In recent years there has been a wealth of scholarship on topics relating to Jewish women. This volume aims to make this scholarship more generally accessible. Its ten essays are by leading scholars, including Sylvia Barack Fishman, Judith Hauptman, and Chava Weissler. They are all clearly written, present a survey of the academic work done in each area, and offer many interesting insights.
Topics include Jewish feminist approaches to the Bible, the spirituality of Eastern European Jewish women, women’s transformation of contemporary Jewish life, women in Jewish law, and the treatment of women in Jewish American and Israeli literature. Renee Levine Melammed introduces the reader to documents from the Cairo Genizah, as well as records of the Spanish Inquisition, to portray the nature and texture of women’s lives in medieval Mediterranean society and in 15thand 16th-century crypto-Jewish society. Sylvia Barack Fishman draws attention to the current decline in involvement in religious life of Jewish men and boys outside the Orthodox community, raising intriguing questions about the implications of distinctively defined gender roles in our religious life. The extensive introductory chapter and epilogue suggest a framework for looking at Jewish women’s studies that sets the stage for future research and conversation.
It seems obvious that students of Jewish history and indeed of all aspects of Judaism should incorporate the experiences of Jewish women into their thinking and writing, but we must remember that this has only been done in a sustained way since the 1970s. This book covers a vast range of material in an engaging way