Doris B. Gold (1919–2011)

Doris Bauman was born to a Jewish-American family in New York City. Her father was a tailor and businessman who emigrated from the Galicia region of Austria-Hungary and her mother was a native New Yorker who designed infant wear. In 1952, Doris married Bernard Gold, with whom she had two sons. After earning a B.A. in English from Brooklyn College, where she received the English Department Prize in Poetry, Doris B. Gold completed an M.A. in English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1955. She also did postgraduate work at the City University of New York Graduate Center in women’s studies as well as in business administration and astronomy education. She became a director of programs for Jewish teenagers; taught English, writing, and astronomy at the high school, adult education, and college levels; and worked in fundraising for the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. She also worked in public relations for the YM-YWHAs of New York. She helped to establish the planetarium at New York City’s Hall of Science. From 1963 to 1972, she edited and wrote for The Young Judaean Magazine and wrote Stories for Jewish Juniors (1967). Doris B. Gold served as a volunteer for many Jewish and feminist organizations. She was a founding member of Lilith Magazine and served on the advisory board from 1976 to 1982. She began studying Jewish women's volunteer activities in the 1960s. As a result of her article "Women and Volunteerism" in Woman in Sexist Society (1971), she was invited to join the Volunteerism Task Force of the National Organization of Women (NOW), where she became a spokesperson on women and volunteer service. Her experience with NOW strengthened her commitment to educating Jewish women about their own heritage. She also was the author of Opposition to Volunteerism: An Annotated Bibliography (1979); Honey in the Lion: Collected Poems (1979); and a co-editor with Lisa Stein of From the Wise Women of Israel: Folklore & Memoirs (1993). In 1979, she founded Biblio Press, which for more than 20 years published books that addressed and illuminated the culture, history, experiences, and spiritual yearnings of Jewish women. In 2001, she donated the Biblio Press collection to the American Jewish Archives, located on the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute.