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<\/a>In 2006, Judith Magyar Isaacson \u201965 signs her memoir “Seed of Sarah” after a class about the Holocaust taught by former Bates professor Steve Hochstadt. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
She earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Bates in 1965 and a master’s in mathematics at Bowdoin two years later. She taught math at Lewiston High School and then at Bates, where she became the dean of women in 1969 and dean of students in 1975. She retired in August 1978.<\/p>\n
As dean, she was instrumental in ending the college\u2019s unequal and antiquated codes of social conduct for men and women and in increasing extracurricular and athletic opportunities for female students.<\/p>\n
In 1976, after discussing her Holocaust experiences with a group of students, Isaacson was moved to record those memories. Published in 1990, her memoir Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor<\/em> is an enduring inspiration of courage and resilience for young women and men.<\/p>\n Isaacson received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at Commencement 1994, and the degree citation read, in part:<\/p>\n To remember vividly, so that none can forget \u2014 to say the unspeakable, so that all can hear \u2014 takes a voice of courage, power, and eloquence. Your strengths, Judith Isaacson, touch the lives of not only your family and your colleagues but those countless others who read in your personal and professional life the inextinguishable force of human worth.<\/p>\n For preserving, for giving testimony, for helping us to understand, and for the encouragement of conviction, we stand in admiration and resolve.<\/p>\n Judith Isaacson receives the honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1994. (Bates Communications)<\/p><\/div>\n In 2004, Kirsten Terry Murphy ’07 wrote a story for The Bates Student<\/em> about Isaacson’s induction into the Maine Women\u2019s Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n Murphy wrote about Isaacson’s work as dean to dismantle the college’s notoriously unequal social rules that literally ran many pages for\u00a0 women and a few pages for men:<\/p>\n Isaacson could see that many of the codes of conduct at Bates were outdated, and quickly became an advocate for women\u2019s rights at the school. She had children of her own in college at that point, and from their experiences she found that, comparatively, the policies at Bates were very different. \u201cYoung, 18-year-old women had far more freedoms at home than at Bates,\u201d explained Isaacson….<\/p>\n Isaacson resolved other important complaints from students. One concerned the issue of parietals. Previously, men and women did not have permission to enter dorms of the opposite sex, but she changed campus-housing rules to allow visitations. Another problem surrounded sports. \u201cI fought pretty hard for women to have athletic privileges,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Judith Isaacson talks with members of the Women’s Council in 1970, the start of changes that would make Bates social life more equal for women. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n Isaacson retired from Bates in 1978. Shortly afterward, she wrote an essay about that final Commencement as dean of students and about her uncertain, but growing, idea of writing her memoirs, which would become Seed of Sarah<\/em>.<\/p>\n The essay recalls the academic procession, led by President Hedley Reynolds, who<\/p>\n ….carries his presidential paraphernalia with great dignity, his head held high, his steps springy. I am proud to be following just behind him, but still incredulous of my position. What right have I, the ultimate outsider, to be playing this venerable role?<\/p>\n My mind, that relentless time machine, projects a different image. Instead of stepping along the carpeted aisle in my academic gown, cap and hood, I see myself marching in a mile-long procession, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, stark naked….<\/p>\n This is my next-to-last official function at the College. After tomorrow\u2019s Commencement, I\u2019ll be embarking on a new venture, just like the seniors.<\/p>\n How many times have I started anew? I muse, as my eyes follow the members of the Class of 1977 making their solemn way to the front pews. How many different identities have I had?<\/p>\n Judit Magyar \u2014 a family name meaning Hungarian. Irving Isaacson ’36 and Judith Isaacson met after her liberation by American troops in 1945. Married on Dec. 24, 1945, they were photographed in 2000 by Phyllis Graber Jensen.<\/p><\/div>\n Historian Steve Hochstadt, a Holocaust scholar who taught at Bates from 1979 to 2006, had a long friendship with Isaacson that included a classroom relationship.<\/p>\n Each year that he taught his course on the Holocaust, she would visit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very important for Holocaust students to meet a survivor,\u201d said Hochstadt in 2006.\u00a0 \u201cAnd Bates students get to see what kind of survivor Judith is: a warm and humorous optimist.\u201d<\/p>\n Hochstadt tells the Portland Press Herald<\/a> <\/em>that Isaacson “was an extraordinarily joyous person who could tell you about very sad things that happened to her, her relatives and her friends, but who was able to retain joy in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n‘Inextinguishable force of human worth’<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n‘I fought pretty hard for women’<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
\n‘How many times have I started anew?’<\/h3>\n
\nJewish teenager under the Nazi regime.
\nNumber 561.20578 in concentration camps.
\nFrau Hauptman<\/em>, American captain\u2019s wife in Germany.
\nMrs. Irving Isaacson, lawyer\u2019s wife in Lewiston, Maine.
\nMom, to my children.
\nJudy, to my classmates.
\nMrs. Isaacson, to my math students.
\nDean Isaacson for the past eight years.
\nWill Grammi be next? Here is hoping.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n‘A warm and humorous optimist’<\/h3>\n