Peerless Victorian Scholar Found Hope in Jewish History

When Gertrude Himmelfarb was born in Brooklyn, the 1920s were already roaring. When she died aged 97 on 30 December, the 2020s were just dawning. Her parents, Max and Bertha, were Jewish immigrants from Russia who spoke Yiddish at home. They were poor yet hardworking and fiercely self-reliant: Max’s glass business went bust in the Depression, but he recovered and his family flourished. Having had little formal education themselves, they ensured that not only their son Milton but Gertrude, too, earned degrees, from Brooklyn College and City College respectively.

Milton went on to become a leading figure at the American Jewish Committee and an expert on what is still the largest urban Jewish community in the world, whose politics he wryly summed up thus: “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”

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