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Feminism (Jewish Studies)

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  1.  
  2. Introduction
  3. Jewish feminism’s history begins in the late 20th century. Women’s studies and feminist scholarship date to the early 1970s, but one finds very little on the intersection of Jewish women, feminism, and gender prior to 1990. Since then, Jewish feminist scholarship and writing in North America has grown significantly, reshaping both Jewish studies and Jewish communal life outside the academy. The impulse for and many important effects of this scholarship have been felt outside the academy; this is significant, and notes are included about the pertinent bibliography. Jewish feminist scholarship is produced across the disciplines. This results in a wide array of new knowledge and theory, but by scholars who are rarely in conversation with each other across disciplines. The result: Jewish feminism has many studies but very little overarching vision, theoretical orientation, or critical issues for the production of new knowledge. The current challenge is not how much work has been done, but whether or not there can be a critical conversation across the academic disciplines, one that binds together the research. The Women’s Caucus of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) has made a strong effort to facilitate this conversation. Attempts to create overarching conversations date to Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt’s Judaism since Gender (Peskowitz and Levitt 1996; cited under Anthologies) and other projects that emerged out of interdisciplinary critical cultural studies. The work done there informs this article. Jewish feminist scholarship did not develop within women’s studies, which often expressed ambivalence or actual hostility to including work on Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness. The lack of inclusion led to increased efforts to do feminist work within specifically Jewish studies contexts, and the centers such as the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and the Lafer Center for Women and Gender at Hebrew University were created. The earliest Jewish feminism scholarship emerged from history departments. Scholars in religion departments followed, with a new focus on topics such as theology and ethics, biblical and rabbinic studies, philosophy, and contemporary Judaism. In this context, Jewish feminist scholarship in biblical and early rabbinic studies emerged along with Christian feminist scholarship, and it reflects this dialogue as well as disagreement. This was also due to an interested communal readership that was pressing for new feminist studies and perspectives that would support activist change outside the academy, and is why we include books that are more popular, but emerge from Jewish feminist scholarship.
  4.  
  5. Anthologies
  6. These works primarily present academic collections, but also include efforts to diversify our understanding of Jewish women to include Middle Eastern and North African Jewish women, as in Khazzoom 2003, and next-wave feminist activists and writers as presented in Ruttenberg 2001. Davidman and Tenenbaum 1996 offers an early take on Jewish feminist scholarship across the curriculum, with essays on a range of fields from history and sociology to religion and literature. The collection in Baskin 1998 was an important early textbook that offered essays about Jewish women in different historical periods, arranged chronologically. The Rudavsky 1995 collection came out of a conference and offers a snapshot of the range of Jewish feminist scholarship in the early 1990s, with a mix of disciplines and issues covered. Peskowitz and Levitt 1996 offers a theoretical intervention into the production of gendered Jewish knowledge with both a range of short essays that ask how scholars were producing new knowledge in their fields, and a set of longer essays on specific topics. This is a highly interdisciplinary work. It was one of the few attempts to create a scholarly conversation in which critical concerns of Jewish feminist theory were engaged across disciplinary boundaries. More recent efforts include the historical collection in Kaplan and Moore 2010 that pays tribute to the legacy of Paula Hyman, perhaps the most accomplished Jewish feminist historian. It is a rich collection that reflects the sophistication of this field. Prell 2007 offers multidisciplinary essays investigating the accomplishments of Jewish women in transforming Jewish religious practices, from the rabbinate to new rituals.
  7.  
  8. Baskin, Judith, ed. Jewish Women in Historical Perspective. 2d ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.
  9.  
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  11.  
  12. This collection offered one of the first historical overviews of Jewish women’s roles in various key moments in Jewish history. It served as a crucial intervention in survey and introductory courses in Jewish studies, bringing the experiences of Jewish women into the story of Jewish history.
  13.  
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  15.  
  16. Davidman, Lynn, and Shelly Tenenbaum, eds. Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
  17.  
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  19.  
  20. This collection asked critical questions about how feminist theory and women’s studies have informed the scholarship in particular fields of Jewish studies inquiry. Each essay focuses on a discipline and challenges the discourse of that particular subfield, from history and literature to the social sciences, film, and religious studies.
  21.  
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  23.  
  24. Kaplan, Marion, and Deborah Moore, eds. Gender and Jewish History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
  25.  
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  27.  
  28. This important collection was done in honor of the extraordinary career of Paula Hyman, Jewish feminist historian who established this field with eloquence and insight. The contributors are colleagues and former students of Hyman’s, and each distinguished essay demonstrates the breath and depth of contemporary historical work on gender in Jewish history. Virtually every leading figure in the field is here.
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  31.  
  32. Khazzoom, Loolwa, ed. The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage. New York: Seal, 2003.
  33.  
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  35.  
  36. This groundbreaking collection of first-person essays makes vivid the diversity and richness of the lives of Jewish women from North African and Middle Eastern Jewish backgrounds. This collection is an intervention into the Eurocentrism of much of even Jewish feminist scholarship. And like other early efforts, this work begins with personal essays to open up a space for further inquiry.
  37.  
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  39.  
  40. Peskowitz, Miriam, and Laura Levitt, eds. Judaism since Gender. New York: Routledge, 1996.
  41.  
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  43.  
  44. The book offers an intervention into how to engender Jewish knowledge with a series of short essays in response to a critical revision of teaching the introductory course with attention to gender, and then presents a series of sustained engagements in producing new knowledge from a feminist take on representing the Holocaust to reading for gender in Jewish philosophy.
  45.  
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  47.  
  48. Prell, Riv-Ellen, ed. Women Remaking American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007.
  49.  
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  51.  
  52. Essays set in the early-21st-century United States, and includes a timeline of Jewish and US Feminism. Leading scholars address feminist innovations in religious life in the United States. Focus is on ritual and textual engagement. Includes work on the Jewish Renewal movement and Jewish feminist theology.
  53.  
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  55.  
  56. Rudavsky, Tamar, ed. Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition. Papers presented at the Gender and Judaism conference at Ohio State University, April 1993. New York: New York University Press, 1995.
  57.  
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  59.  
  60. This book comes out of an early conference that explored the state of the field, with contributions from scholars in various fields of Jewish inquiry, from history and literature to religious studies and philosophy and sociology. The essays are eclectic and demonstrate a range of theoretical perspectives on gender, from liberal to post-structural and French feminist explorations.
  61.  
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  63.  
  64. Ruttenberg, Danya, ed. Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2001.
  65.  
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  67.  
  68. This work constitutes the first of the third wave of Jewish feminist writing and explorations. This collection by a younger generation pushes some of the boundaries of what constitutes feminist engagement, revisiting and renewing interest in the performance of gendered rituals and bringing queer perspectives into these explorations. These are primarily but not exclusively first-person accounts.
  69.  
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  71.  
  72. Journals and Resources
  73. These publications and websites cover the range of Jewish feminist journals, from second-wave feminism and beyond. Lilith remains a key forum for broad discussion from communal to academic and cultural issues related to gender, sexuality, and Jewish women. It was founded in 1976 by Susan Weidman Schneider. The archives are easily available on its website. Bridges finished a twenty-year run as a forum for Jewish feminist activism, literary production, and scholarship. Its roots were in Jewish secular lesbian feminist activism and the work of New Jewish Agenda, a progressive American Jewish community engaged in social justice. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues was cofounded in 1998 by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. It is unique in that it provides an international, interdisciplinary academic forum for innovative work being done in the many areas of research that comprise the field of Jewish women’s and gender studies. It is also supported by the work of the Lafer Center for Women and Gender Studies at Hebrew University. The Journal of the Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) has become an important scholarly and communal venue for critical feminist work by Orthodox feminist scholars. It grows out of the Alliance’s annual conference and forums. Finally, founded in 1995, the mission of the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) is to uncover, chronicle, and transmit to a broad public the rich history of American Jewish women, which it does through its online and searchable collections of documents, photographs, and other archival materials.
  74.  
  75. Bridges. 1989–2011.
  76.  
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  78.  
  79. This journal comes out of lesbian feminist identity politics and cultural production and the New Jewish Agenda. From 1989 to 2010s. It was the leading venue for writing about the diversity of Jewish feminisms—race, ethnicity, language, and class. Published works in Yiddish and Ladino, and explored the challenges of disability and sexual abuse as well as Israel and Palestine.
  80.  
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  82.  
  83. Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. Brandeis University.
  84.  
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  86.  
  87. This important center is a hub for Jewish feminist scholarship in North America. It regularly supports fellowships for scholars and publishes, with the Lafer Center, the journal Nashim. It also hosts international conferences on gender and Jewish studies.
  88.  
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  90.  
  91. Jewish Women’s Archive.
  92.  
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  94.  
  95. Online archive of Jewish Women founded in 1995 to document Jewish women’s stories and history. Extensive collection of primary sources, open-access and available to anyone. Significant resource for research. Includes an online encyclopedia of Jewish Women.
  96.  
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  98.  
  99. Journal of the Orthodox Feminist Alliance. 1998–.
  100.  
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  102.  
  103. This journal publishes some of the varied works of the Orthodox Feminist Alliance, the premier organization of Orthodox Jewish feminist scholars, activists, teachers, and communal leaders. Many of the works published here originate in the annual meeting of this important organization.
  104.  
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  106.  
  107. Lafer Center for Women and Gender Studies. Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  108.  
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  110.  
  111. This center works in alliance with the center at Brandeis to publish the journal Nashim and is the premier center for scholarly engagement with feminist theory and questions of gender in the Israeli academy. It sponsors conferences and fellowships to promote feminist scholarship in Israel.
  112.  
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  114.  
  115. Lilith. 1976–.
  116.  
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  118.  
  119. This high-quality magazine remains a powerful source of information about Jewish feminist activism, social issues, and ritual issues in Jewish communal life since 1976. It also features Jewish feminist artists and creative writers and offers reviews of both scholarly and popular works of gender, sexuality, and Jewish life.
  120.  
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  122.  
  123. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues. 1998–.
  124.  
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  126.  
  127. This scholarly journal has offered a critical venue for sustained engagement with the full range of Jewish studies scholarship. It has published exceptional scholarly work that ranges from Jewish literary topics to ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish history, culture, and textual analysis, bringing together Israeli, North American, and European scholars.
  128.  
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  130.  
  131. Study Guides
  132. These guides are significant for the early development of the field of Jewish feminist studies. They illustrate early attempts to gather information about women, Judaism, and gender, and they show the works available. Baskin and Tenenbaum 1994 is a collection of syllabi that helps other scholars bring gender into their teaching in Jewish studies. Elwell 1987; Masnik 1996; Cantor 1987; and The Jewish Women’s Studies Guide are each second-wave feminist resources for scholars and activist interested in learning more about Jewish women. Taitz, et al. 2003 offers basic information for lay readers and early adults. In the 1930s, Jung attempted to address the question of Jewish women. Jung 1970 is a precursor to contemporary Jewish feminist scholarly work. Additionally, there was an abundance of books and scholarship on Jewish women produced from the middle of the 19th century on, during the first wave of feminism; these works are not included here but are worth noting.
  133.  
  134. Baskin, Judith, and Shelly Tenenbaum, eds. Gender and Jewish Studies: A Curriculum Guide. New York: Biblio, 1994.
  135.  
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  137.  
  138. An early and important collection of syllabi that offers a glimpse of some of the earliest efforts to teach courses on gender and Jewish women in Jewish studies. It was published as a resource book to help others create new courses.
  139.  
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  141.  
  142. Cantor, Aviva, ed. The Jewish Woman, 1900–1985: A Bibliography. 2d ed. Fresh Meadows, NY: Biblio, 1987.
  143.  
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  145.  
  146. An early bibliography of 20th-century publications on Jewish women, which went back and found various earlier research on Jewish women that were published prior to the second wave of feminism. Helpful access to pre–second-wave feminist writing about Jewish women, and to the ongoing threads that link first-wave religious activism to the second wave.
  147.  
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  149.  
  150. Elwell, Sue Levi, ed. The Jewish Women’s Studies Guide. 2d ed. London and New York: University Press of America, 1987.
  151.  
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  153.  
  154. This book is perhaps the earliest guide to the emerging field of Jewish feminist scholarship. It is a resource guide primarily geared to those in the field or entering the field who want to share resources.
  155.  
  156. Find this resource:
  157.  
  158. Elwell, Sue Levi, and Edward R. Levenson, eds. The Jewish Women’s Studies Guide. Fresh Meadow, NY: Biblio, 1982.
  159.  
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  161.  
  162. Like other publications by Biblio Press, this resource work on the state of the field (1982) was published with an eye toward building the field. It is an early account of any and all work then available to students and scholars. Illuminates the limitations and possibilities of such study c. 1982. Important for clarifying how the field developed.
  163.  
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  165.  
  166. Jung, Leo, ed. The Jewish Woman: Background—Foreground—Prospects. Jewish Library 3. London: Soncino, 1970.
  167.  
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  169.  
  170. Jung’s edited work from 1934, reprinted in 1970. Marks the state of any and all scholarship on Jewish women well before the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States and Great Britain, especially scholarly works in English on Jewish women. Important for showing the history of the conversation on Jewish women in the United States and through Jewish communities in Great Britain.
  171.  
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  173.  
  174. Masnik, Ann S. The Jewish Woman: An Annotated Selected Bibliography, 1986–1993. New York: Biblio, 1996.
  175.  
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  177.  
  178. Masnik was engaged in a more fully annotated account of Jewish feminist scholarship, with a focus on second-wave Jewish feminist work as it emerged from 1986 to 1993. Significant as a guide to an important and extremely productive period in this history.
  179.  
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  181.  
  182. Taitz, Emily, Sondra Henry, and Cheryl Tallan. JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E.–1900 C.E. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003.
  183.  
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  185.  
  186. A popular overview of Jewish women’s history from biblical times to the early 21st century. It is not a scholarly work but speaks to the dissemination of Jewish feminism in the community. Included here because it is a rare overview of Jewish women, through history, that draws on up-to-date scholarship.
  187.  
