Bella Savitzky was born on July 24, 1920, in the Bronx, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.
Bella Savitzky was born on July 24, 1920, in the Bronx borough of New York City, the second daughter of Emanuel and Esther Savitzky, Russian Jewish immigrants. Her father ran a butcher shop he called the "Live and Let Live" meat market.
From an early age, Bella displayed the assertiveness and intellectual curiosity that would define her public career. She attended the Hebrew school at her local synagogue and, defying the tradition that reserved the mourner's prayer (Kaddish) for men, insisted on reciting it for her father after his death — an early act of feminist resistance within her own community.
She excelled academically, attending Walton High School and then Hunter College, where she was elected student council president. Her upbringing in a working-class immigrant household, steeped in Jewish social-justice values and Zionist activism, shaped her lifelong commitment to civil rights, labor rights, and gender equality. This formative period set the stage for a career that would make her one of the most recognizable and outspoken women in twentieth-century American politics.
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