“Truly a Liberated Woman: Tehilla Lichtenstein and Her Unique Role in the History of American Judaism”

Sader, Marion. “Truly a Liberated Woman: Tehilla Lichtenstein and Her Unique Role in the History of American Judaism.” MA Thesis, Sarah Lawrence College, 2014.

Sader gives a comprehensive portrait of Tehilla Lichtenstein’s descendants from a long line of renowned rabbis and scholars in Palestine and Constantinople, her successful immigration and assimilation into America, and the marriage and partnership with her husband in the birthing of the Society of Jewish Science in 1924. The Society of Jewish Science grew out of their affiliation with First Society of Jewish New Thought, but also drew heavily on transcendentalism, and Rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses’s text Jewish Science: Divine Healing in Judaism. After being widowed, Tehilla went on to lead JS in NYC for 35 years—a life of teaching, preaching, writing, counseling and her radio program. The Society of Jewish Science was a response to “the mass conversion of Jews [particularly women] to Christian Science” (1). Its purpose was to revive a growing secular Judaism with elements she feared had been lost: healing, personal prayer, and belief in the Divine Spirit within each person (2). Unlike Christian Science, the Society of Jewish Science did not reject medicine or deny the reality of matter. But like both Christian Science and New Thought, the Society of Jewish Science warned of the dangers of materialism, recognized the equality of the sexes, highlighted the mental nature of sickness, and claimed “all healing comes from God” (104).

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