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  189.  
  190. Religion
  191. In the interdisciplinary field of religious studies, and in Jewish denominational and communal settings, Jewish feminist scholars and activists produced a range of books that pioneered what we think of as Jewish feminist writing. These include groundbreaking anthologies like Susannah Heschel’s On Being a Jewish Feminist (Heschel 1995, cited under Early Work) as well as Jewish feminist theologies, Torah commentaries, collections of new rituals, and scholarly works on women in a range of classical and canonical Jewish texts. Many of the early scholars of Jewish feminism were trained in Protestant seminaries; theologies such as Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai (Plaskow 1991 cited under Theology and Ethics) come to represent Jewish feminist concerns using Protestant theological categories to explore overarching dynamics and commitments. Similarly, the earliest models for Jewish feminist biblical research was informed by Protestant Bible scholarship and Christian feminist methods, especially Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror (Tribble 1984, cited under SBL Biblical Studies). Since those earliest publications, there is now a robust range of biblical and rabbinic scholarship by scholars trained either in Jewish seminaries or in university doctoral programs in religion and in Near Eastern and Judaic studies.
  192.  
  193. Early Work
  194. Feminist works in Heschel 1995 and Koltun 1976 were complemented by readers, such as Christ and Plaskow 1992 and Christ and Plaskow 1989. The readers by Christ and Plaskow ushered in the collaborative work that created the field of feminist studies in religion. Plaskow was a founder of the women’s section of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and became the president of the AAR (1997). She was also one of the founding editors of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion in 1983, the premier publication in this subfield and an ongoing venue for Jewish feminists publishing in religious studies. Katharina von Kellenbach was well trained in Christian feminist sources and suggested in her work (Kellenbach 1994) how, unchecked, these sources continued with anti-Judaism in their approach to Judaism and Jewish feminism.
  195.  
  196. Christ, Carol, and Judith Plaskow, eds. Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.
  197.  
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  199.  
  200. This collection speaks to the range of liberal and liberationist feminist work in the field of women and religion. It expands the range and diversity of voices to include the important work of women of color. In this collection, Jewish feminist theological and ethical work is in conversation with a range of predominantly Christian feminist scholars of religion.
  201.  
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  203.  
  204. Christ, Carol, and Judith Plaskow, eds. Woman Spirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992.
  205.  
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  207.  
  208. Originally published in 1979, this book established the field of women in religion. Essays address issues of women’s experience with a focus on Jewish, Christian, and goddess worship. Judith Plaskow emerges as a leading thinker, placing Judaism at the heart of the field through her work on Jewish theology. Important for seeing Plaskow’s work within broader early discussions on religious feminism, which tended to be theologically based.
  209.  
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  211.  
  212. Heschel, Susannah, ed. On Being a Jewish Feminist. New York: Schocken, 1995.
  213.  
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  215.  
  216. Originally published in 1983 and republished in 1995, this was a groundbreaking collection of essays that mapped the contours of what it meant to be a Jewish feminist. With contributions from scholars, rabbis, leaders, and activists. Heschel’s introduction and shaping of the volume helped set the course for Jewish feminist inquiry for a generation.
  217.  
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  219.  
  220. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 1985–.
  221.  
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  223.  
  224. First scholarly journal to address women’s studies and feminism in religion. Cofounded by Jewish feminist Judith Plaskow. This remains the preeminent venue for feminist scholarship in religion, including Jewish feminist work. Important for seeing Jewish feminist research in a cross-religious context.
  225.  
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  227.  
  228. Kellenbach, Katharina von. Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
  229.  
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  231.  
  232. This work was one of the first sustained critical accounts of anti-Judaism, set within the field of women and religion. Kellenbach critiques the ways that many Christian feminist scholars ended up perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes and figures in their efforts to produce feminist versions of Christian traditions. It demonstrates how various forms of oppression are interrelated.
  233.  
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  235.  
  236. Koltun, Elizabeth, ed. The Jewish Woman: New Perspectives. New York: Schocken, 1976.
  237.  
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  239.  
  240. This collection was one of the very earliest attempts to gather the voices of Jewish women engaged in feminist activism within the Jewish community. It offers a historical glimpse of some of the central concerns of the time, especially the need for women’s full and equal participation in Jewish communal life and within liberal Jewish religious congregations and movements.
  241.  
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  243.  
  244. Theology and Ethics
  245. The theological and ethical move is best exemplified in Adler 1999, Plaskow 1991, and Alpert 1997. Adler and Plaskow create Jewish feminist theologies that attend to right relationships, with the result that marriage figures centrally. The Lamda Literary Award–winning Alpert 1997 offers a lesbian feminist rethinking of Jewish traditions, with attention to ethical issues. Levitt 1997 was the first full attempt to use feminist critical theory to engage texts as diverse as rabbinic traditions, liberal Jewish theology, and contemporary Jewish writings. Ruttenberg 2009 highlights essays on sexuality. Other works here include more personal attempts to reclaim Judaism in feminist terms, as in the memoirs Ruttenberg 2008 and Shires 2003. The Plaskow 2005 collection of essays offers an overview of the feminist theological and ethical writings that span the author’s career as a leading Jewish feminist theologian; the essays bridge Plaskow’s work prior to Standing Again at Sinai in 1991 (Plaskow 1991) and her work after that milestone.
  246.  
  247. Adler, Rachel. Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics. Boston: Beacon, 1999.
  248.  
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  250.  
  251. In line with Plaskow and the approach of Jewish feminist theology, Adler offers an abstract, theologically egalitarian presentation of Jewish feminist possibility, centered on a commitment ceremony that is a critical revision of the covenant. In contradistinction to Plaskow’s work, Adler rigorously engages with rabbinic sources and Jewish law to present a position that remains bound to halakha.
  252.  
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  254.  
  255. Alpert, Rebecca. Like Bread on a Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
  256.  
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  258.  
  259. This award-winning and decidedly lesbian Jewish feminist presents a critique of Jewish ethics and theology and offers rereadings of traditional texts and practices from a lesbian perspective. It is a daring and compelling constructive vision of a transformed tradition. Argues against the taming of radical feminist critiques by the “Orange on the Seder Plate” feminists.
  260.  
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  262.  
  263. Levitt, Laura. Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  264.  
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  266.  
  267. Groundbreaking feminist book that critiques the liberal foundations of Jewish feminist writing and theology. This is a more experimental work. It engages texts that range from the ketubah to rape and marriage practices, to rabbinic texts and contemporary feminist theory. Critically informed by postmodern and post-structural feminist theory, it questions our prevailing notions of security and home.
  268.  
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  270.  
  271. Plaskow, Judith. Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
  272.  
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  274.  
  275. The first sustained Jewish feminist theology. Covers the covenantal relationships expressed in God, Torah, and Israel and reimagines these as more broadly inclusive of women. The central image in this book is a return to Sinai in order to add the voices of Jewish women to the formative experiences at Sinai, and move forward again from there.
  276.  
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  278.  
  279. Plaskow, Judith. The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972–2003. Boston: Beacon, 2005.
  280.  
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  282.  
  283. Building on Standing Again at Sinai (Plaskow 1991), these essays review and expand Plaskow’s Jewish feminist theological and ethical vision, this time to more fully engage with queer critiques of Jewish communal practice.
  284.  
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  286.  
  287. Ruttenberg, Danya. Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion. Boston: Beacon, 2008.
  288.  
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  290.  
  291. First-person account of a third-wave feminist, queerly inflected embrace of Jewish tradition. Appreciated by younger Jewish feminists and a source for historical changes in Jewish feminism as it reaches third-wave possibilities.
  292.  
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  294.  
  295. Ruttenberg, Danya, ed. The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
  296.  
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  298.  
  299. These essays bring together contemporary scholars for a sex-positive approach to Jewish sources. Topics range from masturbation to loving the one you’re with. Reflects third-wave Jewish feminism.
  300.  
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  302.  
  303. Shires, Linda M. Coming Home: A Woman’s Story of Conversion to Judaism. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003.
  304.  
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  306.  
  307. Eloquent and serious reflection on Jewishness by a feminist scholar who converts, and then engages Jewish community, texts, and ritual. One of the few sustained feminist accounts of why someone might want to become a Jew as a feminist.
  308.  
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  310.  
  311. Orthodoxy and Halakha
  312. Blu Greenberg inaugurated research and conversation about Orthodox Jewish women’s issues in Greenberg 1998, and her work was followed by a growing body of Orthodox Jewish feminist scholarship, writing, and activism. In the early 2000s there have been a number of sophisticated feminist readings of classical Jewish texts, each of which claims Torah for Jewish women; some good examples of these collections include Wiskind Elper and Handelman 2000 and Ross 2004. These collections offer Orthodox feminist readings of biblical and rabbinic sources. Other feminist scholars of Jewish tradition have mined classic sources to discuss a series of critical Jewish legal or halakhic issues. Biale 1995 remains one of the most important feminist critical overviews of women and halakha. It remains a vital reference work. Irshai 2012 addresses classical sources on fertility. Graetz 1998 focuses on wife beating in traditional Jewish texts, while the collection in Wasserfall 1999 revisits the mikvah and questions about menstruation. Hartman 2007 offers a nuanced feminist engagement with Orthodox practice.
  313.  
  314. Biale, Rachel. Women and Jewish Law: The Essential Texts, Their History, and Their Relevance for Today. New York: Schocken, 1995.
  315.  
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  317.  
  318. Originally published in 1984, this book remains an important feminist guide to classic Jewish texts and rituals around gender. This was the first Jewish feminist text to engage the rabbinic halakhic literature and practice in a rigorous, scholarly, and practical way.
  319.  
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  321.  
  322. Graetz, Naomi. Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wifebeating. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998.
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  325.  
  326. Important argument against traditions and Jewish sources on wife beating, and their consequences for women in Jewish communities. Graetz brings a scholarly critique to Jewish legal sources and advocates against the practice and toleration of wife beating in some Jewish families and communities.
  327.  
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  329.  
  330. Greenberg, Blu. On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998.
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  333.  
  334. Groundbreaking work, originally published in 1981. A rebbetzin (rabbi’s wife) becomes a feminist and presents a vision of inclusion for women in modern Orthodox communities. Cited by many others, and often used in curriculum in early development of Jewish feminism.
  335.  
  336. Find this resource:
  337.  
  338. Hartman, Tova. Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2007.
  339.  
  340. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  341.  
  342. An Israeli and modern Orthodox account that engages halakhic texts. Still critical of practices within modern Orthodoxy, this is an account of Hartman’s new synagogue in Jerusalem. Focuses on “creative tensions” as positive in a new experience of coengaging feminism and modern Orthodoxy.
  343.  
  344. Find this resource:
  345.  
  346. Irshai, Ronit. Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature. Translated by Joel A. Linsider. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012.
  347.  
  348. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  349.  
  350. Theoretically sophisticated research into questions on fertility issues in Jewish law. Important review of the historical response literature, and how fertility has been imagined in the historical development of Jewish law.
  351.  
  352. Find this resource:
  353.  
  354. Ross, Tamar. Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004.
  355.  
  356. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  357.  
  358. Sustained modern Orthodox work, rooted in philosophical approach that embraces a radical feminist critique and challenge to the central idea of divine revelation. Seeks to present the notion of “cumulativism” as a contact between Orthodoxy and feminism.
  359.  
  360. Find this resource:
  361.  
  362. Wasserfall, Rahel, ed. Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1999.
  363.  
  364. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  365.  
  366. Essays on texts and rituals about menstruation and ritual purity. Thematizes a more visceral aspect of Jewish women’s historical experience, and presents a range of feminist critiques and revisions of these practices.
  367.  
  368. Find this resource:
  369.  
  370. Wiskind Elper Ora, and Susan Handelman, eds. Torah of the Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts. New York and Jerusalem: Urim, 2000.
  371.  
  372. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  373.  
  374. Landmark collection of essays on the theme of exile and redemption, by scholars and educators within Orthodoxy. Good to read with liberal Jewish feminist accounts to understand the range of feminist and women’s work within different Jewish communities, including—as in this collection—those who do not identify themselves as feminists and/or claim a feminist position.
  375.  
  376. Find this resource:
  377.  
  378. Ritual and Prayer
  379. These books offer a more sustained focus on ritual practice. Some are how-to guides, such as Adelman 1990, while others are more scholarly, such as Weissler 1998 on Yiddish prayers for women. Still, others are thought pieces focused on reshaping communal religious practices. Falk 1996 and Piercy 1999 offer poetic moves toward creating new feminist blessings. Ochs 2007 provides a critically sophisticated perspective on innovation in ritual. Umansky and Ashton 2008 provides a broad historic overview of primary sources related to Jewish women’s spirituality; this provided an important piece in a previously missing history. The revised edition of Umansky and Ashton 2008 includes a more diverse and multicultural selection of these works from Jewish communities across the globe, and is recommended over the original. Sered 1996 is a key study that highlights the use of ethnography as a source of data for women’s ritual lives. The book was one of the first within Jewish studies to take Jewish women’s ritual practices seriously. Grossman 2005 offers the voices of Orthodox Jewish women on Jewish ritual, texts, and practice. In addition, for access to a range of new and renewed rituals, see the important websites Ritual Well and Ma’yan, and in the contemporary German context, Bet Debora.
  380.  
  381. Adelman, Penina. Miriam’s Well: Rituals for Jewish Women around the Year. 2d ed. New York: Biblio, 1990.
  382.  
  383. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  384.  
  385. First and very popular compendium of new feminist rituals, including girl baby naming, menarche, and Rosh Hodesh. These innovations were an early version of online collections of new rituals, including Ritual Well, Ma’yan, and Bet Debora.
  386.  
  387. Find this resource:
  388.  
  389. Falk, Marcia. The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.
  390.  
  391. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  392.  
  393. Key text for Jewish feminist liturgical change. A poet and scholar, Falk provides new feminist translations and revisions of classic Jewish liturgy. This book collects her otherwise widely distributed work from congregational and denominational prayer books.
  394.  
  395. Find this resource:
  396.  
