When Gloria Steinem identified as a Jew most

This story was originally published in the Forward . Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

Gloria Steinem , the journalist and organizer who became the most recognizable face of America’s modern women’s movement, died Wednesday at her New York City home. She was 92.

For more than half a century, Steinem pushed American women to imagine lives beyond the limits society had set for them. She co-founded Ms. magazine, helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus and turned phrases like “sexual harassment” from unnamed experiences into subjects of national debate.

Steinem was the daughter of a Jewish father, Leo Steinem , and a Protestant mother, Ruth Nuneviller . She was raised without much religion and generally described herself as secular, but she was unequivocal about where she stood when Jews were targeted: “Never in my life have I identified as a Christian,” she said , “but wherever there is antisemitism, I identify as a Jew.”

Her mother taught her to value her Jewish roots. Steinem told the Forward in 2015 that her father rarely discussed his heritage; it was her non-Jewish mother who presented Judaism to her as…