Eleanor Roosevelt thoughts

I've been thinking a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt lately, and thanks to a wise seventh grade student, I have learned so much about her in the past week.

Before Maya set forth on her independent research for National History Day, I didn't know too much about this First Lady, and my feelings about her were mixed, to say the best. I credited her for being a strong feminist and a stout intellectual. I empathized with her for not matching society's view of beauty and for having an odd speaking voice. And, somehow I had it in the back of my mind that some of her actions were antisemitic and that she could have done more to help with the plight of the Jewish people in Europe. 

Maya is researching Eleanor Roosevelt as a representative example for Leaders and Legacy, this year's theme. She chose the leader and has come to work on her research at lunch and study hall just about every day this school year. Her efforts have given me a greater appreciation of the many predicaments ER was in, and still I am left wondering if she did as much as she could. 

Today, I feel sympathy toward the little girl whose mother never connected with her because she wasn't beautiful, whose father was loving and kind but an alcoholic deemed unfit to parent, and whose grandmother welcomed her into an austere household with the makings of an LM Montgomery book. 

I want to know more about Marie Souvestre, her powerful teacher who spoke up against the Boer Wars and who was outraged about the Dreyfus affair, at a time when it was not prudent to take those stances.

I wonder where she got the strength to push her husband forward, back onto the political scene after he was deemed a useless cripple by his mother and society; had ER not rallied for him, he would have never become president and I am chilled to think of how today's world would be. 

I wonder what she would have said to Hillary Clinton about unfaithful husbands. ER too had a publicly unfaithful husband; she also had an all-powerful mother-in-law who refused to allow a divorce. ER stayed married to FDR but insisted on having a bedroom of her own and their relationship became solely platonic, a friendship of a stateswoman and a politician.  The times were different sixty years later, but Hillary also stayed with Bill. 

I have to remind myself that times were different when I learn about Eleanor Roosevelt and the Jewish people. I also have to acknowledge that people change. In her young adulthood, she made some horrible statements about Jewish people. It was the America of Ford style antisemitism and she was not exempt from it. 

I have to remember that she was not in control of her husband's decisions and that she was a First Lady, not a president. She did a great deal to change the role of president's wife, but times were different. So, when I read the following plea from Albert Einstein, I cannot condemn her too much for taking it up with her husband and letting it stop there. But part of me does condemn her a bit, anyway. 

 

And then I remind myself that the world has changed with our accessibly to news and to visual evidence. We have live-time information and misinformation sent to us around the clock. Though we could benefit from a national community of Fireside Chats, we now are bombarded with so much more.  I know that she and her husband knew much more than the average Joe about what was going on overseas. I know that in her "My Day" newspaper column in 1943 she spoke out with words that sound like nouveau humanism for the Jewish people as a slice of humanity. In this public forum, she wrote:

"I do not know what we can do to save the Jews in Europe and to find them homes, but I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them."

I need to remember that this woman who was born to high society ended up speaking with actions to help race relations in America, continuing long after her stint in the White House. There are great stories about her refusing to sit at a segregated table, even with police urging her to do so. She worked to help the situation of Jews in America and advocated the formation of Israel. In fact, take a look at this Israeli postage stamp:: 

At Passover, we sing a song about the ten plagues. "Dayenu" means "it would have been enough for us" and this song proclaims that God didn't need to bring forth all these disasters and hardships just to free the Jewish people; it would have been enough just to give us learning and culture and freedom.

My Nana once showed me a response to Dayenu from a 1969 Freedom Seder. Segments of it are available here: 

http://jwa.org/media/1969-freedom-seder-excerpt-dayenu-opposite

The message though, rings clear. It is never enough until we all have what we need, until there is no war, no genocide, no hunger, no hatred. 

Eleanor Roosevelt made personal and societal change in her lifetime and I admire her a lot more than I did before learning from Maya. She did her part. But her part alone is not enough. I will keep doing my part-- not just for my people but for anyone who I can help (after all, we are all one people, we are all my people, all my living beings....)--- and collectively, someday maybe it will be enough.