  397. Grossman, Susan. Daughters of the King. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005.
  398.  
  399. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  400.  
  401. A historical account of Jewish women’s participation in and segregation within the synagogue, from its origin to the contemporary period. Draws from across history and across disciplines. Brings historical work as a resource for Jewish feminist change in the present.
  402.  
  403. Find this resource:
  404.  
  405. Ochs, Vanessa. Inventing Jewish Ritual. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2007.
  406.  
  407. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  408.  
  409. This award-winning ethnographic work offers a bold new account of Jewish feminist ritual and material culture. Presents case studies of ritual objects and how they are used by contemporary Jewish feminists to create new ritual.
  410.  
  411. Find this resource:
  412.  
  413. Piercy, Marge. The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
  414.  
  415. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  416.  
  417. Renowned poet collects her poems that retell Jewish liturgy.
  418.  
  419. Find this resource:
  420.  
  421. Sered, Susan Starr. Women as Ritual Experts: The Religious Lives of Elderly Jewish Women in Jerusalem. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  422.  
  423. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  424.  
  425. Anthropological account that takes seriously the lived religious lives of elderly Jewish women. One of the first ethnographies to focus on Jewish women as central to what we know about Jewish communities and religious life.
  426.  
  427. Find this resource:
  428.  
  429. Umansky, Ellen, and Dianne Ashton, eds. Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A Sourcebook. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008.
  430.  
  431. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  432.  
  433. First published in 1992, and now in expanded form, Four Centuries offers a historical overview of Jewish women’s spiritual life. Establishes a tradition of Jewish women creating their own spiritual and communal lives, from the medieval period to the early 21st century. The latest edition adds global voices and expressions of Jewish women outside of Europe and North America.
  434.  
  435. Find this resource:
  436.  
  437. Weissler, Chava. Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women. Boston: Beacon, 1998.
  438.  
  439. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  440.  
  441. Weissler’s important historical work on the Tekhines, the prayers written by women in the Early Modern period, changed the understanding of Jewish women in earlier periods. It shows examples in which women themselves transmitted religious sensibilities and sanctified their everyday lives. Not all these prayers are written by women, but all are for women.
  442.  
  443. Find this resource:
  444.  
  445. Biblical Scholarship
  446. Biblical scholarship contains a range of perspectives and discipline-based approaches: feminist, queer, and literary theory, including Ashkenasy 1986 and Ashkenasy 1998, Bal 2009, Lefkovitz 2010, and Ostriker 1994 (all cited under Feminist Literary Approaches), as well as Pardes 1993, Schwartz 1990, and Schwartz 1997 (all cited under Theoretical Rereadings); departments of English and comparative literature; and the traditions of academic biblical scholarship, as represented by the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and Bach 1990, Collins 1985, Brenner 1985, and Schussler-Fiorenza 1993–1994 (all cited under SBL Biblical Studies). The latter would include scholars and studies of specific biblical texts, along with the unique work in Meyers 1991 on biblical history and archaeology and Frymer-Kensky 2002 (both cited under SBL Biblical Studies). Sherwood 2004 (cited under Theoretical Rereadings) is an example of a more recent generation of scholarship engaged with critical theory that works within the SBL and within Jewish studies. Finally, there is a strong Jewish feminist communal focus on preparing full commentaries, as in Frankel 1997 (cited under Biblical Commentaries).
  447.  
  448. Feminist Literary Approaches
  449. These works offer literary readings of biblical women. Ashkenasy 1986 reads for the feminine in Hebrew literature, and Ashkenasy 1998 rereads biblical tales of oppression and escape. Bal 2009 critically reads against the grain of biblical texts. Lefkovitz 2010 brings feminist and queer biblical readings to a broad audience. Ostriker 1994 uses poetry to retell biblical stories.
  450.  
  451. Ashkenasy, Nehama. Eve’s Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary Tradition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.
  452.  
  453. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  454.  
  455. Traces the migration of several key female images across the Hebrew Bible, showing the evolution of a series of key female archetypes.
  456.  
  457. Find this resource:
  458.  
  459. Ashkenasy, Nehama. Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape. Detroit: Wayne University State, 1998.
  460.  
  461. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  462.  
  463. Ahskenasy offers a creative, analytical retelling of biblical tales about women to address some of the central obstacles that shapes these ancient women’s lives.
  464.  
  465. Find this resource:
  466.  
  467. Bal, Mieke, ed. Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield, UK: Almond, 2009.
  468.  
  469. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  470.  
  471. Bal brings together a collection of critical feminist post-structural scholars to consider the various limitations posed to women by the legacy of the Hebrew Bible. This is an important scholarly collection and represents early-21st-century critical developments in the field, from an “elder” in the field of feminist biblical studies.
  472.  
  473. Find this resource:
  474.  
  475. Lefkovitz, Lori Hope. In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
  476.  
  477. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  478.  
  479. Lefkovitz’s award-winning series of essays brings queer theory and a critical feminist eye to key biblical texts. Lefkovitz’s lively and engaging readings offer new insight into the constructions of sexuality and gender in the Hebrew Bible.
  480.  
  481. Find this resource:
  482.  
  483. Ostriker, Alicia S. The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
  484.  
  485. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  486.  
  487. Acclaimed poet Alicia Ostriker rereads the Hebrew Bible from the perspective of a contemporary Jewish feminist interacting with the text in creative ways. She writes from what one reviewer calls a fiercely autobiographical point of view. This book is the first of her forays into an engagement with the Bible and Jewish liturgy.
  488.  
  489. Find this resource:
  490.  
  491. Theoretical Rereadings
  492. Bal brings her sharp critical lens to a range of biblical texts, from love stories in Bal 1987 to Judges in Bal 1988 and Bal 1992. Pardes 1993 offers a subtle and psychologically intricate feminist lens to the reading of biblical texts. Schwartz 1990 intervened into the field of biblical studies from a critical literary perspective. The author’s subsequent work in Schwartz 1997 challenges the legacy of violence in the Hebrew Bible. Sherwood 2004 builds and expands on Schwartz’s interventions with a study of Hosea, and in broader ways in Sherwood and Bekkenkamp 2004.
  493.  
  494. Bal, Mieke. Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
  495.  
  496. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  497.  
  498. Bal presents literary feminist readings of a series of biblical love stories, readings that are informed by post-structural and narrative theory.
  499.  
  500. Find this resource:
  501.  
  502. Bal, Mieke. Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
  503.  
  504. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  505.  
  506. Bal offers a critically engaged post-structural feminist rereading of the Book of Judges.
  507.  
  508. Find this resource:
  509.  
  510. Bal, Mieke. Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre, and Scholarship on Sisera’s Death. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
  511.  
  512. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  513.  
  514. Bal uses literary theory and ideological criticism to move beyond narrowly historical and text-centered criticism of Bible texts, and insists on the importance of gender in such readings.
  515.  
  516. Find this resource:
  517.  
  518. Pardes, Ilana. Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
  519.  
  520. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  521.  
  522. Brilliantly argued, Pardes offers a feminist countertradition to the dominant patriarchal narrative of the Hebrew Bible, even making visible the diverse and even contradictory depictions of femininity in the biblical text.
  523.  
  524. Find this resource:
  525.  
  526. Schwartz, Regina A., ed. The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory. Cambridge, MA, and London: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
  527.  
  528. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  529.  
  530. This scholarly collection was an early attempt to bring a range of critical theoretical, including feminist theoretical, approaches to the study of the Hebrew Bible.
  531.  
  532. Find this resource:
  533.  
  534. Schwartz, Regina A. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
  535.  
  536. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  537.  
  538. This provocative study raises serious questions about the legacy of violence built into the narratives of the Hebrew Bible and its relationship to the central claims of monotheism.
  539.  
  540. Find this resource:
  541.  
  542. Sherwood, Yvonne. The Prostitute and the Prophet: Reading Hosea in the Late Twentieth Century. London: T&T Clark, 2004.
  543.  
  544. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  545.  
  546. Sherwood powerfully presents a reading of Hosea that is informed by critical and feminist theory. Focusing on Hosea 1–3, she addresses some of the most controversial aspects of violence by using four different approaches to the text.
  547.  
  548. Find this resource:
  549.  
  550. Sherwood, Yvonne, and Jonneke Bekkenkamp, eds. Sanctified Aggression: Legacies of Biblical and Post-biblical Vocabularies of Violence. London: T&T Clark, 2004.
  551.  
  552. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  553.  
  554. This scholarly collection continues the tradition of feminist and critical rereadings of sanctioned violence in both biblical and postbiblical sources.
  555.  
  556. Find this resource:
  557.  
  558. SBL Biblical Studies
  559. There are numerous feminist studies in the field of biblical studies, done primarily in the context of the scholarly conversations within the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). This distinction helps differentiate scholarly works in the field of religious studies from works in Jewish communal life. It also marks the vital role of the SBL and the American Academy of Religion in promoting Jewish feminist work. This was the community within which Tribble published her groundbreaking work, Texts of Terror (Tribble 1984). Bach 1990, Brenner 1985, and Brenner and van Dijk-Hemmes 1993 combine literary and historical studies. Edited volumes in Collins 1985 and Schussler-Fiorenza 1993–1994 helped to establish the field and parameters of feminist biblical studies. Frymer-Kensky 2002 poses questions about gender in the broader context of the ancient Near East; Meyers 1991 brought feminist attention to material culture and the work of archeology.
  560.  
  561. Bach, Alice, ed. The Pleasure of Her Text: Feminist Readings of Biblical and Historical Texts. Philadelphia: Trinity, 1990.
  562.  
  563. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  564.  
  565. These feminist rereadings of biblical and historical texts ask important questions about the role of pleasure in these Jewish sources, especially as they relate to women.
  566.  
  567. Find this resource:
  568.  
  569. Brenner, Athalya. The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in the Biblical Narrative. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1985.
  570.  
  571. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  572.  
  573. Brenner offers a reassessment of the Israelite woman as both a literary figure and a social actor in the ancient world.
  574.  
  575. Find this resource:
  576.  
  577. Brenner, Athalya, and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, eds. On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic, 1993.
  578.  
  579. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  580.  
  581. This collection offers a series of feminist-inflected readings of both male and female voices within the Hebrew Bible.
  582.  
  583. Find this resource:
  584.  
  585. Collins, Adela Y., ed. Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship. Chico, CA: Scholars, 1985.
  586.  
  587. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  588.  
  589. This early collection presents the state of the field of feminist biblical studies c. 1985, with selections from some of the most important scholars engaged in this work.
  590.  
  591. Find this resource:
  592.  
  593. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories. New York: Schocken, 2002.
  594.  
  595. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  596.  
  597. Frymer-Kensky was a leading Jewish feminist biblical scholar who forged new ground in biblical studies, especially within the context of ancient Near East traditions. This is her major rereading of women in the Hebrew Bible.
  598.  
  599. Find this resource:
  600.  
  601. Meyers, Carol. Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  602.  
  603. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  604.  
  605. Groundbreaking study. Meyers, an archaeologist, uses the material culture of ancient Israel to consider various theories about the social status and working roles of Israelite women, and how that changed in different periods of Israelite history. Women’s roles were higher when their labor was needed, as during pioneering periods, and lower when male-dominated bureaucracies, like the Priesthood, gained power.
  606.  
  607. Find this resource:
  608.  
  609. Schussler-Fiorenza, Elizabeth, ed. Searching the Scripture: A Feminist Introduction. 2 vols. New York: Crossroad, 1993–1994.
  610.  
  611. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  612.  
  613. A Harvard Divinity School New Testament scholar noted for her 1983 book, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad), Schussler-Fiorenza turns her eye toward general feminist readings of the Bible with this two-volume set. Important for understanding SBL and Christian feminist contexts for Jewish feminist biblical readings.
  614.  
  615. Find this resource:
  616.  
  617. Tribble, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.
  618.  
  619. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  620.  
  621. Lauded for bravery and honesty. Reinterprets the tragic stories of Hagar, Tamar, an unnamed concubine, and the daughter of Jepthah. Highlights the theme of women’s terror in the face of patriarchy’s violence, God’s silence, and human cruelty. Formative for Jewish and Christian scholars as an early and very well-known challenge to misogyny in biblical texts.
  622.  
  623. Find this resource:
  624.  
  625. Popular Accounts of Biblical Women
  626. These works include imaginative and often quite sophisticated collections of writings about biblical women. Examples include a wildly popular work, The Red Tent (Diamant 1997), and writing by and for German-speaking European Jews, as in Domhardt, et al. 2007. Ochs 2005, Goldstein 1998, and Hammer 2001 offer gendered readings of biblical texts and/or new accounts of biblical women. Kates and Reimer 1996 presents essays of readings of the Book of Ruth.
  627.  
  628. Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: Picador, 1997.
  629.  
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631.  
  632. This popular Jewish feminist novel about the biblical Dina is told in the first person. It was an international best seller, read by women’s reading groups and individual women across the globe. It may arguably be the most influential Jewish feminist text about the Bible.
  633.  
  634. Find this resource:
  635.  
  636. Domhardt, Yvonne, Esther Orlow, and Eva Preuschy, eds. Kol Ischa: Juedishe Frauen Lesen Die Tora. Zurich, Switzerland: Chronos, 2007.
  637.  
  638. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  639.  
  640. This German-language collection offers a glimpse of the kind of feminist work being done in German-speaking central Europe by feminist scholars and communal leaders.
  641.  
  642. Find this resource:
  643.  
  644. Goldstein, Elyse. ReVisions: Seeing Torah through a Feminist Lens. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1998.
  645.  
  646. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  647.  
  648. Argues for the centrality of women figures in biblical stories, and that women see different questions when reading biblical stories.
  649.  
  650. Find this resource:
  651.  
  652. Hammer, Jill. Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2001.
  653.  
  654. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  655.  
  656. New midrash on biblical stories about women, based on rabbinic interpretations and the author’s creativity.
  657.  
  658. Find this resource:
  659.  
  660. Kates, Judith, and Gail Twersky Reimer, eds. Reading Ruth: Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story. New York: Ballantine, 1996.
