Jewish Women

An Orthodox Jew and an outspoken feminist, Blu Greenberg offers help in integrating both positions in a wide range of issues: women in the home and Synagogue, divorce, abortion and feminism and Jewish law.

Volume XVI in this well-received annual series contains an up-to-date survey of gender issues in modern Judaism. It includes original essays on Orthodox Judaism and feminism, American Jewish women, female rabbis, the impact of feminism on rabbinic study, masculinity, Jewish women in the Third Reich, and gender and military service.

From salons in Federal Philadelphia to Frontier homesteads to settlement houses in city slums to 1970s consciousness-raising sessions, American Jewish women have brought a distinctive sense of self and community to bear on the economic, social, and family life around them. Hasia R. Diner and Beryl Lieff Benderly draw upon long-neglected public records, private diaries, memoirs and letters to overturn the widespread notion that Jewish life began at Ellis Island and happened only in New York. They offer a complex portrait of flesh-and-blood characters such as Emma Lazarus, Mrs. Wyatt Earp, Ethel Rosenberg, Betty Friedan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The result is a comprehensive account of how America transformed generations of Jewish women--and how these women transformed America.

This groundbreaking study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. Meyers argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts and the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Analyzing the biblical material in light of recent archaeological discoveries about rural village life in ancient Palestine, Meyers depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and society.

"The first book-length account of one of the most fascinating figures in modern Jewish history. With invigorating prose, "The Maiden of Ludmir makes the world of 19th-century Europe come alive. Deutsch is a fascinating, sophisticated, and rare combination of social historian and cultural critic. "--Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Jewish Mysticism and Philosophy, New York University.

"A beautifully written and moving study of a woman who stood alone as a spiritual leader, breaking the bounds of women's spirituality and gender roles to assume the position of a male zaddik, Hasidic leader. Deutsch's own journey to Ludmir lends a unique and charming voice to this compelling story."--David Biale, author of "Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History.

This ethnography explores the religious beliefs and rituals of a group of elderly Jewish women, originally from Kurdistan and Yemen, who now live in Jerusalem. Sered visited the women in their homes and accompanied them on trips to holy tombs, local ethnic synagogues, and Judaica classes. She finds that, though mainly illiterate and excluded from formal religious practices, the women are experts in rituals aimed at safeguarding the well-being of their extended families. By analyzing their rituals, daily experiences, life-stories, and non-verbal gestures, Sered uncovers the strategies these women have used to circumvent the patriarchal institutions of Judaism, and how they have developed their own "little tradition" within and parallel to the "great tradition" of Torah Judaism.

A social history of Jewish women in Imperial Germany, this study synthesizes German, women's, and Jewish history. The book explores the private--familial and religious--lives of the German-Jewish bourgeoisie and the public roles of Jewish women in the university, paid employment and social service. It analyzes the changing roles of Jewish women as members of an economically mobile, but socially spurned minority. The author emphasizes the crucial role women played in creating the Jewish middle class, as well as their dual role within the Jewish family and community as powerful agents of class formation and acculturation and determined upholders of tradition.

The first comprehensive history of the oldest religious Jewish women's organization in the U.S., Gone to Another Meeting charts the development of the National Council of Jewish Women and its impact on both the Jewish community in the United States and American society in general.