Ruth Messinger’s lengthy second act honors ‘an obligation to reply’

(RNS) — New Yorkers of a sure age bear in mind Ruth Messinger as a metropolis councilwoman and later Manhattan borough president whose political achievements have been, by dint of the time, feminist, together with her 1997 try and deprive then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani of a second time period and turn into New York’s first feminine chief government — a glass ceiling that has but to be damaged. 

At that time, anybody might have fairly assumed Messinger’s twenty years of public service made an entire profession.

However Messinger was hardly performed. 

At 81, she holds the title of World Ambassador for the American Jewish World Service, after stepping down as president and CEO of the 37-year-old human rights group in 2016 after 18 years within the job.

As AJWS president, Messinger turned for the primary time in her life an explicitly Jewish chief, focusing the Jewish group’s consideration to oppressed and persecuted communities worldwide, heading campaigns to finish the Darfur genocide, towards little one marriage in India and to oppose violence towards ladies and the LGBT group.

However Messinger’s Judaism has all the time knowledgeable her work. Messinger and her sister have been raised on the Higher West Aspect of Manhattan by working mother and father who have been concerned in Jewish social service organizations. She ascribes her personal dedication to service, in addition to her nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic, to her religion and to her mom’s personal estimable instance.

“The emphasis was to have construction in your life so as to exit and do the work that’s required on the earth,” Messinger defined, “significantly the half that got here from Judaism was the Jewish obligation to work for justice and fairness.”

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Her feminism, too, derives from her upbringing, particularly from her mom, whom she calls her greatest affect. A graduate of Bryn Mawr Faculty, her mom discovered herself divided between elevating a household and constructing a profession. 

Earlier than Ruth and her sister have been born, her mom labored to place Messinger’s father, an accountant, via graduate college in accounting. She bought a job on the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a Conservative motion college, and labored there for 55 years. 

On the seminary, her mom was immersed in a Judaism that was “involved with the problems of the day, that promoted the concept Jews had a task in caring for the opposite and serving to to interact all about what Jews might give to the world,” mentioned Messinger, who identifies as a Reconstructionist Jew at the moment however, when requested her denomination, proudly pronounces that she is a “social justice Jew.”

However Messinger’s mom had sophisticated emotions about working exterior the house. It wasn’t till Messinger was in her 60s that her mom informed her how she had gotten a suggestion early in her profession to show at Queens Faculty, which the varsity rescinded after they discovered a person to take the place. “Our mom didn’t need us to suppose there was prejudice towards ladies,” she mentioned.                          

However, Messinger mentioned her mom’s emotions about being a spouse, mom {and professional} on the similar time didn’t get totally resolved — although she did it brilliantly — till her mom noticed her daughters return to work quickly after having kids. “My mom admitted that was the primary time she felt good in regards to the alternative that she had made,” mentioned Messinger.

Certainly, making a steadiness between household and work life remains to be one thing Messinger, the matriarch of a sprawling household herself, with three kids, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, pays nice consideration to. As she answered questions from a reporter, Messinger cradled a great-grandson in a single arm whereas filling envelopes together with her free hand. 

After taking a level in social work (on the College of Oklahoma whereas her then-husband, Eli Messinger, labored for the U.S. Authorities Public Well being Service), Messinger gravitated towards New York politics in 1975 and was elected to a metropolis council seat in 1977. She labored on many points throughout her twenty years in elected workplace, together with the betterment of public schooling and defending small companies towards gigantic hire hikes. The previous concern she ran on when she started her marketing campaign towards Giuliani in 1997.

FILE – On this Sunday, Sept. 21, 1997, file picture, former New York Mayor David Dinkins, heart, marches on the entrance of the twenty ninth annual African-American Day Parade in Harlem flanked by Al Sharpton, left, and Ruth Messinger, in New York. (AP Photograph/Michael Schmelling, File)

Operating as a prosecutor with an outsized deal with policing, Giuliani dismissed her candidacy and her points. “He referred to as me a liar on the difficulty of college overcrowding,” she mentioned. 