  661.  
  662. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  663.  
  664. Each essay examines the Book of Ruth. Includes essays by Cynthia Ozick and Marge Piercy as well as Jewish feminist scholars and authors.
  665.  
  666. Find this resource:
  667.  
  668. Ochs, Vanessa. Sarah Laughed: Modern Lessons from the Wisdom and Stories of Biblical Women. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
  669.  
  670. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  671.  
  672. University of Virginia professor and National Jewish Book Award winner Vanessa Ochs reflects on biblical women, mixed with memoir-stories and contemporary ritual. Sections include “Being Wise,” “Living in a Woman’s Body,” “Being a Friend,” “Being a Parent,” “Healing,” and “Being in the Divine Presence.”
  673.  
  674. Find this resource:
  675.  
  676. Biblical Commentaries
  677. The biblical commentaries are not of the same genre as other commentaries on the canonical Jewish texts, with their close focus on language and editions. Instead, they draw from feminist biblical scholarship and transpose it for a communal readership. Their aim is to be useful and to make scholarly ideas accessible. The commentaries in Goldstein 2008, Goldstein 2000, and Eskenazi and Weiss 2008 opened the way for Drinkwater, et al. 2009 and its queer commentary on the Torah. Frankel 1997 offers a single-authored women’s commentary on the Torah text that builds on the author’s spirited engagement with Jewish folklore and Yiddish fables. Newsom and Ringe 1992 is a feminist scholarly commentary that includes a wide range of entries by biblical scholars. Unlike the others in this section, it is not geared to the Jewish ritual of Torah reading, but rather to a wider readership, and includes the apocryphal books (1–4 Maccabees, 1–2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Sirach, and more) and the New Testament.
  678.  
  679. Drinkwater, Gregg, Joshua Lesser, David Shneer, and Judith Plaskow, eds. Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
  680.  
  681. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  682.  
  683. Perspectives from queer theory inflected with Jewish feminism, organized as commentary for weekly Torah readings, from leading scholars.
  684.  
  685. Find this resource:
  686.  
  687. Eskenazi, Tamara Cohn, and Andrea Weiss, eds. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. New York: Women of Reform Judaism, 2008.
  688.  
  689. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  690.  
  691. Scholarly commentary, with postbiblical and contemporary reflection. Focuses on women in the Torah, or their absence from key texts.
  692.  
  693. Find this resource:
  694.  
  695. Frankel, Ellen. Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah. New York: HarperOne, 1997.
  696.  
  697. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  698.  
  699. A mature and masterful weave of women’s biblical commentary with storytelling, folklore, and Yiddish fable. A creative Jewish feminist companion to the Torah that focuses on women’s lives of work, sex, love, marriage, ambition, and place in Jewish communities and around the world.
  700.  
  701. Find this resource:
  702.  
  703. Goldstein, Elyse, ed. The Women’s Torah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Light, 2000.
  704.  
  705. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  706.  
  707. Commentary on each week’s Torah portion, with each chapter written by a different female rabbi, inspired by Jewish feminist scholarship. Emerges from a sea change in Jewish leadership in non-Orthodox communities.
  708.  
  709. Find this resource:
  710.  
  711. Goldstein, Elyse, ed. The Women’s Haftarah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Haftarah Portions, the 5 Megillot, and Special Shabbatot. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2008.
  712.  
  713. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  714.  
  715. Readings of the Haftarah (Prophets, Writing, and Five Megillot) that accompany the weekly Torah readings. Each chapter is by a different rabbi, inspired by Jewish feminism.
  716.  
  717. Find this resource:
  718.  
  719. Newsom, Carol A., and Sharon H. Ringe, eds. The Women’s Bible Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992.
  720.  
  721. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  722.  
  723. Emerges from a Society of Biblical Literature sensibility, thus “Bible” in the title includes the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, with a very good section on the apocryphal books. Focuses on the reception history of biblical texts about women, and puts biblical texts in historical, sociological, and anthropological context.
  724.  
  725. Find this resource:
  726.  
  727. Ancient Judaism and Rabbinic Texts
  728. Given the authoritative role of rabbinic literature in Jewish communal life and Jewish study, combined with the historical prohibition against women studying these texts, Jewish feminist scholarship on rabbinic texts and the Rabbinic period has been extremely important. The implications of this scholarship have inspired a growing community of Jewish feminists, both as scholars working in academic settings and as teachers in Yeshivot. Some of these women in the latter group are crucial players in the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance of activists and scholars.
  729.  
  730. First Generation, Feminist Inclusion
  731. Research in this field begins with three important books: the earliest critical feminist readings of the Talmudic and early Midrashic canon in Baskin 2002, with author Judith Baskin working at the State University of New York in Albany; Hauptman 1998, whose author was based at Jewish Theological Seminary; and Wegner 1992, the author of which had been a student of Jacob Neusner and held a Juris Doctor degree, and who analyzed the early halakha legal logic for its organizing laws about and for women. These first-generation works on halakha, midrash, and women opened up the feminist task of addressing what these texts had to say about women, how they represented them, and how the early rabbinic construction of woman/women measures up on an ethical and feminist scale (the answer: usually negatively). See Bronner 1994 for what happens to biblical women in Rabbinic literature. These works challenged many assumptions of earlier or concurrent work on Jewish women, like Neusner 1980 and Swidler 1976; the latter replicated anti-Judaic stereotypes, as noted in Kellenbach 1994. Valler 1999, originally in a Hebrew volume and translated through the Brown Judaica series, represents an early overview of the role of women in Talmudic literature.
  732.  
  733. Baskin, Judith. Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002.
  734.  
  735. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  736.  
  737. In contrast to studies that focus on the legal position and status of women, this book examines constructions of women in the midrash and nonlegal rabbinic writings. Broadens the perspective on women’s lives in the rabbinic imagination.
  738.  
  739. Find this resource:
  740.  
  741. Bronner, Leila Leah. From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994.
  742.  
  743. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  744.  
  745. Examines rabbinic attitudes toward women in biblical texts, and shows the ways that these representations were altered, often in extraordinary ways, in the interpretations of rabbinic midrash.
  746.  
  747. Find this resource:
  748.  
  749. Hauptman, Judith. Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998.
  750.  
  751. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  752.  
  753. By Jewish Theological Seminary professor Judith Hauptman, a full account of women in rabbinic law. Argues for places that the rabbis gave women a higher legal status and more rights than they had in biblical law. Hauptman argues for her method—not plucking out a few rabbinic passages, but using rabbinic readings to understand texts in their legal and literary contexts.
  754.  
  755. Find this resource:
  756.  
  757. Kellenbach, Katharina von. Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
  758.  
  759. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  760.  
  761. Important text by a New Testament scholar that reviews how these scholars tend to show Judaism negatively, in a pervasive tradition of Christian anti-Judaism. Key for understanding the rift lines between scholarship by various feminist scholars on Jewish women in biblical, postbiblical, and early rabbinic periods.
  762.  
  763. Find this resource:
  764.  
  765. Neusner, Jacob. A History of the Mishnaic Law of Women. 5 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic, 1980.
  766.  
  767. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  768.  
  769. The Law of Women, or Seder Nashim, is not the only part of the Mishna that references women, but its tractates on marriage vows, marriage agreements, the sotah (woman accused of adultery), divorce, and betrothal, as well as vows in general form the lion’s share of early rabbinic material about women. This English translation provides access to these tractates.
  770.  
  771. Find this resource:
  772.  
  773. Swidler, Leonard. Women in Judaism: The Status of Women in Formative Judaism. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1976.
  774.  
  775. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  776.  
  777. Early account that became a standard text for many years. A New Testament scholar’s preamble to a later book that contrasted the low position of women in Jewish communities to argue that Jesus was a feminist. Ahistorical, and worth knowing just as an antitext that shows how contested these histories of Jewish women are.
  778.  
  779. Find this resource:
  780.  
  781. Valler, Shulamit. Women and Womanhood in the Talmud. Atlanta: Scholars, 1999.
  782.  
  783. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  784.  
  785. This work by a Talmud scholar and historian at Haifa University offers a broad account of women in the Talmud. This is the first of Valler’s ongoing work on these issues.
  786.  
  787. Find this resource:
  788.  
  789. Wegner, Judith Romney. Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  790.  
  791. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  792.  
  793. Wegner’s lawyerly approach to rabbinic texts and how they classified women within their legal hierarchies. Argues that only when a man has ownership of a Jewish woman’s reproduction is she treated like chattel. Otherwise, when she is a widow, a divorcee, or an emancipated daughter, rabbinic law treats her with full personhood rights.
  794.  
  795. Find this resource:
  796.  
  797. Second Generation, Gender and Feminist Theory
  798. The second stage of scholarship built on and pushed beyond these questions to think about the construction of gender as a category in rabbinic texts. They looked at both masculinity and femininity as a rabbinic preoccupation, and often studied rabbinic texts/history in context of early Christan and other histories, thus broadening the field. These include Boyarin 1993 and Boyarin 1997 on gender and bodies; Peskowitz 1997 is more historically and archaeologically oriented, and argues for a rabbinic discourse on labor and the work of being female, and for the historical regendering of biblical laws about mitzvot. See Fonrobert 2000 and Balberg 2014 on family purity. Informed by some of these key studies and adding significantly to the field are Baker 2002 on gendered space and the agora, Labovitz 2009 on marriage, and Kessler 2009 on the fetus.
  799.  
  800. Baker, Cynthia. Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
  801.  
  802. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  803.  
  804. Important study of sexual and ethnic difference in Galilee during the post-Temple, rabbinic period. Similar intellectual tradition to Peskowitz 1997 using archaeological and nonliterary remains. Powerful questioning of the construction of Jewish men as “public” agents and Jewish women as “private” or housebound. Important readings of the archaeology of houses, marketplaces, and courtyards/alleyways along with early rabbinic texts.
  805.  
  806. Find this resource:
  807.  
  808. Balberg, Mira. Purity, Body and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature? Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
  809.  
  810. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520280632.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  811.  
  812. A strong, new critical study that addresses issues of purity, bodies, and selves in early rabbinic literature. Balberg’s study is especially sensitive to issues of the shift from biblical to rabbinic notions of a bodily self.
  813.  
  814. Find this resource:
  815.  
  816. Boyarin, Daniel. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
  817.  
  818. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  819.  
  820. Argues, surprisingly, for the carnality and embodiedness of views of Rabbinic Judaism, that Rabbinic Jewish texts did not loathe women and the female body, as has been charged. Because this tradition believed in reproduction and coupling, it constrained women’s lives, but without the loathing that accompanied other contemporary traditions in early Christianity.
  821.  
  822. Find this resource:
  823.  
  824. Boyarin, Daniel. Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  825.  
  826. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  827.  
  828. Argues for the Jewish ideal of the gentle, receptive male, a representation emerging from rabbinic texts, as a liberating idea against the Western discourse of the active male and passive female. The feminized Jew is not the pathology that it is in some Diaspora thought or in anti-Semitic discourse, but a valuable alternative to conventional culture, according to this argument.
  829.  
  830. Find this resource:
  831.  
  832. Fonrobert, Charlotte. Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
  833.  
  834. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  835.  
  836. This book focuses on rabbinic texts about menstration, placing them in a larger historial context. The work includes selected early Christian texts about the ways that Jewish women who became Christians were committed to continuing these practices.
  837.  
  838. Find this resource:
  839.  
  840. Kessler, Gwynn. Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009
  841.  
  842. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  843.  
  844. Studies the Rabbis’ fascination with the fetus as a way to express new understandings of god, gender and Jewishness.
  845.  
  846. Find this resource:
  847.  
  848. Labovitz, Gail. Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009
  849.  
  850. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  851.  
  852. Important study that explores gender relations in marriage, through careful study of rabbinic metaphor of ownership to express marriage, and showing how the early Rabbis reconstituted Jewish marriage, based on their legal concepts of property and ownership.
  853.  
  854. Find this resource:
  855.  
  856. Peskowitz, Miriam. Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  857.  
  858. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  859.  
  860. This groundbreaking, historical-critical work reads for the changes made to gender as Second Temple Judaism shifted into early Rabbinic Judaism, by focusing on work and labor. Interdisciplinary study of how the early rabbis created a new legal system built around genderd distinctions, which had negative effects for Jewish women. The argument includes broader issues of the perils of searching for proto-feminist ancestors in the Rabbis or in ancient women.
  861.  
  862. Find this resource:
  863.  
  864. Talmud Commentary and Ritual Practice
  865. Ilan, et al. 2007 is the first Jewish feminist commentary on the Talmud. Alexander 2013 offers a sophisticated reexamination of the exemption of women from time-bound commandments.
  866.  
  867. Alexander, Elizabeth Shanks. Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  868.  
  869. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139565066Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  870.  
  871. Studies the complicated transmission of the exemption of women from key rituals (shema, tefillin, and Torah study) as the halakha about time-bound commandments became a key marker of Jewish gender and a rationale for Jewish women’s absence from the synagogue and presence at home.
  872.  
  873. Find this resource:
  874.  
  875. Ilan, Tal, Tamar Or, Dorothea M. Salzer, Christiane Steuer, and Irina Wandrey, eds. A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud: Introduction and Studies. Tübingen, Germany: Morh Siebeck, 2007.
  876.  
  877. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  878.  
  879. A first in Jewish history, a commentary on the Babylonian Talmud that highlights the ways that Jewish life is not the same for women as for men, and makes central feminist readings about women and gender that emerge while reading the Talmud. With essays by leading scholars. Series expected to cover the entire Talmud.
  880.  
  881. Find this resource:
  882.  
  883. Second Temple Period
  884. The field of ancient rabbinic studies includes both textual studies and historical work as well as the research on the Second Temple period listed in this section. The Brooten 1982 work on the inscriptional evidence for women’s participation in early synagogue life, and whether they did so from the main floor of the congregation or from the gallery, was not just a signal contribution to the field, it created the field. It is mentioned here because, as a historical work, it tends to be overlooked, as the field of rabbinics is dominated by textualists, not historians. On women and gender throughout the Second Temple period, see the important works Levine 1991, Ilan 1996, and Ilan 2001. Sly 1990 examines the philosopher Philo Judaeus on women.
