Rhoda Smolow

Origins and early life

Rhoda Smolow grew up in Westchester County, New York, where her father, a lawyer, was involved in every aspect of the family's small synagogue, and where her parents and grandparents supported the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and Jewish federations.

Work and career

A first trip to Israel as a teenager, she has said, ignited her passion for the country, and she became a reading specialist with a master's from the University of Pennsylvania, teaching in Philadelphia and on Long Island. As a young mother in Great Neck she joined the Erev Group of the local Hadassah chapter, and in 1985 her grandmother Elenor Klein, herself a Hadassah group president, predicted that she would one day lead the organisation.

She rose to preside over her group, her chapter and the Nassau Region, then served as national vice president and secretary before Hadassah's convention elected her national president in July 2019. She took office on 1 January 2020 as the 27th national president of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America and the largest Jewish women's organisation in the United States, after 39 years of service. When covid-19 struck, she oversaw the organisation's move to all-remote work and an emergency campaign that raised 9 million dollars for the Hadassah Medical Organization's response to the pandemic.

In 2022 she led a joint effort with Hadassah International and the medical centre that raised 2 million dollars to send Hadassah doctors to the border between Poland and Ukraine and to bring displaced Ukrainian teenagers to its youth villages in Israel.

Recognition

That work was among the efforts honoured with the Genesis Prize in 2023, the year the Jerusalem Post named her among its fifty most influential Jews and the year her term ended, on 31 December. Carol Ann Schwartz succeeded her in January 2024, and Smolow remains on Hadassah's national board as its immediate past president.