The American Jewish leader Henrietta Szold (1860-1945) founded Hadassah and organized the first Youth Aliyah projects, which were directed at rescuing Jewish youth from Nazi Europe.

Henrietta Szold was born in Baltimore, Md., on Dec. 21, 1860. Her father, Benjamin Szold, was a rabbi and an active leader in the movement for African American emancipation. During the wave of immigration to the United States by European Jews, the Szold household was well known as a place where guidance, advice, and assistance could be found.

Szold taught school in Baltimore, also directing an evening school for newly arrived Jewish immigrants. Between 1892 and 1916 she served as secretary of the Jewish Publication Society. Beginning in 1895, she edited the American Jewish Yearbook with Cyrus Adler. She first visited Palestine in 1909, writing from there that she was confident that Jewish redemption would come only through Zionism. To that end she dedicated the rest of her...