  885.  
  886. Brooten, Bernadette. Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue. Chico, CA: Scholars, 1982.
  887.  
  888. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  889.  
  890. Uses archaeological evidence and texts to argue for women as leaders in the ancient synagogue. Also argues that the segregated women’s gallery was not part of the ancient synagogue, but emerged later. Key text by a New Testament scholar, important positive research, and an argument against the Christian polemic that argued that Christianity was better for women than Rabbinic Judaism.
  891.  
  892. Find this resource:
  893.  
  894. Ilan, Tal. Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and Status. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996.
  895.  
  896. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  897.  
  898. Argues that the radicalism of Jewish sects in the late Second Temple period encouraged them to more tightly control women, and to express relationships in ideal rather than real terms. Jewish women’s actual status was more varied.
  899.  
  900. Find this resource:
  901.  
  902. Ilan, Tal. Integrating Women into Second Temple History. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001.
  903.  
  904. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  905.  
  906. Discovering women in the public sphere and political events of Second Temple Judaism—women mentioned in Josephus, women associated with Pharisees, and women such as Beruriah and Berenice—who have been well known from the sources.
  907.  
  908. Find this resource:
  909.  
  910. Levine, Amy-Jill, ed. Women Like This: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World. Atlanta: Scholars, 1991.
  911.  
  912. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  913.  
  914. Early and good collection of articles about women in the Second Temple period. Topics include representations of women in Tobit, Philo, Ben Sira, Aseneth, and an article by Ross Kraemer on the possibility of women as authors of religious texts during this period; she is responding to claims that some Second Temple texts might be written by women.
  915.  
  916. Find this resource:
  917.  
  918. Sly, Dorothy. Philo’s Perceptions of Women. Atlanta: Scholars, 1990.
  919.  
  920. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  921.  
  922. Philo’s writings are a source for Jewish women’s ritual, as in the Therapeutae. This study places him against Jewish and Greek writing, and argues that Philo imagines a lower position for women than he inherited from these traditions, considers women dangerous when not controlled by a man, and thinks they should play an auxiliary role in ritual.
  923.  
  924. Find this resource:
  925.  
  926. Kabbalah
  927. Jewish feminist work in this area has been limited mostly to popular accounts, including those in Besserman 2006 and Novick 2008. Work that addresses gender theory includes Deutsch and Bardach 2003 and Rapoport-Albert 1988 on the Maid of Ludmir, and Wolfson 1995 on Kabbalistic symbolism. Aside from these books, there is not yet a sustained feminist account of this time period and these texts.
  928.  
  929. Besserman, Perle. A New Kabbalah for Women. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
  930.  
  931. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  932.  
  933. This popular book combines serious study of Kabbalah, memoir, and meditation practices, with a special attention to the feminine in Kabbalah.
  934.  
  935. Find this resource:
  936.  
  937. Deutsch, Nathaniel, and Janusz Bardach. The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
  938.  
  939. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520231917.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  940.  
  941. This important scholarly study introduces readers to the life of Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, a Hasidic holy woman known as the Maiden of Ludmir who was born in early-19th-century Russia and became famous as the only woman in the three-hundred-year history of Hasidism to function as a rebbe—or charismatic leader—in her own right.
  942.  
  943. Find this resource:
  944.  
  945. Novick, Leah. On the Wings of Shekhinah: Rediscovering Judaism’s Divine Feminine. Wheaton, IL: Quest, 2008.
  946.  
  947. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  948.  
  949. This popular book on Kabbalistic spirituality interweaves historical views of the concept of Shekhinah with thoughtful quotes and guided meditations.
  950.  
  951. Find this resource:
  952.  
  953. Rapoport-Albert, Ada. “On Women in Hasidism, S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition.” In Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky. Edited by Ada Rapopport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein, 495–525. London: P. Halban, 1988.
  954.  
  955. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  956.  
  957. This is an early and important essay that addresses the historical role of women and Hasidism. It is also one of the first academic accounts of the legacy of the Maid of Ludmir.
  958.  
  959. Find this resource:
  960.  
  961. Wolfson, Elliot. Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
  962.  
  963. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  964.  
  965. This powerful theoretical work was groundbreaking in bringing critical and gender theory to the study of Kabbalah. By addressing the issue of gender in Jewish mysticism, it shows the thematic correlation of eroticism and esotericism that is central to the Kabbalah.
  966.  
  967. Find this resource:
  968.  
  969. Philosophy
  970. Feminist scholars trained in the Jewish philosophical tradition provide readings of the medieval origins of Jewish philosophy, as in the very close and critical theory–informed readings in Shapiro 1997 of the category construction of gender in Maimonides, as well as Shapiro 2003 and Shapiro 2009. Also significant is Katz 2003, a rereading of Levinas, amid the contemporary Jewish philosophical tradition. There is not yet a fully sustained engagement with the entire philosophical tradition, although Tirosh-Samuelson 2004 is an important move in that direction; the volume presents a range of contemporary Jewish feminist philosophical scholarship that was presented at the first conference on Jewish feminism and Jewish philosophy, which Tirosh-Samuelson had convened at Arizona State University.
  971.  
  972. Katz, Claire. Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
  973.  
  974. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  975.  
  976. Challenging previous interpretations of Levinas that gloss over his use of the feminine or show how he overlooks questions raised by feminists, Katz explores the powerful and productive links between the feminine and religion in Levinas’s work, combining feminist interpretations of Levinas with interpretations that focus on his Jewish writings.
  977.  
  978. Find this resource:
  979.  
  980. Shapiro, Susan E. “A Matter of Discipline: Reading for Gender in Jewish Philosophy.” In Judaism since Gender. Edited by Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt, 158–173. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  981.  
  982. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  983.  
  984. This classic essay demonstrates what it means to read for gender in Jewish philosophy. It offers a sophisticated theoretical rereading of the tropes and figures that bring together Jewish and classical sources in the work of Maimonides, attending to the gendering of rhetoric as well as the gender of specific tropes and figures as they make meaning.
  985.  
  986. Find this resource:
  987.  
  988. Shapiro, Susan E. “‘And God Created Woman’: Reading the Bible Otherwise.” In Semeia Studies: Levinas and Biblical Studies. Edited by Tamara Cohen Eskenezi, Gary A. Phillips, and David Jobling, 159–195. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
  989.  
  990. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  991.  
  992. This essay demonstrates what it means to reread both Levinas and the Hebrew Bible through a feminist philosophical lens. This is one of the earliest and most important feminist readings of Levinas, and sets the stage for later work.
  993.  
  994. Find this resource:
  995.  
  996. Shapiro, Susan E. “The Status of Women and Jews in Moses Mendelssohn’s Social Contract Theory: An Exceptional Case.” In Special Issue: German-Jewish and Jewish-German Studies. Edited by Leslie Morris. German Quarterly 82.3 (Summer 2009): 373–394.
  997.  
  998. DOI: 10.1111/j.1756-1183.2009.00055.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  999.  
  1000. This critical essay revisits Mendelssohn’s alternative approach to liberalism’s social contract, describing a road not taken. More specifically, by paying attention to a key moment in this work about a Jewish divorce contract, Shapiro deftly shows how contracts might be reimagined with powerful implications for women.
  1001.  
  1002. Find this resource:
  1003.  
  1004. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava, ed. Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy. Proceedings of a conference On Being Human: Women Jewish Philosophy, held 25–26 February 2001 at Arizona State University. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
  1005.  
  1006. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1007.  
  1008. This groundbreaking collection offers readers an introduction to the range and depth of Jewish feminist philosophical scholarship. It brings together leading figures in this burgeoning field and emerges out of a conference held at Arizona State University in the early 2000s.
  1009.  
  1010. Find this resource:
  1011.  
  1012. Ethnography
  1013. Anthropology has provided the opportunity for scholars to examine the lived realities of Jewish women. This scholarship is divided into Orthodoxy, American Jewish Women and Gender, and Women and Gender in Israel.
  1014.  
  1015. Orthodoxy
  1016. This field was established by research in Ochs 1990 on women engaged in intense textual study, and in Kaufman 1991 and Davidman 1991 on newly Orthodox Jewish women and the attraction of various forms of Orthodox for women who came from liberal and secular Jewish families. This initial ethnographic research has been enhanced by ongoing work. El-Or 1994 researched ultra-Orthodox and other Orthodox women in Israel. Two books pay closer attention to language and linguistics, and use a more performative ethnographic approach to engage with both newly Orthodox; see Bunin Benor 2012 on women’s efforts to become observant, and Fader 2009 on the education of Hassidic girls in Brooklyn.
  1017.  
  1018. Bunin Benor, Sarah. Becoming Frum: Now Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012.
  1019.  
  1020. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1021.  
  1022. Studies newcomers to Orthodoxy, particularly its cultural aspects with attention to language use, with important insights on gender differences among newly Orthodox Jews.
  1023.  
  1024. Find this resource:
  1025.  
  1026. Davidman, Lynn. Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
  1027.  
  1028. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1029.  
  1030. Studies and compares secular women who entered a modern Orthodox community and a Lubovitch Hasidic community.
  1031.  
  1032. Find this resource:
  1033.  
  1034. El-Or, Tamar. Educated and Ignorant: Ultraorthodox Women and Their World. Bolder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994.
  1035.  
  1036. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1037.  
  1038. Studies women in the ultra-Orthodox Gur Hassidic community in Israel. Argues that the women are educated, but shallowly, and in ways that encourage their subordination.
  1039.  
  1040. Find this resource:
  1041.  
  1042. El-Or, Tamar. Next Year I Will Know More: Literacy and Identity among Orthodox Women in Israel. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002.
  1043.  
  1044. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1045.  
  1046. Studies religious literacy among women in Israel’s religious Zionist community, with questions about how this new trend could change gender identity, and potentially, theology and law.
  1047.  
  1048. Find this resource:
  1049.  
  1050. Fader, Ayala. Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
  1051.  
  1052. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1053.  
  1054. Studies how Hasidic women in Brooklyn create identities as they engage with the secular world—which they do to protect Hasidic men and boys so they can study the Torah—and in which they, as women, are both modest and fashionable.
  1055.  
  1056. Find this resource:
  1057.  
  1058. Kaufman, Debra Renee. Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
  1059.  
  1060. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1061.  
  1062. Studies countercultural and feminist women who enter Orthodox communities, seeking to understand how they argue their moves as a feminist choice, and how they experience the subordination of women.
  1063.  
  1064. Find this resource:
  1065.  
  1066. Ochs, Vanessa. Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanowitch, 1990.
  1067.  
  1068. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1069.  
  1070. An account of Och’s year in Jerusalem, spent learning the Torah and Talmud from women and grappling with her feminist self amid this new experience, while creating a new understanding of Jewish learning through women.
  1071.  
  1072. Find this resource:
  1073.  
  1074. American Jewish Women and Gender
  1075. This section includes social scientific and ethnographic accounts of women and Jewish life in the United States, with much of the research looking at the construction of gender. These works include Baker 1993, Barack Fishman 1993, and Hartman and Hartman 2009. Behar 2007 is a more experimental and autobiographical work about Jewish Cuba. All these efforts build on Myerhoff 1978, the classic study of aging American Jews in Venice, California, a key achievement in establishing Jewish ethnography. Pinsky 2009 looks at the identities and activism of Jewish women and men in the second-wave feminist movement.
  1076.  
  1077. Baker, Adrienne. The Jewish Woman in Contemporary Society: Transitions and Traditions. New York: New York University Press, 1993.
  1078.  
  1079. DOI: 10.1057/9780230375819Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1080.  
  1081. Early overview by a British scholar, the kind that is no longer written today, but is still helpful for the big picture.
  1082.  
  1083. Find this resource:
  1084.  
  1085. Barack Fishman, Sylvia. A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community. New York: Free Press, 1993.
  1086.  
  1087. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1088.  
  1089. Asks what women do with their newfound sense of possibility and opportunity, in Jewish communities and society, based on 120 interviews across ages and the 1990 National Jewish Population Study.
  1090.  
  1091. Find this resource:
  1092.  
  1093. Behar, Ruth. An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
  1094.  
  1095. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1096.  
  1097. Lyrical anthropological account of Yiddish-speaking European Jews who landed in “Hotel Cuba” in the 1920s, thinking they were on the way to the United States, but who ended up staying until 1959, when most of these Jews left as Castro came to power. An account of returning to the place her family left when she was five.
  1098.  
  1099. Find this resource:
  1100.  
  1101. Hartman, Moshe. Gender Equality and American Jews. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.
  1102.  
  1103. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1104.  
  1105. This is the first of the Hartman quantitative studies of American Jews. Building on earlier population survey material, this study addresses the question of gender equity.
  1106.  
  1107. Find this resource:
  1108.  
  1109. Hartman, Harriet, and Moshe Hartman. Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education, and Family in Contemporary Life. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2009.
  1110.  
  1111. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1112.  
  1113. Quantitative sociological interpretation of recent National Jewish Population Surveys, to analyze gendered patterns in the contemporary US Jewish community.
  1114.  
  1115. Find this resource:
  1116.  
  1117. Myerhoff, Barbara. Number Our Days. New York: Touchstone, 1978.
  1118.  
  1119. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1120.  
  1121. Classic Jewish ethnographic text of elderly Jews, including elderly Jewish women. Sets the stage for the ethnographic focus on everyday life that opened up research on women. This was a groundbreaking account of everyday life that told the life stories of the first generation of, especially, Eastern European Jewish women.
  1122.  
  1123. Find this resource:
  1124.  
  1125. Pinsky, Dina. Jewish Feminists: Complex Identities and Activist Lives. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
  1126.  
  1127. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1128.  
  1129. Study of Jewish feminists—mostly women, but including five men—active in the 1960s and 1970s. Discusses intersectionality: how being Jewish gave these Jews a unique take on gender, and how being women and feminists influenced how they understood Judaism and Jewishness.
  1130.  
  1131. Find this resource:
  1132.  
