Born in Philadelphia on March 4, 1781, Rebecca Gratz was the daughter of a well known merchant and patriot. She grew up a celebrated beauty, and the Gratz home was frequently visited by Edward Malbone, Thomas Sully (both of whom made portraits of Rebecca), Washington Irving, and Fanny Kemble. In 1801 she helped organize and became first secretary of the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances. In 1815 she helped found the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum, of which she served as secretary from 1819 to 1859. In 1819 she organized and became secretary of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society.
In 1838, after some 20 years of active interest in improving religious education for Jewish children, Rebecca Gratz, through the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, founded the Hebrew Sunday School Society of Philadelphia, of which she served as president until 1864. The society was the first such organization in the United States and served as a model for others like it. The fame she enjoyed in her own day and the enduring interest in her rest not on her philanthropies, however, but on the well attested tradition that she served as the model for the heroine Rebecca in Sir Walter Scott╒s Ivanhoe. Story has it that Washington Irving met Scott and, on learning of his intention to include Jewish characters in his next novel, told him about his Philadelphia friend. Scott later wrote Irving after the publication of Ivanhoe: ╥How do you like your Rebecca? Does the Rebecca I have pictured compare well with the pattern given?╙ Rebecca Gratz died in Philadelphia on August 27, 1869.
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