Modern Israel celebrates its 73rd birthday this week. Let me put my cards on the table: I’m not dispassionate when... But the most striking Jew in the abolitionist movement was a Polish immigrant — born Ernestine Louise Potowski and later known by her married name, Ernestine Rose — who became a prominent advocate for abolition, as well as free thought (in her case, atheism) and women’s rights. She once boasted, “I was a rebel at the age of five.” She sued in civil court to dissolve the marriage arranged for her by her rabbi father, and left home for Germany as a teenager, where the Prussian king granted her residency despite her Jewish origins. She supported herself selling her invention of perfumed paper for use as a room deodorizer.