She linked professional and activist work by developing and teaching the first women’s studies class at Berkeley, among the first in the nation. At Berkeley, amid the excitement and energy of the Women’s Liberation Movement, she explored feminism. In 1966, Kaye/Kantrowitz left New York to study comparative literature at the University of California–Berkeley.

Kaye/Kantrowitz braided of all of these activisms with progressive Judaism to weave the tapestry of her life. Civil rights work led her to activism for racial justice, anti-war organizing, then feminism and the struggle for lesbian rights.

During the early 1960s, she also participated in anti-war and anti-nuclear protests. Kaye/Kantrowitz became a tutor with the Harlem Education Project. CCNY is in Harlem, a vital artery in the then-thriving civil rights movement, with radical and transformative visions coupled with practical reforms. From an early age, Kaye/Kantrowitz spoke up and spoke out.Īt the age of seventeen, Kaye/Kantrowitz went to City College of New York (CCNY), where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1966. While not religiously observant, the Kayes had a strong Jewish identity expressed through solidarity with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, labor unions, and anti-McCarthyism. (Melanie would later adopt the naming convention Kaye/Kantrowitz see below.) Milton owned a women’s clothing store with his sister, where Violette also worked. Before Melanie and her older sister Roni were born, Milton changed the family name from Kantrowitz to Kaye. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was born on September 9, 1945, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, to Milton and Violette Kaye, who had family roots in Poland and Russia.

Nice Jewish Girls by Evelyn Torton Beck