Oral history interview with Selma Friedman, 2000

Biographical Note

Selma Friedman was born in the Bronx; her parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Friedman attended Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, DC, and the end of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March. Friedman traveled through Europe and into Israel in 1964, and returned to Israel in 1966. Friedman lived and worked in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem for years before returning to New York City. She worked with the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO), New Outlook magazine, and other Israeli institutions while also participating in intellectual socialist and Arab-Israeli activities

Scope and Contents

Friedman begins with a description of her parents. Friedman describes her Bronx neighborhood and education. Her father worked in a millinery factory, and her mother was a housewife. She describes her travels through Europe in 1964, at which point the Cyprus Dispute was in full swing. She also summarizes her experience in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1966, Friedman traveled to Haifa, Israel to visit Arab-Israeli friends involved in the peace movement. Friedman describes her experience traveling to Poland and around Greece as an American citizen, the fracturing of the Israeli Communist Party, and the ethnic and religious hierarchies in Israel in the late 1960s. Friedman describes a diverse intellectual group she was a part of. Citing this circle as an safehaven, Friedman names Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Felicia Langer as attendees. Friedman describes the participation of the group in anti-Vietnam War picketing and the French student uprising of May 1968. She also discusses the anti-Arab demonstrations of Histadrut, Israel's organization of trade unions. Friedman summarizes her employment in Israel. Friedman worked for a Zionist Federation in Jerusalem, the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) in Tel Aviv, and a magazine entitled New Outlook, which published international essays on the Middle East. Friedman describes the challenges of working at WIZO, her decision to leave, and the nature of Now Outlook, where Simha Flapan served as editor in chief. Friedman explains the issue of statehood in the context of Arab-Israeli citizens, the character differences she experienced between Arabs and Jews, and various instances of racism and resistance she encountered in Tel Aviv. Friedman concludes the interview by explaining the relationship between the Druze and other parts of Israeli society

Subjects

• Arab-Israeli conflict.
• Civil rights demonstrations--United States.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Druzes--Israel.
• Friedman, Selma--Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Labor Zionism.
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Peace movements--History--20th century.
• Wizo.