ROSLINDALE, Mass., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Hannah Blocker, who pushed for women to play an active part in Conservative Jewish life in the Boston area, has died at the age of 94.
Blocker had been in a bad fall several weeks ago and died Oct. 23 at the Hebrew Senior Life Center in Roslindale, the Boston Globe reported.
The daughter of Orthodox Rabbi Cadish Waldman, Blocker learned to chant Torah from her father. In the late 1970s, she became one of the first -- possibly the first -- Jewish woman to do so at a Conservative synagogue.
Samuel Chiel, then the rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Newton, gave Blocker her opportunity and said she "wowed them."
"Hadassah was a pioneer," said Chiel, using Blocker's Hebrew name. "She was a woman before her time. Had she been a few years younger, she would have made a wonderful rabbi."
Blocker also helped set up classes for older women who wanted to go through the Bat Mitzvah ceremony, which was not popular when they were young.
In 2004, the Jewish Women's Archives cited her as one of its "women who dared."
Blocker is survived by two sons, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
