Rose Sommerfield

Rose Sommerfield (1874–1952) was an American teacher, activist, and social worker. She helped to develop the first home for Jewish working girls in the United States.

Career Teacher Sommerfield taught in the public schools of Baltimore, Maryland from 1889 to 1899. She was actively interested in the First Grade Teachers' Association, helping to shape its policy, and inaugurated the first Mothers' Meetings held in Baltimore public schools. She was interested in Jewish and non-Jewish philanthropic and educational institutions as a volunteer worker. She helped to organize the Daughters of Israel and the Baltimore Section of the Council of Jewish Women, being the first secretary of both organizations. She was also involved in a day nursery, the First Jewish Working Girls Club, and the Maccabeans, an association of men who interested themselves in work among Jewish boys. In 1896 Sommerfield presented her own paper, "Organization of Charities", at the annual convention of the National Council of Jewish Women. She served as chairman of the committee on philanthropy for the National Council of Jewish Women. She also organized the Clara de Hirsch Home for Immigrant Girls, the Welcome House Settlement, the Model Employment Bureau, and helped to reorganize the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society and the Virginia, a non-sectarian working girls hotel.

Personal Sommerfield was raised in a middle-class German Jewish family in Baltimore. She never married.

Selected works "Truancy in Public Schools" for the Maryland State Conference of Charities. "Charity Organization" for first Triennial of Council of Jewish Women, in which Federation of Charities was urged and a school of philanthropy advocated. "Homes for Working Girls" for National Conference of Jewish Charities meeting in Philadelphia.