Book Reviews

This ethnographic study by Ayala Fader, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University, won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Women’s Studies, as well as a New York City Book Award given by the New York Society Library.  Fader spent ten years studying how Hasidic girls in the Boro Park neighborhood […]

This volume honors Paula Hyman, professor of modern Jewish history at Yale, who is one of the founders of Jewish gender studies. It asks how gender has influenced the lives and actions of Jewish women and the histories and stories told by scholars. What difference does a focus on gender make when we interpret the

In this unusual volume, original and sensitively crafted poetry by Washington poet Davi Walders tells the story of women from different cultural and religious backgrounds, who fought against tyranny during World War II. Some names will be familiar to readers, such as Hannah Senesh; Emilie Schindler, who worked with her husband to save Jews in

JOFA Journal readers are very familiar with the outstanding scholarship of Daniel Sperber, whose writings have often graced our pages. This volume, which explores the development of our liturgy, has its roots in a presentation at the 2007 JOFA conference and devotes much attention to the berakha in the morning prayers recited by men, she-lo

This beautiful volume, which would make a wonderful gift book for both Bat Mitzvah girls and women of all ages, presents 28 prayers and meditations recited by women, with illuminations by Israeli artist Enya Tamar Keshet. The artwork is inspired by the 15th-century Lisbon workshop of Hebrew manuscript illumination. The prayers, both traditional and modern,

For those interested in traditions of female mysticism in Judaism parallel to those found in Christianity and Islam, this is a fascinating book. Ada RapoportAlbert, Reader in Jewish history at University College, London, has been a strong proponent of the view that the Hasidic movement was not gender-egalitarian and neither promoted women’s spirituality nor lent

High school student Tamar Lindenbaum wrote a beautiful piece in the JOFA Journal Bat Mitzvah issue about her great grandmother and her courageous stand on behalf of striking local miners in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1932. Now we have a whole volume of diary extracts written by that same deeply religious and independent woman, Bina

Although many know of the contribution to the education of Jewish girls by Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov network that began in Cracow in the 1920s, the private schools for Jewish girls that developed in Russian lands from 1831 to 1881 are far less familiar, This gap in Jewish history is rectified with Eliyana

In this highly readable volume, Sandra Rapoport retells and explores six biblical episodes in which the sexuality of the female characters is “used or abused.” The women in the stories vary, but all have, in the author’s words, “stepped outside their expected roles.” The stories are those of Lot and his daughters, Dinah and Shechem,

With aliyah and extended stays in Israel on the upswing, as well as international assignments for professional advancement becoming common, members of our community will have much use for the practical wisdom amassed in this advice-packed book. The author, a social worker, came to her subject because of the aliyah of her older son and