Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society

This book is an extraordinarily rich and unusual window into the society of Jewish women in the nineteenth-century. Iris Parush, who teaches Hebrew Literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, offers a historical analysis of reading patterns of Eastern European women. According to Parush, the women enjoyed the “benefit of marginality” precisely because they were denied the skills that would allow them access to the prestigious male world of learning. Many women learned to read Yiddish in informal settings for different reasons—for prayers, for business—but often also for pleasure, and unlike men were freer to choose the material they read. Except for the Talmudic elite, men mostly were taught to read mechanically to fulfill ritual duties. Because of their role as breadwinners which necessitated increased interaction with non-Jews, women often were allowed to study foreign languages and gain a secular education, whereas traditional men were not. Consequently, it was often the female readers who introduced their husbands to the world of European classics and to secular modern culture. With fascinating details about girls’ secular and Jewish education and revealing extracts from memoirs and novels, Parush underlines the crucial role of women in spreading the spirit of the Enlightenment and modernization throughout East European Jewish society. Interestingly, this is the obverse of the situation that we know that Sara Schenirer sought to address in the early twentieth century–—the loss of religious attachments by many young girls who lacked a strong traditional Jewish education.