Making the World a Better Place - Touro College

Anything but OrdinAry
Passi Rosen-Bayewitz ‘13
Graduate School of Jewish Studies
AMaster of Arts in Jewish History
candidate, Passi Rosen-Bayewitz
embarked on a study of Jewish
professional women who had made a
difference during the interwar years and the
Holocaust period, between 1918 and 1945.
Rosen-Bayewitz calls her subjects “ordinary
women who accomplished extraordinary
things”—very much like Rosen-Bayewitz
herself.
Before enrolling in Touro’s Graduate
School of Jewish Studies, Rosen-Bayewitz
had an illustrious career as an executive in
several Jewish philanthropic organizations,
most recently as an executive director of
financial resources for the UJA–Federation
of New York.
Her involvement with Jewish-related
causes traces back to 1970, when, as a
student activist, she traveled to Russia to
meet with refuseniks, Soviet Jews who
weren’t allowed to emigrate. An avid learner,
Rosen-Bayewitz has completed no fewer than
three master’s degrees: in Contemporary
Jewish Studies from Brandeis University; in
Social Research from Lehigh University; and
in Nonprofit Management from New York
University. Outside of her professional life,
the Toronto native has five children and 13
grandchildren.
Even though she has done it all—
executive, academic, mother, activist—it
wasn’t until her current tenure at Touro that
Rosen-Bayewitz uncovered an entirely new
skill: she is a great detective.
Her sleuthing began last year, sparked by
her thesis. With access to the archives at the
American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee (JDC), which are located in
midtown, Rosen-Bayewitz looked specifically
for stories of women who had traveled
overseas for relief work.
Poring over documents, she
would see a name and
wonder, “What else did she
do?” Before long, she had
woven together the
contributions of four unsung
Jewish heroines.
Through cables and
other missives, Rosen-
Bayewitz learned the story
of Harriet Lowenstein, an
educator who attended law school in her late
twenties. Born in 1876, Lowenstein was the
first female certified public accountant in
New York, earning a perfect score on her
examination. Eventually, she became the
first comptroller of the JDC, a post she held
for more than 30 years (incidentally, it was
Lowenstein who gave the fledgling
organization its name in 1914). After World
War I, Lowenstein, who was based out of
Paris, became the point person to coordinate
critical relief efforts for people victimized by
the pogroms and starvation that had
devastated Eastern Europe.
Another heroine, Hetty Goldman, who
was the granddaughter of the founder of
Goldman Sachs, served the JDC by traveling
to the Balkans and Eastern Europe after
World War I, from 1918 to 1920. Goldman, a
“Even though she has done it all—
executive, academic, mother,
activist—it wasn’t until her
current tenure at Touro that
Rosen-Bayewitz uncovered an
entirely new skill: she is a great
detective.”
TOURO LINKS I SPRING 2013 7