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In this deeply researched, eloquently crafted volume, Bonnie Anderson brings to life one of the most fascinating, yet elusive, figures of the nineteenth century, Ernestine L. Rose. Known best for her pioneering role in the early years of the United States women’s rights movement, Rose emerges from Anderson’s careful, creative treatment as a complex figure whose politics and identity did not neatly conform to the historical shorthand we have come to rely upon to narrate the nineteenth century.
The rabbi’s atheist daughter was arguably one of the most famous Jews in nineteenth-century reform circles, despite the fact that she rejected Judaism at an early age. Born Ernestine Louise Susmond Potowska in Poland in 1810, Rose and her family were religious minorities in a largely Catholic society. Her father departed from tradition and taught young Ernestine to read Hebrew, a skill typically reserved for sons. Steeped in the study of the Torah, Ernestine engaged in vigorous questioning and debate until her father reversed course and pronounced that “little girls must not ask questions,” a moment that Rose credited with simultaneously igniting her feminism and her dedication to repudiating religion (13). More than an adolescent rebellion, Rose’s new found atheism would prove to be a lifelong commitment, one that put her at odds with the religious zeal that motivated both abolition and the women’s rights movement. While she rejected Judaism, Rose was unable to elude antisemitism. She battled it throughout her life and at times within the very movements—women’s rights and free thought—to which...