Janice Rothschild Blumberg

(1924 - )

Born in Atlanta in 1924, Janice Oettinger was the daughter of Carolyn Goldberg Oettinger and Waldo Edouard Oettinger. She attended public schools, The Temple’s Sunday school, and began college at the University of Georgia at the age of fifteen.

During World War II, Blumberg worked for the Army Corps of Engineers in the Panama Canal Zone to combat malaria, and served the Signal Corps in Washington, D.C. She also spent time in Mexico attending the Experiment in International Living. When Blumberg returned to Atlanta in 1946, she met and married Jacob Rothschild, the newly installed rabbi at The Temple. They had two children, Marcia and William. Rabbi Rothschild died suddenly of a heart attack on New Year’s Eve in 1973, and two years later Janice married insurance executive and B’nai B’rith International president David Blumberg and moved to Washington, D.C.

After her second husband’s passing, Blumberg returned to Atlanta in 2009. Blumberg has held numerous leadership positions in the Jewish community including the B’nai B’rith Klutznick Museum, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and as president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society.

She is a prolific author, and penned several books, including Prophet in a Time of Priests: Rabbi Alphabet Browne, 1845–1929; One Voice: Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild and the Troubled South; and two histories of The Temple: As But a Day: The First Hundred Years (1867–1967) and As But a Day: To a Hundred and Twenty (1867–1987). She has contributed to publications including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Southern Israelite, Encyclopedia Judaica, Education for One World, and the Jewish Georgian.