  1133. Women and Gender in Israel
  1134. Sered 2000 offers an important gendered reading of militarism and maternity. Kahn 2000 does similarly textured research on fertility and assisted reproduction, as practiced specific to Israeli culture, a world leader in the number of fertility clinics per capita. There is a vast literature in Hebrew on various aspects of gender and contemporary Israeli life. See entries listed under Israel and Zionism.
  1135.  
  1136. Kahn, Susan M. Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2000.
  1137.  
  1138. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1139.  
  1140. Ethnography of reproductive technology in Israel and unmarried Israeli women using Israeli fertility clinics. Sophisticated use of critical feminist analysis, and National Jewish Book Award winner.
  1141.  
  1142. Find this resource:
  1143.  
  1144. Sered, Susan Starr. What Makes Women Sick? Maternity, Modesty, and Militarism in Israeli Society. Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2000.
  1145.  
  1146. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1147.  
  1148. Critical ethnographic account of the military, medical, and religious institutions in Israel and the pressures women feel, organized around the question of why Israeli women have a lower life expectancy and health status compared to other women in developed countries.
  1149.  
  1150. Find this resource:
  1151.  
  1152. Feminist, Gender, and Body Theory
  1153. This research engages with critical theory as a means to rethink the cultural categories of gender and bodies, with a focus that includes masculinity. Classic texts are Gilman 1991 and Gilman 1993, Eilberg-Schwartz 1994, and Biale 1997. Eilberg-Schwartz 1994 provocatively called attention to the embodied and decidedly masculine nature of the biblical God. The author’s 1992 collection (see Eilberg-Schwartz 1992) opened up a space for exploring issues of the body, more broadly construed. This category also includes efforts to consider Jewishness within feminist theory (Miller 1991) and efforts to create a critical Jewish cultural studies in Boyarin and Boyarin 1997 and Silberstein 2000.
  1154.  
  1155. Biale, David. Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  1156.  
  1157. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1158.  
  1159. Historic overview of Judaism through history. Organized around questions of when Jewish texts support asceticism and repression of desire and when they engage a sensuality that Biale considers more liberatory.
  1160.  
  1161. Find this resource:
  1162.  
  1163. Boyarin, Daniel, and Jonathan Boyarin, eds. Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
  1164.  
  1165. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1166.  
  1167. Edited volume that asserts the “New Jewish Cultural Studies,” or research on Jews and Judaism and Jewishness that is explicitly informed by critical cultural studies, as it became known in the 1990s.
  1168.  
  1169. Find this resource:
  1170.  
  1171. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, ed. People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
  1172.  
  1173. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1174.  
  1175. Building on the centrality of the body in Jewish studies in his prior work, this edited volume explores a wide range of topics around the question, what’s the problem of the body for the People of the Book? Important book, includes the classic Riv-Ellen Prell essay “Why Jewish Princesses Don’t Sweat” and Rebecca Alpert’s “Challenging Male/Female Complementarity: Jewish Lesbians and the Jewish Tradition.”
  1176.  
  1177. Find this resource:
  1178.  
  1179. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. God’s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Boston: Beacon, 1994.
  1180.  
  1181. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1182.  
  1183. Groundbreaking and provocative book that explored the masculine biblical images of God as a theological conundrum for men: in that a Jewish man must either be feminized as the female partner of a masculine God, or allow themselves to engage in an imagined homoerotic relationship with their God.
  1184.  
  1185. Find this resource:
  1186.  
  1187. Gilman, Sander. The Jew’s Body. New York: Routledge, 1991.
  1188.  
  1189. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1190.  
  1191. Critical discussion of the bodily images of Jews, as promoted in racist anti-Semitic literature. Gilman examines the specificities in these medical and popular texts, and shows how 19th- and 20th-century pseudo-science created a rhetoric about Jewish voices, feet, and noses, and formed a construction of Jewishness that became part of psychoanalysis.
  1192.  
  1193. Find this resource:
  1194.  
  1195. Gilman, Sander. Freud, Race, and Gender. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
  1196.  
  1197. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1198.  
  1199. Describes how Freud’s internalizing of a gendered, racist anti-Semitism that described Jews as sexual degenerates shaped psychoanalysis. Includes discussion of the feminization of male Jews by European intellectuals and an argument that Freud projected these anxieties onto Jewish women, “his cultural inferiors.”
  1200.  
  1201. Find this resource:
  1202.  
  1203. Miller, Nancy K. Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. New York: Routledge, 1991.
  1204.  
  1205. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1206.  
  1207. This collection of essays marks critical moves in feminist literary theory toward the use of the first person. Miller offers a rare and important attempt to position herself as a Jewish feminist.
  1208.  
  1209. Find this resource:
  1210.  
  1211. Silberstein, Laurence, ed. Mapping Jewish Identities. Papers presented at the Mapping Jewish Identities conference held at Lehigh University, May 1998. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
  1212.  
  1213. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1214.  
  1215. Important volume, arising from conferences at Lehigh University, that enacts Jewish studies scholarship through post-structuralist theory, critical feminist theory, and postmodern philosophy. Creates a very new way of doing Jewish studies, by American and Israeli scholars.
  1216.  
  1217. Find this resource:
  1218.  
  1219. Feminist Critical Interventions
  1220. Feminist efforts that built on these critical moves posed questions about the entire discipline of Jewish studies and the gendering of the knowledge it produced. This body of scholarship includes Peskowitz and Levitt 1995, Peskowitz and Levitt 1996, Myers 2005, and Greenspan 2009 and the forum on gender and boundaries in the Jewish Quarterly Review (2011). This work created the scholarly ground for additional research in masculinity, femininity, and queerness and what would become critical/queer Jewish studies. Harrowitz and Hyams 1995 was one of the earliest of these queer interventions. Rosen 2003 offers a powerful, theoretically sophisticated account of gender in medieval Hebrew literature. Further work on place and geography as they intersect with notions of gender are reflected in Baumel and Cohen 2003.
  1221.  
  1222. Baumel, Judith Tydor, and Tova Cohen, eds. Gender, Place, and Memory in the Modern Jewish Experience: Re-Placing Ourselves. London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003.
  1223.  
  1224. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1225.  
  1226. This collection emerged out of a conference, “Gender, Place, and Memory in the Modern Jewish Experience” at Bar-Ilan University, January 2001. It offers a range of essays on the relationship between memory, gender, and place and builds on gender theory, geography, and memory studies.
  1227.  
  1228. Find this resource:
  1229.  
  1230. Dohrmann, Natalie B., ed. “Forum: On Gender and Boundaries.” Jewish Quarterly Review 101.3 (Summer 2011): 407–457.
  1231.  
  1232. DOI: 10.1353/jqr.2011.0026Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1233.  
  1234. This forum offers a range of essays on the ways that gender gets deployed in classical Jewish texts and practices to mark identity and the boundaries of inclusion, from the biblical Garden of Eden to more contemporary practices of conversion and political inclusion.
  1235.  
  1236. Find this resource:
  1237.  
  1238. Greenspan, Frederick. Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
  1239.  
  1240. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1241.  
  1242. This synthetic overview presents an account of the state of the field of scholarship in Jewish studies about women.
  1243.  
  1244. Find this resource:
  1245.  
  1246. Harrowitz, Nancy, and Barbara Hyams, eds. Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.
  1247.  
  1248. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1249.  
  1250. This collection explores the deeply charged discourse of Otto Weininger, with careful attention to his disturbing account of both women and Jews and the intersection between these discourses. Essays draw from scholars across the disciplines.
  1251.  
  1252. Find this resource:
  1253.  
  1254. Myers, David, ed. Special Issue: Overcoming Matter? Jewish Quarterly Review 95.3 (2005).
  1255.  
  1256. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1257.  
  1258. This special issue focuses on the body and the range of important scholarly works that continue to build on feminist and queer theoretical insights across the fields of Jewish studies. Especially noteworthy is Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s essay “The Corporeal Turn.”
  1259.  
  1260. Find this resource:
  1261.  
  1262. Peskowitz, Miriam, and Laura Levitt, eds. Special Issue: Engendering Jewish Knowledges. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Jewish Studies 14.1 (Fall 1995).
  1263.  
  1264. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1265.  
  1266. An important early effort to bring together scholars across the various fields of Jewish studies to address how they create new knowledge. It includes both a forum around a single essay as well as reviews of key texts at this important moment of Jewish feminist scholarly production.
  1267.  
  1268. Find this resource:
  1269.  
  1270. Peskowitz, Miriam, and Laura Levitt, eds. Judaism since Gender. New York: Routledge, 1996.
  1271.  
  1272. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1273.  
  1274. This collection offers a vision of what it might mean to engender new Jewish knowledge across the various fields and subfields of Jewish studies. Presents new work by leading scholars across the disciplines, and includes sustained case studies and textual considerations, as well as conversation about the challenges of feminist work.
  1275.  
  1276. Find this resource:
  1277.  
  1278. Rosen, Tova. Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
  1279.  
  1280. DOI: 10.9783/9780812203592Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1281.  
  1282. A theoretically sophisticated reading of medieval Hebrew literature that demonstrates how to read for gender and what can come out of such a reading.
  1283.  
  1284. Find this resource:
  1285.  
  1286. Jewish Lesbian, Feminist, and Queer Studies (LGBTQ)
  1287. The focus of early lesbian feminist work was visibility and inclusion, and about moving lesbian and gay Jews into the mainstream of scholarship (and communal life). Anthologies detailed coming out and various first-person narratives; see Balka and Rose 1991 and Shneer and Aviv 2002. The first generation of lesbian rabbis is documented in Alpert, et al. 2001. What follows is a more sustained critical scholarly work in Alpert 1997 on lesbian Jewish ethics (cited under Theology and Ethics); in Brettschneider 2006 on queering what constitutes a family, and how gender and sexuality intersect with race in Jewish communities; and finally, in the edited collection Boyarin, et al. 2003 that demonstrates the powerful critical interventions that can be made when queer theory is placed in conversation with issues of Jewish identification across the disciplines. Recent collections of first-person narratives include Moore 1995, which addresses writings by lesbians in Israel; the experiences of transgender Jews in Dzmura 2010; and Orthodox lesbians in Kabakov 2010.
  1288.  
  1289. Alpert, Rebecca, Sue Levi Elwell, and Shirly Idelson, eds. Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
  1290.  
  1291. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1292.  
  1293. This historic collection brings together the life stories of the first generation of lesbian rabbis. It crosses the liberal denominations, Reconstructionist, Reform, and, at the time of its publication, even a Conservative rabbi whose identity is disguised because it was not yet sanctioned for there to be lesbian rabbis in that movement. These are important first-person accounts.
  1294.  
  1295. Find this resource:
  1296.  
  1297. Balka, Christy, and Andy Rose, eds. Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish. Boston: Beacon, 1991.
  1298.  
  1299. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1300.  
  1301. This was one of the very first collections of first-person accounts by gay and lesbian Jews about their experiences. It is a groundbreaking collection with a range of voices and positions. It is a classic collection with great historical import for LGBTQ Jews coming out as both Jewish and gay or lesbian.
  1302.  
  1303. Find this resource:
  1304.  
  1305. Boyarin, Daniel, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini, eds. Queer Theory and the Jewish Question. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
  1306.  
  1307. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1308.  
  1309. This important scholarly anthology by leading queer theorists and Jewish studies scholars demonstrates what happens when Jewishness is queered, and some of the challenges of drawing analogies between different kinds of oppression. The introduction is a must read for using queer theory to do Jewish studies.
  1310.  
  1311. Find this resource:
  1312.  
  1313. Brettschneider, Marla. The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006.
  1314.  
  1315. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1316.  
  1317. In this provocative and inspired first-person account of the politics of queering Jewish family life, political theorist Brettschneider raises crucial questions about the ways American Jews think about family and community. It is a compelling and engaging theoretically sophisticated account.
  1318.  
  1319. Find this resource:
  1320.  
  1321. Dzmura, Noach, ed. Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in the Jewish Community. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 2010.
  1322.  
  1323. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1324.  
  1325. This groundbreaking collection offers one of the first accounts of transgender Jewish life and the challenges of acceptance. This collection was an opening to this burgeoning field and the discussion within both Jewish communal life and Jewish scholarship.
  1326.  
  1327. Find this resource:
  1328.  
  1329. Kabakov, Miriam, ed. Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 2010.
  1330.  
  1331. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1332.  
  1333. This collection explores a once-taboo topic, the experiences and lives of Orthodox lesbian women. It is an important addition to LGBTQ scholarship and activism. It brings the stories of these women into these discussions with a series of first-person accounts of coming out in the Orthodox world.
  1334.  
  1335. Find this resource:
  1336.  
  1337. Moore, Tracy, ed. Lesbiot: Israeli Lesbians Talk about Sexuality, Feminism, Judaism, and Their Lives. London: Cassell, 1995.
  1338.  
  1339. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1340.  
  1341. This collection offers a series of accounts of what it means to be a lesbian in contemporary Israeli society. It is the first English-language account of Israeli lesbian lives with attention to questions of feminist activism and Jewish observance.
  1342.  
  1343. Find this resource:
  1344.  
  1345. Shneer, David, and Caryn Aviv, eds. Queer Jews. New York: Routledge, 2002.
  1346.  
  1347. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1348.  
  1349. This collection builds on the legacy of Twice Blessed (Balka and Rose 1991) and explores how a new generation of out LGBTQ Jews are reclaiming and transforming what it means to be Jewish and queer. These are first-person accounts that offer a range of positions at the turn of the 21st century. It chronicles the lives of a generation of proud queer Jews.
  1350.  
  1351. Find this resource:
  1352.  
  1353. Jewish Secular Lesbian Feminist Writing and Activism
  1354. Beginning with Beck 1989, which is a revision of the 1982 publication of Nice Jewish Girls, secular lesbian Jewish feminists began to identify as Jews, and actively raised questions about anti-Semitism in radical feminist and lesbian communities, as in Bulkin, et al. 1984; Kaye/Kantrowitz and Klepfisz 1989; Klepfisz 1990; and Kaye/Kantrowitz 1995. These secular lesbian Jewish feminists became increasingly engaged in advocating for peace in Israel and Palestine. On these thorny issues, see Beck 1989; Fabel, et al. 1990; Klepfisz 1990; and Kaye/Kantrowitz 1995.
