as I am concerned they are much more cooperative when I ask for something, but membership, which I decided to leave entirely to Shirley’s responsibility…I can honestly say I have tried to cooperate, and be tactful, and your letter really came as an SOS to keep me back from doing something drastic…Because Shirley complained to Rabbi Cohn about me, and he definitely is one of my severest critics, since he knows I can take it, and he felt that I was right in whatever I said or did. Shirley just hasn’t come down to earth yet… I just can’t think of a possible remedy any more, than maybe, to always let Ida talk to Shirley when I want anything done.27
She closed with a dejected comment that Seattle’s Zionist community was at an all-time low, with bickering among the different groups. She hoped she would be able to attend the upcoming national Junior Hadassah convention, if she could find the money for it.
Ruth went to the convention, but she had to quit her job (probably at the Washington Quilt Company) in order to go. She traveled to Cleveland, her first major trip since moving to Seattle. In addition to meeting up again with Naomi Chertoff, Ruth met the rest of the national officers, as well as Zionist leaders, including Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. The program included mass meetings on underground Zionist groups in Europe, ideas for branch activities, screenings of Zionist films, and Palestinian music programs. Ironically enough, Shirley Berliner chaired a luncheon honoring branch presidents.28
Perhaps most importantly, Ruth connected with other young, serious-minded women for whom Zionism wasn’t just a vehicle for teas and dances. During discussions, she would have felt free to speak her mind on this topic that she felt so passionate about, instead of trying to suppress her outrage and urgency just to not offend anyone, like she did in Seattle. Remarkably, she was able to reconnect with a childhood friend from Leipzig, Ruth Reicher.29 Reicher may have also belonged to the Habonim there. Besides the two Ruths, there were other European refugees at the convention who were able to convey to the American-born members what they had gone through there as children or teenagers and how vital a new Palestinian state was for the fate of European Jews. Ruth no doubt had a thrilling time at the convention, and this opportunity to network with such influential Jewish leaders might have made all the local grunt work worth it.
While Ruth was at the conference, Zeanna Berliner (likely Shirley’s sister or cousin) was appointed acting president while Ruth was away, and sent letters updating her on the progress of the Seattle branch. She wrote that she and the acting membership chair, Edith, had plans to recruit fifteen new members. Although she told Ruth that she’d do anything she needed, Zeanna also reassured her how much she loved being president, how good she was at it, and how Ruth had nothing to worry about.30
After the convention in Cleveland, Ruth visited Rappaport relatives who had moved from New York to Washington, DC. Photographs she captured of her aunt Bertha and cousins Marvin and Selma show the family exploring the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Vernon. Ruth probably still had twinges of regret that she hadn’t lived with the Rappaports—they seemed to have had a relaxed, fun time together. When she returned to Seattle, Ruth looked for a job while she helped care for one of her ailing aunts. As she reported in a letter to a friend, when she got back the whole town was “in a mess” about recent bills in Congress concerning Palestine. The various Seattle Zionist groups could not agree on whether to support them.31
Ruth took a new job in April 1943 at the Medina Baby Home, which had been founded in 1921 as both an orphanage and a home for unwed pregnant women.32 In a series of five articles written for the Seattle Times over 1944, reporter Anne Swensson detailed the huge rise in unwed pregnancies during the war and how Seattle’s adoption agencies were overwhelmed. Stable families who wanted to adopt were difficult to find in wartime, and doctors an
d even classified ads facilitated adoptions that agencies couldn’t assist with.33 Ruth described her job as “wonderful, fascinating.”34 Even though she was still just a typist, she sometimes helped with casework by visiting homes of adoptees, a task that gave her a vastly different work experience than she had had at her previous jobs.
