Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Throwback Thursday: Queen Esther in New York City

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives.

Image by Forward Association

Sonia Kanciper, a 22-year-old member of the Farband, the Labor Zionist organization and a post-graduate student at Hunter College, was chosen New York’s Queen Esther of 1952 in a beauty contest of representatives of colleges and Jewish youth groups in the metropolitan area. The contest was sponsored by the New York Committee for State of Israel Bonds. As a prize, Kanciper received a free trip to Israel that summer. Crowned March 17 in Madison Square Garden at a Purim Festival also sponsored by the local Israel bond committee, Kanciper received her tiara in front of 18,000 New Yorkers who attended the event. Film and stage stars Betty Field and Page Johnson crowned the new Jewish queen. It was a banner year for women’s participation in the bond drive; Hadassah Organization chapters alone raised over 7 million dollars through bond sales in 1952.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version