The Woman in the Room: A Jewish Life Through 100 Years of History

Born into a poor, immigrant family, Naomi B. Levine grew up in the Bronx and on Manhattan’s storied Lower East Side in an era when women were not encouraged to have lives of their own. Nevertheless, she managed to raise herself to prominence as a leader of Jewish affairs, champion of civil rights, and expert fundraiser.

Poignant, direct, and inflected with Yiddishkeit, The Woman in the Room is the story of how Levine went from living in a crowded tenement with a shared bathroom to penning an...