  1355.  
  1356. Beck, Evelyn Torton, ed. Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon, 1989.
  1357.  
  1358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1359.  
  1360. First published in 1982, this classic text was the first Jewish lesbian anthology. Building on feminist identity politics at its very best, these essays remain some of the most important explorations of these issues. The prefaces to its various editions mark some of the political struggles around Israel and feminist activism after the Lebanon War, as were also experienced in the United Kingdom by Jewish feminists involved with the magazine Spare Rib.
  1361.  
  1362. Find this resource:
  1363.  
  1364. Bulkin, Elly, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith. Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism. Brooklyn: Long Haul, 1984.
  1365.  
  1366. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1367.  
  1368. This book of sophisticated lesbian feminist identity politics offers three classic essays on feminist attempts to challenge anti-Semitism and racism. Smith, Pratt, and Bulkin each challenge their own most basic assumptions about sexuality and class, as all of these forms of oppression intersect and overlap.
  1369.  
  1370. Find this resource:
  1371.  
  1372. Fabel, Rita, Irena Klepfisz, and Donna Nevel, eds. Jewish Women’s Call for Peace: A Handbook for Jewish Women on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1990.
  1373.  
  1374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1375.  
  1376. This handbook was a guide to Jewish feminist activism, as it emerged from the work of the group Women in Black in protesting Israeli occupation after the first Intifada. These are powerful, brief essays by leading activists and scholars. It remains a powerful contribution to seeing the intersections between feminist and peace work in Israel and Palestine.
  1377.  
  1378. Find this resource:
  1379.  
  1380. Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. The Issue is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1995.
  1381.  
  1382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1383.  
  1384. Provocative feminist explorations by lesbian feminist scholar, activist, and poet, Kaye-Kantrowitz, that explore the nexus between issues of power, feminist and lesbian activism, and the challenges posed in efforts to resist violence.
  1385.  
  1386. Find this resource:
  1387.  
  1388. Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie, and Irena Klepfisz, eds. The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology. Boston: Beacon, 1989.
  1389.  
  1390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1391.  
  1392. This collection was first published by the magazine Sinister Wisdom in 1986, and spoke back to other more mainstream religious Jewish feminists. A collection of primarily secular Jewish feminist activists, poets, and writers. This diverse collection was initiated by lesbian activists engaged in the work of identity politics outside the organized Jewish community. Crucial text for understanding a vibrant community.
  1393.  
  1394. Find this resource:
  1395.  
  1396. Klepfisz, Irena. Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes. Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain, 1990.
  1397.  
  1398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1399.  
  1400. These essays are some of the most powerful explorations of secular Yiddish Jewish culture and the legacy of the Holocaust, alongside compelling engagements with feminist and lesbian poetry and activism. These are sophisticated and compelling explorations by a leading poet, writer, and activist. Also published in 1993.
  1401.  
  1402. Find this resource:
  1403.  
  1404. Selected Jewish Lesbian Feminist Literature
  1405. Lesbian Jewish feminists produced a new culture for themselves, for their communities, and for society in general. This included the writing of stories, essays, and poetry that addressed their sexuality, politics, and Jewish identifications. Prominent among these are the short story collections in Feldman 1992, Newman 1988, Kaye/Kantrowitz 1990, and Zahava 1990; poetry in Klepfisz 1990; and the Newman 2000 classic lesbian text for children, Heather Has Two Mommies.
  1406.  
  1407. Feldman, Jyl Lynn. Hot Chicken Wings. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1992.
  1408.  
  1409. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1410.  
  1411. This collection of short stories includes funny, poignant explorations of living as a lesbian Jewish feminist in late-20th-century America. They explore contradictions and pleasures, food and sex, and family. Feldman’s writing emerges out of lesbian Jewish feminist identity politics and lesbian feminist activism and cultural production.
  1412.  
  1413. Find this resource:
  1414.  
  1415. Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. My Jewish Face & Other Stories. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990.
  1416.  
  1417. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1418.  
  1419. This collection of stories by Kaye/Kantrowitz explores questions of Jewishness, and includes an important story about the complicated place of an Israeli in an Ashkenazi American family, after the first Intifada.
  1420.  
  1421. Find this resource:
  1422.  
  1423. Klepfisz, Irena. A Few Words in the Mother Tongue: Poems Selected and New (1971–1990). Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain, 1990.
  1424.  
  1425. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1426.  
  1427. This important collection of poems brings together the most significant array of the work of Irena Klepfisz, a major literary figure and poet. The poems offer explorations of her life as a child survivor of the Holocaust and as a lesbian secular Yiddish writer and activist.
  1428.  
  1429. Find this resource:
  1430.  
  1431. Newman, Lesléa. A Letter to Harvey Milk: Short Stories. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1988.
  1432.  
  1433. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1434.  
  1435. Newman was a lesbian writer coming out of a strong community of lesbian feminist activists and writers. She wrote fiercely about her Jewishness and her queerness together. This collection speaks to the challenges of claiming LGBTQ politics and community through the figure of the San Francisco politician Harvey Milk.
  1436.  
  1437. Find this resource:
  1438.  
  1439. Newman, Lesléa. Secrets: Short Stories. Norwich, VT: New Victoria, 1990.
  1440.  
  1441. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1442.  
  1443. This later collection of Newman’s lesbian short fiction continues to explore the complexities of her own position as a Jewish lesbian feminist writer and activist.
  1444.  
  1445. Find this resource:
  1446.  
  1447. Newman, Lesléa. Heather Has Two Mommies. Los Angeles: Alyson, 2000.
  1448.  
  1449. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1450.  
  1451. First published in 1989, this was one of the first children’s books to explore the realities of lesbian families and their children, as experienced through Newman’s Jewish family. It was popularly adopted in libraries and schools, and became controversial as conservative opponents challenged its place there.
  1452.  
  1453. Find this resource:
  1454.  
  1455. Zahava, Irena, ed. Speaking for Ourselves: Short Stories by Jewish Lesbians. Freedom, CA: Crossing, 1990.
  1456.  
  1457. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1458.  
  1459. This collection brings together a range of lesbian feminist voices exploring questions of Jewishness through fiction. Published in 1990, which was a high watermark for small feminist and lesbian feminist presses and journals in promoting and circulating these works.
  1460.  
  1461. Find this resource:
  1462.  
  1463. Literature
  1464. This section includes several categories of scholarship. Feminist literary histories bring to light the literary production of Jewish women. These have focused particularly on Jewish women’s writings in Hebrew and Yiddish, and to a more limited degree, writing in English, Russian, and other languages. In addition, literary scholarship has analyzed how gender is constructed in the canonical literary works. Using feminist critical theory, this scholarship has challenged Jewish studies’ accepted understandings of the canon. The body of feminist literary scholarship in Hebrew is not covered here, although some of it appears in translation in the journals and anthologies.
  1465.  
  1466. Stories and Poetry by Jewish Women
  1467. These works include an early collection of the Italian Hebrew poetry of Ragek Morpurgo in Salman 1924, and Zierler 2004 on the range of modern Hebrew women writers. Anthologies of Jewish women’s writing, broadly construed, are available. See Kalechofsky and Kalechofsky 1990 and Kaufman 1999; American Jewish women writers can be found in Antler 1990; and Yiddish women writers are collected and translated in Forman, et al. 1994. See Hellerstein 1999 for work on the important Yiddish writer Kadya Molodowsky. Balin 2000 offers readers access to the rich literary productions of Jewish women writing in tsarist Russia.
  1468.  
  1469. Antler, Joyce, ed. America and I: Short Stories by American Jewish Women Writers. Boston: Beacon, 1990.
  1470.  
  1471. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1472.  
  1473. Through this collection, Antler, a literary scholar working in American and Jewish studies, brings together important short fiction by American women writers who are Jewish, asking readers to consider what it might mean to see the powerful presence of Jewish women in this genre.
  1474.  
  1475. Find this resource:
  1476.  
  1477. Balin, Carole. To Reveal Our Hearts: Jewish Women Writers in Tsarist Russia. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2000.
  1478.  
  1479. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1480.  
  1481. Balin brings readers of English into the vast literary production of Jewish women who wrote in tsarist Russia. This study demonstrates the range and depth of this work. She discovers previously unknown authors while shedding new light on previously known writers.
  1482.  
  1483. Find this resource:
  1484.  
  1485. Forman, Frieda, Ethel Raicus, Silberstein Swartz, and Margie Wolfe, eds. Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers. Toronto: Second Story, 1994.
  1486.  
  1487. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1488.  
  1489. This collection translates into English and circulates a powerful range of stories written by Yiddish women writers. Introduces readers to the depth and breath of this trove of Jewish women’s writing.
  1490.  
  1491. Find this resource:
  1492.  
  1493. Hellerstein, Kathryn, ed. Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky. Detriot: Wayne State University Press, 1999.
  1494.  
  1495. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1496.  
  1497. This eloquent and carefully annotated book of translations brings English-speaking readers to the work of Kadya Molodwsky, a Yiddish poet and woman writer of unusual talent and vision.
  1498.  
  1499. Find this resource:
  1500.  
  1501. Kalechofsky, Robert, and Roberta Kalechofsky, eds. The Global Anthology of Jewish Women Writers. Marblehead, MA: Micah, 1990.
  1502.  
  1503. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1504.  
  1505. This popular collection offers readers a global account of the range and depth and diversity of writing by Jewish women in the modern period.
  1506.  
  1507. Find this resource:
  1508.  
  1509. Kaufman, Shirley, ed. The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1999.
  1510.  
  1511. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1512.  
  1513. This collection, published by the Feminist Press, offers an overview of feminist poems in Hebrew from antiquity to the present, in translation for English-speaking readers.
  1514.  
  1515. Find this resource:
  1516.  
  1517. Salman, Nina Ruth. Rahel Morpurgo and the Contemporary Hebrew Poets in Italy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1924.
  1518.  
  1519. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1520.  
  1521. Published in the 1920s, this book presents an account of Rahel Morpurgo and other Hebrew poets who wrote in Italy in the early 20th century. Morpurgo later becomes a subject of contemporary Jewish feminist literary scholarship in the work of Wendy Zierler, among other scholars of Hebrew literature.
  1522.  
  1523. Find this resource:
  1524.  
  1525. Zierler, Wendy. And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Women’s Writing. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.
  1526.  
  1527. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1528.  
  1529. Zierler offers a rich intertextual analysis of the emergence of Hebrew women’s writing in the modern period. She not only uncovers lost texts and writers, she reads them with great subtlety and, through her reading, demonstrates their importance.
  1530.  
  1531. Find this resource:
  1532.  
  1533. American Literature
  1534. These works include studies that address the images and legacies of Jewish women in American Jewish literature and popular culture, especially in the 20th century, as in Antler 1998a and Antler 1998b, as well as in sustained studies on the figures of mothers and daughters in Antler 2008 and Burnstein 1996. Other studies address questions of Jewish identities, as in Meyers 2011, and on the roles of gender and sexuality as they relate to ultra-Orthodoxy, as in Rubel 2010. Rubel challenges the gender discourse especially around the fascination and repulsion expressed in contemporary fiction. Rosen 1992 addresses what it means to be a woman and a Jewish writer in America, addressing her own career as a novelist.
  1535.  
  1536. Antler, Joyce. The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America. New York: Schocken, 1998a.
  1537.  
  1538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1539.  
  1540. Interweaving social history with biography, Antler profiles Jewish women—from Emma Goldman, Sophie Tucker, and Golda Meir to Bella Abzug, Gertrude Stein, and Wendy Wasserstein—examining the political conflicts and personal tensions that have animated their lives. Meticulously researched, this work demonstrates Antler’s important role as a key American studies scholar of Jewish women.
  1541.  
  1542. Find this resource:
  1543.  
  1544. Antler, Joyce, ed. Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1998b.
  1545.  
  1546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1547.  
  1548. This edited collection challenges traditional notions of Jewish female identity presented in mass media images, films, narratives, and stories. Here these women are not only subjects, but also shapers of American popular culture. Such stereotypes as the Jewish mother and the Jewish American Princess are dismantled, and new possibilities for the expression of Jewish women’s voices are explored.
  1549.  
  1550. Find this resource:
  1551.  
  1552. Antler, Joyce. You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  1553.  
  1554. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1555.  
  1556. This important study is the first sustained history of the Jewish mother. It challenges and historicizes the various stereotypes that have been associated with this figure. This work builds on Antler’s sustained engagement with the Jewish mother figure in her prior work.
  1557.  
  1558. Find this resource:
  1559.  
  1560. Burnstein, Janet. Writing Mothers, Writing Daughters: Tracing the Maternal in Stories by American Jewish Women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
  1561.  
  1562. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1563.  
  1564. This important study of the works of many of the leading American Jewish women writers asks questions about the figures of mothers and daughters in these works. Authors addressed include Cynthia Ozick, Edna Ferber, Vivian Gornick, Grace Paley, and many others.
  1565.  
  1566. Find this resource:
  1567.  
  1568. Meyers, Helene. Identity Papers: Contemporary Narratives of American Jewishness. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011.
  1569.  
  1570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1571.  
  1572. This critical feminist work argues that contemporary Jewish American literature should move beyond the reductive labeling of texts and authors as “too Jewish” or “not Jewish enough.” It focuses instead on narratives that portray Jewish regeneration through feminist Orthodoxy, queerness, off-whiteness, and intermarriage.
  1573.  
  1574. Find this resource:
  1575.  
  1576. Rosen, Nora. Accidents of Influence: Writing as a Woman and a Jew in America. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
  1577.  
  1578. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1579.  
  1580. This is an early second-wave feminist work about American Jewish women writers. Although no longer in print, it helped shape the field.
  1581.  
  1582. Find this resource:
  1583.  
  1584. Rubel, Nora L. Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
  1585.  
