Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day, a woman whose commitment to social justice was as unyielding as her Catholic faith, began her journey as a Greenwich Village radical. She rubbed shoulders with socialists, anarchists, and other free-thinkers, leading a life that was, shall we say, unconventional before finding her spiritual home in Catholicism. Clearly, someone had to balance out all that revolutionary zeal with a bit of ritual and doctrine.

After her conversion, Day co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, establishing houses of hospitality and publishing a newspaper dedicated to promoting Catholic social teaching. She championed the rights of the poor, the homeless, and the marginalized, consistently practicing what she preached, even when it meant getting arrested for civil disobedience. While her dedication was undeniably impressive, it also meant she probably wasn't much fun at a Shabbat dinner.

Her activism for pacifism and social justice earned her accolades from many, though her communist sympathies in her youth and her later unwavering Catholicism might have made her an enigma to others. She was, in essence, a radical whose radicalism found its ultimate expression not in political revolution, but in the radical demands of Christian charity. Not a Jew, but certainly a mensch of the highest order, if you squint.