Ruth Norkin Auritt

1918-1966

Ruth Norkin Auritt was born in Philadelphia, PA to Russian immigrants Rose Glazier and Louis Norkin.

Her mother suffered from depression, so my mom, Ruth, was forced at a young age to take charge of her siblings.  This circumstance, plus coming from a poor family, prevented her from graduating from high school.

But she spent many hours in public libraries as a child, and she used to joke, when I was a kid, that while almost everyone in America passionately opposed communism, she was one of the few people in the country who had actually ever read Das Kapital, by Karl Marx.  This was because, to insure that his children never messed around with organized religion in any way, her father (my grandfather)--a committed socialist--required his sons and daughters to visit the public library on weekends, reading and memorizing works by Karl Marx.  When they came home they had to recite Marx to Papa.

Ruth secretly eloped with my father Jack Auritt in 1936, against objections from my paternal grandmother, Rebecca Auritsky, who never considered my mother, Ruth, Jewish enough (or good enough) for her oldest son (despite that my mother agreed to study Judaism and to be re-married, after the elopement, by a rabbi).

My mother rejected all forms of organized religion and, of course, all official political ideologies.  She believed in her own brand of nature worship and in a system of natural justice that she summarized by saying, over and over, "What goes around, comes around."

She fiercely believed in women's rights, especially to control our bodies and make reproductive decisions.  Margaret Sanger was one of her heroines.

My mother died young of cancer:  too soon to see the feminist movement of her mother's generation reborn in the late 1960s and beyond.  She was fiercely proud, and reserved, but quick to express her views at home, in private.  Her world view was a homemade mixture of Puritanism and mysticism.  She loved music, everything from classic opera to country western, and she, herself, possessed an exquisite singing voice.  She sang in the kitchen, cooking and doing dishes.

As a young woman I saw her as a thwarted nightclub singer, trapped in the life of a 1950’s housewife.

Honored by Marian Chatfield-Taylor