The press largely let Giuliani get away with it. Figuring Giuliani to win and detest to alienate him — “In the event that they coated me severely, he would punish them,” she mentioned — her run bought “shockingly little protection.”

When the press did listen, she confronted questions on gimmicky points and aspersions solid by the Giuliani camp. “The quantity of sexism and misogyny in politics challenged me fairly persistently,” she mentioned, however shrugged it off. “There’s numerous sexism in society. So in fact, there’s numerous sexism in authorities.” 

After a lopsided vote in Giuliani’s favor, Messinger moved to the worldwide stage. She discovered on the time that American Jews, whereas deeply concerned in home social justice, had little historical past of working for good overseas with and thru a Jewish group, aside from in Israel.

“There have been many Jews within the States in organizations exhibiting up for interfaith work — Nationwide Convention of Christians and Jews, issues like that,” she recalled. “However there weren’t very many Jews doing that on a world stage. AJWS helped fill that hole.” Many Jews labored on worldwide points with many organizations, defined Messinger, however there have been no particularly Jewish organizations engaged on international human rights points for individuals of all backgrounds.

AJWS was working in Africa, Asia and Latin America by the point Messinger joined. She led the trouble within the Jewish group and past to answer the Darfur genocide. By doing this, she inspired the U.S. Jewish group’s rising curiosity in the remainder of the world. “At AJWS, we satisfaction ourselves significantly on not telling individuals how they need to be helped,” Messinger mentioned, “and by actually listening to what sort of assist is required by them — what we will do to assist their imaginative and prescient and their work.”

The job, which concerned talking commonly to (and fundraising from) audiences of Jewish individuals from throughout the nation and around the globe, compelled her to deepen her understanding of the religion she’d grown up with. “Within the final 18 years that I used to be with AJWS, I used to be consistently making myself extra Jewishly knowledgeable utilizing textual content in order that I might discuss intelligently and from a Jewish perspective in all the assorted locations that I spoke.” 

Ruth Messinger with Robert Financial institution, who succeeded Messinger as President and CEO of AJWS, throughout a visit to Cambodia in 2016. Photograph by Christine Han, courtesy of AJWS

A part of her schooling has been about antisemitism, which has been on the rise for a lot of her tenure at AJWS. Messinger’s consciousness of antisemitism rising up was that it was a major problem of the previous greater than the current. Whereas she knew many Jewish households that have been survivors of the Holocaust, Messinger’s was not.

Her view of it at the moment respects Jewish individuals’s deep connection to reminiscence, time and persecution, however her intuition because the chief of a Jewish establishment is to be healing-oriented and directed to the numerous different populations which might be victims of hate, intolerance and oppression.

“I feel it doesn’t make me standard to say this, however there are individuals within the Jewish group who’re dwelling completely comfy lives and whose life is nonetheless type of centered round victimhood,” Messinger informed me.

“There are completely different attitudes on the a part of survivors as to when and whether or not to inform their tales,” she added. “Some survivors don’t inform their tales as a result of it’s simply too horrible. Some don’t inform their tales as a result of they suppose, not incorrectly, that they’re passing on an unhealthy view of the world to younger kids.”

Her work at the moment is to recruit rabbis to assist communities around the globe via the AJWS World Justice Fellowship. About 15 rabbis a 12 months go to organizations preventing for human rights and likewise obtain coaching in how one can turn into advocates for human rights.

“We take them to one of many nations the place we work for about eight days and get them to essentially meet the individuals we’re serving to on the bottom. After which we anticipate the rabbis to return again and do extra public talking ambassadorial work and activist advocacy work in Washington with us,” she mentioned.

The work with rabbis and with donors is to answer the Jewish obligation to assist the opposite and the stranger.

Messinger hopes her outward-looking work locally continues to attract individuals out and deal with points exterior of their very own. “There are individuals in nice want,” mentioned the unstoppable Messinger, “and we’ve got an obligation to answer these individuals.” 

This text was produced as a part of the Spiritual Exemplars Project fellowship with the College of Southern California’s Heart for Faith and Civic Tradition.