Rebecca Gratz Tea Party!
Rebecca Gratz Tea Party
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
2:00 – 3:15 pm ET
$10, includes tea and snacks
Gratz College, in-person only
Melissa R. Klapper, PhD
Professor of History and Director of Women’s & Gender Studies, Rowan University
Nina Warnke, PhD
Lead Editor, Rebecca Gratz Digital Archive, Gratz College
Open a window into the past of one of America’s most storied Jewish women of the 19th century. Rebecca Gratz, rumored inspiration for Gratz College, was a fierce proponent of Jewish education. Her creation of the first children’s classes for Jewish religion, history and culture eventually became the model for the modern Jewish Sunday School in the United States. Scholar of American Jewish history Melissa R. Klapper will discuss Gratz’s legacy from a historical perspective. We will also dive into the personal side of Rebecca Gratz by reading from a few of her letters, pulled from our collection of almost 800 documents! Nina Warnke, lead editor of the Rebecca Gratz Digital Archive, will guide us through her process of transcribing the letters so that they can be accessible to everyone. Learn with us; sip tea; munch on scones and cookies; and feel free to wear your favorite Rebecca Gratz-esque hat as we venture back in time to the 19th century!
Melissa R. Klapper, PhD
Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and Director of Women's & Gender Studies at Rowan University. She is the author of numerous books, including most recently Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940 (NYU, 2013), which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies, and Ballet Class: An American History (Oxford, 2020). She is also a recent three-time Jeopardy! champion.
Nina Warnke, PhD
Dr. Nina Warnke is the lead editor of the Rebecca Gratz Digital Archive and an Adjunct Professor at Gratz College. She is a scholar of Yiddish Studies whose articles on Yiddish theater and immigrant popular culture have been published in leading scholarly journals and collections.