Ruth wrote to a friend about another new job as the private secretary for the owner of Grunbaum’s Furniture Company. She described her new boss:
He is of “GERMAN JEWISH ORIGIN” strictly REFORM, strictly AUTOCRATIC, in a group of 250 employees I believe I am the only one who is not afraid of him, and talks right back to him when I feel I am right (I can afford it for two reasons, I don’t give a damn about the job and he is a friend of my uncles). However, he is the most alert man I know at the age of between 65 to 70. No error escapes him. He still talks either German or French to me. He is strictly anti-Zionist, but helps finance an exclusive Jewish Golf and Country Club in Seattle, thinking he is a philanthropist.35
Ruth wrote that many of the employees were refugees from Europe, and she was ashamed of their petty behavior, jealousy, and gossip. She genuinely liked one woman who had lived in Berlin and Switzerland and had Zionist leanings. Although the job was good experience, with convenient hours and location, if any other more interesting job came along, she’d take it. After the excitement of the convention, getting back to real life seemed like a letdown. “Seattle seems so dull to me now,” she complained, “or rather you always feel like bumping your head in a stone wall.”36
Ruth updated Ruth Reicher on the Seattle branch. She had to appoint an almost entirely new group of officers and board members after many had to leave town because of war service or sudden marriages. Shirley Berliner had resigned as membership chair, Ida Fink (perhaps her one true ally) had left to try to make it in the radio business in Hollywood, and another member left to return to the family business, a waffle shop on the beach. Ruth’s new appointees were “willing,” she wrote, but had “no background whatever in Zionism, Judaism, organizational work or anything else for that matter.”37 Remarkably, membership had increased to fifty-six from thirty the previous summer. On top of that, Ruth had recently been recruited to be the secretary of the new Seattle Zionist Emergency Council. She informed Caroline Ruelf, the chair of the national Youth Aliyah whom she had met in Cleveland, “This year, we, the Seattle Jr. Hadassah have definitely established our reputation locally. No one can say that they haven’t heard of us. Wherever, and whenever anything is going on in town we are approached, either as guests, or helpers.”38
Months later, Ruth wrote a long letter to her friend Esther Elbaum, a former Seattle Junior Hadassah member who now lived in New York. Ruth explained that she had declined to be nominated for another term as president and that, naturally, Zeanna Berliner stepped up for the nomination. Ruth wrote:
Had a long telephone conversation with her, and it was most distressing. She told me that to her Zionism is not what it is to me. She won’t force the girls to do anything, she won’t be a slave driver, and whatever the girls want she will do. She has picked a board of totally inexperienced girls, and made me fund-raising chairman, of all things. She is not in the least willing to cooperate. Admitted that she primarily is concerned with personalities, and not Hadassah, and since that fire-side at my house she decided that neither you nor I are human, and that of course leaves me out. The rest of the kids of course want me to be active, but…….39
Ruth asked Esther to stop by the national Hadassah office to tell them what was really going on in Seattle, as surely they wouldn’t know from any official communication what was up.
She updated Esther on her personal life too. She had recently quit teaching at Herzl’s Congregation Synagogue’s Sunday school and hadn’t talked to Rabbi Cohn in weeks. She revealed her concerns about her family in Europe:
Had a letter from my sister in Paris yesterday. It was dated February 9, and about all she could say was “Nous allons très bien” [We are doing very good]. My brother-in-law is evidently working in a coal mine. That is, she said, Pere, but I believe she means the father of her little boy, as I can’t possibly imagine that she means my father. However, I can’t be sure, and have no way of checking until this blasted war is over.40
She was optimistic about a big change she had made that summer. A few weeks earlier Ruth had enrolled in college, finally setting in motion a plan she had dreamed about for years. Like her cousins and friends had, she enrolled at the University of Washington, just over the Montlake Cut, a few blocks from the Rubinsteins’ house. She either walked over the bridge or took the bus up Montlake Boulevard to the campus, a foggy hillside of stone buildings and cherry and fir trees. She was surprised that she already knew so many people there and seemed to fit in easily. The change was good for her, she noted to Esther: “Since I’ve been back at school I have been much less nervous, much more calm, better poised, more humorous, not more hysterical, am not so upset (as with Hadassah).”41 She mentioned that she often studied at the campus library in the evenings. Ruth was referring to the Suzzallo Library, built in 1926 and famous for its Gothic style. In 1935 a new wing had been built, doubling the building’s size. Ruth had found yet another library that not only provided her with books she needed and a space to study for her classes but also served as a hideaway when she couldn’t stand to be at home.