When this AJT writer visited Janice Rothschild Blumberg for the last time earlier this month, she was resting with several large pillows behind her, a soft blue bed jacket with rounded lapels neatly tied around her. From her Buckhead condominium in a prominent high-rise, she could look out at the broad expanse of the city where she had been born a century before.
And she could reflect on the critical role she had played in the history of the city as the wife of a pivotal figure in America’s civil rights movement, Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild. As The Temple’s Senior Rabbi for more than 27 years, he became a leading voice for racial justice in the South.
Her health had taken a turn for the worse in the weeks leading up to what had been planned as a major celebration of her 100th birthday on Feb. 13. But for a woman who had seen so much history pass before her, she greeted this writer not with memories of the past, but of questions about the future.
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Her first question upon entering her room was, “Tell me what’s going on in the world,” which was the perfect cue to describe how the community had been gearing up for months to celebrate her most remarkable life.
Janice Rothschild (far right) with her husband, Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr and his wife, Coretta Scott King.
On Feb. 11, The Breman Jewish Heritage Museum lined up Melissa Faye Green, the celebrated author of the best seller, “The Temple Bombing.” She reminisced about how she had caught the eye of the young bachelor rabbi soon after his arrival after the end of the Second World War and swept him off his feet. He wrote to a friend in another city that he would skip all the superlatives that he could enumerate, because she had them all.
According to her son, Bill, his mother’s favorite nickname, was the “Queen of Sheba,” because, just like the celebrated monarch of the Hebrew Bible,…
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