Miss Rose Brenner of Brooklyn, N. Y., President of the National Council of Jewish Women since 1920, died on Monday at the home of her brother, Arthur B. Brenner, 169 Fenimore Street, Brooklyn. Only forty-two years old when her career came to an end, she had been called to responsibility in organized Jewish work at an unusually early age. She had only graduated from Adelphi College when she was asked to assume a chairmanship in the Brooklyn Council Section, of which she served as President for a period of six years, from 1912 to 1918.
When she was stricken she was spending the afternoon of the Passover holiday with her friend and fellow-officer, Mrs. Estelle M. Sternberger, Executive Secretary of the National Council of Jewish Women.
During the presidency of Miss Brenner, the National Council of Jewish Women attained a world wide influence that was unparalleled in its history. Its membership in the United States and Canada grew from 30,000 to 52,000 during the six years of her leadership. The Council’s work during this period inspired Jewish women in other lands to adopt its program with the result that Councils of Jewish Women were formed in Europe and in Australia.
Miss Brenner directed the Council’s Department of Farm and Rural Work through its experimental stage to its present position of the second largest department of the Council’s program, reaching Jewish women on the farms of the six states of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California.
For twenty years she taught a class in the religious school of Beth Elohim Temple, Brooklyn, whose sisterhood she had also served as President. She held the distinction of having been the first woman elected to the Executive Board of Beth Elohim Temple.
She summarized the duty and responsibility of the National Council of Jewish Women in the following statement which she had presented before the Board of Managers of the Council when it met in Boston in 1921, and which she asked the same body, when it met in New York City in November, 1925, to reaffirm:
“The Council concerns itself with the Jewish woman in America, and on her way to America; in the city and on the farm lands; in need of adjustment to her environment and capable of contributing to the enrichment of her environment.”
Miss Brenner was the daughter of the late Judge Jacob Brenner of Brooklyn, and is survived by three sisters, the Misses Selma, Rica and Carolyn, and two brothers, Mortimer and Arthur B.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
