Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold

Synopsis

Labors of Love explores the fascinating history and enduring legacy of Henrietta Szold, one of the most influential American Jewish women who ever lived. With her rare blend of logistical genius and hands-on dedication, Henrietta created a night school for Eastern European refugees in Baltimore that became the template for ESL programs today. Her remarkable story has not yet been told on film.  

Following a major heartbreak, in 1912 Henrietta founded Hadassah, a service organization that became the bridge between American Jewish women and the needs of people, both Jewish and Arab, living in Palestine. She helped established a modern healthcare system that remains an oasis of equal care for Jews and Arabs. In a crowning achievement, Henrietta spearheaded Youth Aliyah, which successfully rescued 11,000 Jewish children from Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s and transported them to safety in Palestine.  

Henrietta — who never married or had children of her own — became mother and mentor to thousands of young Jews, helping them to survive and flourish against terrible odds. Through Henrietta’s story, Labors of Love invites viewers of all backgrounds to honor a behind-the-scenes visionary whose hard work and tireless devotion helped to bandage the wounds of displacement and genocide.  

About the Director

Abby Ginzberg, a Peabody award-winning director, has been producing compelling documentaries about race and social justice for over 35 years.  She was just inducted into the Silver Circle of the Emmys® for over 25 years of service to the film and TV community. Her film, Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power, won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary and is available on Amazon Prime and Starz. Her latest film, Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter (co-directed with Christy Carpenter) premiered at SXSW in March, 2024 in the Documentary Spotlight section and will be broadcast on public television in March, 2025. Judging Juries, which premiered at the Pan African Film Festival in February, 2024 has won 4 short film awards.  Abby also produced A Double Life which premiered at the 2023 Mill Valley Film Festival and won an Audience Favorite award.  

Waging Change, her 2019 documentary, about the challenges faced by tipped servers who are forced to rely on their tips due to the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour, won Best Feature Documentary at the UNAFF and was broadcast on public television in 2021. And Then They Came for Us (2017) examines the connection between the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII and the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban. The film was broadcast on public television in 2019 and 2020 and won a Silver Gavel award from the American Bar Association for Best Documentary. Agents of Change (2016) (co-directed with Frank Dawson) documented the impact of the Black student movement of the late 1960s on college campuses. It won the Jury and Audience awards for Best Documentary at the Pan African Film Festival and was broadcast on public television on America ReFramed. Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa won a 2015 Peabody award and has screened at film festivals around the world, winning four audience awards, and was broadcast on public television. 

Abby was the Consulting Producer on The Barber of Birmingham, which premiered at Sundance in 2011 and was nominated for an Oscar® in the Short Doc category in 2012. 

In addition to her work as a documentary director and producer for the past 15 years, Abby has served as President of the Berkeley Film Foundation, which provides funding and mentoring to the next generation of filmmakers in the East Bay. To date the Foundation has supported 304 films and has provided $2.88 million in grants to filmmakers. 

Artistic Statement

Then and now. Rather than taking place exclusively in the past, Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold emphasizes the durability of the reforms she created and the ways in which they continue to serve vulnerable people today.  For example, Henrietta’s efforts to create a night school to teach Eastern European refugees English in Baltimore in the late 1880’s provided the template for many ESL classes today. Her work enabled Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s father to learn English. Her efforts to bring well-baby care to both Arab and Jewish families in Palestine continues to this day with the Tipat Halav clinics. The youth village, Meir Shfeya, was one of the locations where German Jewish youth were housed and trained following their escape from Nazi Germany.  Today it continues to serve young Jewish refugees from Ukraine, Ethiopia and those in need of additional support within Israel. Each historical scene is in some way connected to a contemporary story.  

Diary and correspondence. To give viewers a sense of who Henrietta was, how she reacted to the many challenges she faced, and to provide insight into her inner life, we use excerpts from her letters and from her diary. These inner thoughts and reflections will be voiced by well-known Jewish Broadway actress Tovah Feldshuh in the finished film. We use animation to reproduce some of Henrietta’s spoken words onscreen in her handwriting.  Because there is only one piece or archival footage with Henrietta speaking, we are working with a considerable amount of silent footage and photographs, and adding motion and subtle color to animate these photos. 

Recreation. We have filmed and included a recreation of the Szold/Ginzberg relationship with Henrietta’s voice from her diary as the VO.  Expecting that Louis Ginzberg, a Talmudic scholar for whom she was an editor but also 13 years older than he was, would ask her to marry him, she suffers a major breakdown when he tells her he has just become engaged to another woman. Henrietta’s VO from her diary describing her shock after learning of Ginzberg’s engagement: 

 “I thought: Was I not of good family? Was I not domestic? Ah, but I was not 22, I had no beautiful eyes, no beautiful mouth.  I was only a woman who knew how to love and serve my beloved boundlessly until my heart broke and my brain reeled.  And because I had loved, I had been blind-I had been mistaken, he had never loved me…he had never thought of me in that light.  I was sex-less to him.  I had misinterpreted everything.”  

The rupture caused by Ginzberg’s engagement provide a turning point in Henrietta’s life, leading her at the age of 50 to begin the work that would create her lasting legacy-the founding of Hadassah in 1912, the beginning and then expansion of providing medical care in Palestine, first by sending nurses, then by creating a nursing school followed by her work as head of the American Zionist Medical Unit (AZMU) and finally her crowning achievement as coordinator of Youth Aliyah, through which she saved the lives of over 10,000 German Jewish youth by bringing them to Palestine.   

Festivals, Screenings, & Awards

Coming soon…