  1586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1587.  
  1588. Unpacking the literary writing of Allegra Goodman, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Erich Segal, Anne Roiphe, and others, Rubel investigates the choices non-Orthodox Jews have made as they represent ultra-Orthodox Jews. Rubel recasts the war over gender and family and the anxieties over acculturation, Americanization, and continuity in innovative ways.
  1589.  
  1590. Find this resource:
  1591.  
  1592. British Literature
  1593. Studies over the past twenty years have reexamined the legacy of Jewish women writers in the Victorian era; see Galchinsky 1996 and Tylee 2006. Valman 2007 has addressed the figure of the Jewess, and Scheinberg 2009 examines Jewish identity in a Christian context as it is played out in Victorian women’s poetry. Ragussis 1995 addresses the figure of Jewish conversion in British literature, with a discussion of gender. Valman 2014 brings together scholars of both 19th- and 20th-century British Jewish women writers, expanding our understanding of this rich, ongoing literary tradition.
  1594.  
  1595. Galchinsky, Michael. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
  1596.  
  1597. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1598.  
  1599. Galchinsky shows the central role of Jewish women writers in the Anglo-Jewish enlightenment. They were the first Jewish women anywhere to publish novels, histories, periodicals, theological tracts, and conduct manuals. Galchinsky analyzes this critical but forgotten period in the development of Jewish women’s writing in relation to Victorian literary history, women’s cultural history, and Jewish cultural history.
  1600.  
  1601. Find this resource:
  1602.  
  1603. Ragussis, Michael. Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” & English National Identity. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1995.
  1604.  
  1605. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1606.  
  1607. Ragussis explores the phenomenon of Jewish conversion—the subject of popular enthusiasm, public scandal, and national debate, and dubbed “the English madness” by its critics—in Protestant England from the 1790s through the 1870s. This work pays attention to the fascination with Jewish men and women in this vast literature.
  1608.  
  1609. Find this resource:
  1610.  
  1611. Scheinberg, Cynthia. Women’s Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  1612.  
  1613. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1614.  
  1615. Scheinberg examines Anglo-Jewish (Grace Aguilar and Amy Levy) and Christian (Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti) women poets, and argues that there are important connections between the discourses of 19th-century poetry—gender and religious identity. Broadly interdisciplinary, the book’s methodology relates to studies in poetics, religious studies, feminist literary criticism, and little-known Anglo-Jewish primary sources.
  1616.  
  1617. Find this resource:
  1618.  
  1619. Tylee, Claire. “In the Open”: Jewish Women Writers and British Culture. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006.
  1620.  
  1621. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1622.  
  1623. This collection of essays on Jewish women writers and British culture contributes to the fields of both women’s studies and Jewish studies. A variety of British women writers from across the 20th century are brought together and considered through the lens of their Jewish background. Authors include Anita Brookner, Mina Loy, and Denise Levertov.
  1624.  
  1625. Find this resource:
  1626.  
  1627. Valman, Nadia. The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  1628.  
  1629. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511484964Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1630.  
  1631. Valman argues that the figure of the Jewess—virtuous, appealing, and sacrificial—reveals how hostility toward Jews was accompanied by pity, identification, and desire. Reading a range of texts from popular romance to the realist novel, Valman shows the Jewess as a complex figure who brought the instabilities of British religious, racial, and national identities into sharp focus.
  1632.  
  1633. Find this resource:
  1634.  
  1635. Valman, Nadia, ed. Jewish Women Writers in Britain. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014.
  1636.  
  1637. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1638.  
  1639. This collection brings together studies of 19th- and 20th-century British women writers, featuring key early writers like Agular, Magnus, and Montagu; a full range of 20th-century poets and writers; and émigré and post-Holocaust writing produced in Britain. Essays are written by a strong group of literary scholars within and outside of Jewish studies.
  1640.  
  1641. Find this resource:
  1642.  
  1643. Critical Literary Studies
  1644. Seidman 1997 reads for the gendered relationship between Yiddish and Hebrew. It is exemplary, showing how these languages are bound by a kind of marriage, with Yiddish in the feminine role. Sokoloff, et al. 1992 presents a range of scholarship on the gendering of texts in both languages. A growing body of scholarship addresses gender and literary production across Jewish literatures. Baskin 1994 offers an overview of the field of Jewish women’s writings. Two special issues of scholarly journals offer gendered readings of Jewish texts: Brettler and Hoffman 2000 and Zierler 2008, a double issue of the Jewish feminist journal Nashim. Other works represented here are Fuchs 1987, a groundbreaking feminist reading of modern Hebrew literature; Scheindlin 1999, a sophisticated reading for women in medieval Hebrew poetry; and Hahn 2005, a retelling of the story of modernity in German letters through the work of German Jewish women.
  1645.  
  1646. Baskin, Judith, ed. Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.
  1647.  
  1648. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1649.  
  1650. Responding to a variety of Jewish women’s writing in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and Spanish, this collection surveys the achievements of Jewish women writers from the Middle Ages to the date of publication. It includes essays by leading Jewish feminist literary scholars working across languages and time periods, including Sara Horowitz, Laura Wexler, Janet Bernstein, Yael Feldman, and Kathryn Hellerstein.
  1651.  
  1652. Find this resource:
  1653.  
  1654. Brettler, Marc, and Ann G. Hoffman, eds. Special Issue: Reading through the Lens of Gender. Prooftexts 20.1–2 (Winter–Spring 2000).
  1655.  
  1656. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1657.  
  1658. Double issue of the leading journal of Jewish literature offers essays by some of the most important scholars in the field, each demonstrating how gender matters in a broad range of Jewish texts. Contributors include Anita Norich, Wendy Zierler, Tova Rosen, Sara Horowitz, and Yael Feldman, among many others.
  1659.  
  1660. Find this resource:
  1661.  
  1662. Fuchs, Esther. Israeli Mythogynies: Women in Contemporary Hebrew Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.
  1663.  
  1664. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1665.  
  1666. This is one of the earliest critical feminist readings of the contemporary Hebrew literary canon. Fuchs offers a sharp critique of these fictional works, showing their profoundly masculinist vision of Hebrew letters.
  1667.  
  1668. Find this resource:
  1669.  
  1670. Hahn, Barbara. The Jewess Pallas Athena: This Too a Theory of Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
  1671.  
  1672. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1673.  
  1674. This eloquent book offers a rereading of German Jewish letters through the legacy of Jewish women writers. Through a series of close readings of intellectual intimacies, Hahn presents an alternative genealogy that moves between Rahel Varnhagen, Rosa Luxenburg, Hannah Arendt, Else Lasker-Schueler, and Margete Susman, among others. Time wise, the legacy extends from the salonnières and ends after the Holocaust.
  1675.  
  1676. Find this resource:
  1677.  
  1678. Scheindlin, Raymond P. Wine, Women and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  1679.  
  1680. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1681.  
  1682. This study of medieval Hebrew poetry from Spain places the work of Jewish poets from the period in the broader context of Arab-Islamic letters. Scheindlin translates these works into English, and offers sophisticated readings of the tropes of women, wine, and the good life.
  1683.  
  1684. Find this resource:
  1685.  
  1686. Seidman, Naomi. A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  1687.  
  1688. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1689.  
  1690. This powerful study offers a brilliant gendered reading of the relationship between Hebrew and Yiddish literature. Through the trope of marriage, Seidman presents the asymmetrical relationship between Hebrew and Yiddish letters and, in so doing, challenges readers to reconsider these dynamics and look more fully at the interrelationship between these modern Jewish literatures.
  1691.  
  1692. Find this resource:
  1693.  
  1694. Sokoloff, Naomi, Anne Lapidus Lerner, and Anita Norich, eds. Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992.
  1695.  
  1696. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1697.  
  1698. This early collection addresses both the works of women writers and the representations of women in writing by men in Hebrew and Yiddish literature. Among the writers discussed are Esther Raab, Yocheved Bat Miriam, Celia Dropkin, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, A. B. Yehoshua, and Ahron Appelfeld. Three women novelists also write about their own craft, and contributors provide extensive annotated bibliographies.
  1699.  
  1700. Find this resource:
  1701.  
  1702. Zierler, Wendy, ed. Special Issue: Women and Books. Nashim 15–16 (2008).
  1703.  
  1704. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1705.  
  1706. Nashim devoted two issues to the most sophisticated scholarship to date on the various dimensions of the relationship between Jewish women and books, deftly edited by Zierler with contributions that range from contemporary literary works to classic Jewish texts.
  1707.  
  1708. Find this resource:
  1709.  
  1710. History
  1711. The field of history has produced several decades of distinguished scholarship on Jewish women and gender, much of this accomplished by the subfield of women’s history, and has addressed contemporary women’s history in European and North American Jewish communities. Increasingly this focus has expanded to include women’s history in Jewish communities across the globe, including Mizrahi and Sephardic ones described in Ben-Ur 2009, Shohat 2008, and Stein 2008 (all cited under Mizrahi and Sephardi).
  1712.  
  1713. General Jewish Women’s History
  1714. Scholarship on women’s history, generally speaking, starts by adding women’s histories into the usual narratives. Using new information about women’s history, it can then proceed to take this new knowledge about women’s history and analytically reimagine the metanarratives of the discipline. Gender and Assimilation (see Hyman 1995) is a significant example of this second, more powerful move. It is a critical, historically based theoretical intervention into the field of Jewish history that reconceptualizes the centrality of gender in the history of Jewish emancipation and the entry into the dominant cultures of the West. These dual moves are echoed in and across the various subfields of this important site of Jewish feminist scholarship. A more general work is Baskin 1991, a volume of chronological essays, and Shepherd 1993, a more popular account of radical Jewish women. Frankel 2000 addresses the challenges that feminist scholarship poses to the understanding of gender and power in Jewish communities, and the broader impact of feminist work on the field of Jewish studies. The collection in Prell 2007 focuses on the American context; Kaplan and Dash Moore 2010 pays special tribute to the work of Paula Hyman. This rich second-wave-and-beyond feminist scholarship in Jewish history replaces much earlier efforts to address the general legacy of the Jewish woman, including Remy 1895 and Weiss-Rosmarin 1940.
  1715.  
  1716. Baskin, Judith, ed. Jewish Women in Historical Perspective. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.
  1717.  
  1718. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1719.  
  1720. In chapters about different time periods, scholars address big-picture questions about women’s status in Jewish communities across history. Asks how much opportunity women had at different times to be part of the male-oriented and male-dominated intellectual and public life of Jewishness, and about women’s opportunities in the broader secular or non-Jewish society.
  1721.  
  1722. Find this resource:
  1723.  
  1724. Frankel, Jonathan, ed. Jews and Gender: The Challenge to Hierarchy. Studies in Contemporary Jewry 16. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  1725.  
  1726. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1727.  
  1728. Twelve essays, from across the Jewish studies disciplines, address the controversial application of gender and feminist perspectives in their fields. Includes essays by Tamar Ross, Paula Hyman, Hasia Diner, Marion Kaplan, Daniel Boyarin, Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Jody Myers, Hillel Kieval, Naomi Seidman, Eyal Ben-Ari and Edna Levy-Schreiber, Susan Sered and Sergio dellaPergola (on sociodemographics), Jonathan Judaken, and Elisheva Baumgarten. Also includes review essays (in particular, see Heschel on gender and Holocaust scholarship). Published in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
  1729.  
  1730. Find this resource:
  1731.  
  1732. Hyman, Paula. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.
  1733.  
  1734. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1735.  
  1736. Hyman complicates the usual analyses of Jewish assimilation, which assumed that all Jews were men. Looks at assimilation and women in the United States and Europe, 1850–1950, and asks how gender can change what we know and what we can assert about the classic narratives of Jewish assimilation. Assimilation, the “feminization” of Jewish men, and differing class locations became points of tension.
  1737.  
  1738. Find this resource:
  1739.  
  1740. Kaplan, Marion, and Deborah Dash Moore, eds. Gender and Jewish History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
  1741.  
  1742. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1743.  
  1744. Twenty-two essays on modern Jewish history, culture, politics, and the gendered dimensions of religious change.
  1745.  
  1746. Find this resource:
  1747.  
  1748. Prell, Riv-Ellen, ed. Women Remaking American Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007.
  1749.  
  1750. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1751.  
  1752. Overview of recent Jewish feminist religious change. The introduction by Riv-Ellen Prell argues for the radical change brought by American Jewish feminism, and also its accommodation to liberalism. Significant essays focus on religious change within the denominations as well as more generally, including an essay on the first generation of women rabbis, rosh hodesh ceremonies, and women’s adult bat mitzvahs.
  1753.  
  1754. Find this resource:
  1755.  
  1756. Remy, Nahida. The Jewish Woman. Cincinnati: C. J. Krehbiel, 1895.
  1757.  
  1758. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1759.  
  1760. Early, first-wave feminist text, translated from the original German, Juedische Weib into American English. The translator, Louise Mannheimer, connected the work of Jewish women’s history to the activist work of the National Council of Jewish Women, each sharing “a spirit of renaissance.”
  1761.  
  1762. Find this resource:
  1763.  
  1764. Shepherd, Naomi. A Price below Rubies: Jewish Women as Rebels and Radicals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
  1765.  
  1766. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1767.  
  1768. Solid introduction to the many Jewish women radicals, 1870s to 1930s, including biographies of Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, Bertha Pappenheim, and four others.
  1769.  
  1770. Find this resource:
  1771.  
  1772. Weiss-Rosmarin, Trude. Jewish Women through the Ages. New York: Jewish Book Club, 1940.
  1773.  
  1774. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1775.  
  1776. Weiss-Rosmarin established the School of the Jewish Woman on New York’s Upper West Side in 1933, after she was unable to find a professorial job, despite her PhD in Assyriology. A Jewish intellectual who edited the Jewish Spectator, her book signals the presence of Jewish women’s consciousness and history in a period that most scholars assumed was devoid of such activity.
  1777.  
  1778. Find this resource:
  1779.  
  1780. Women’s Movements in Europe and United States
  1781. Historical scholarship on European and American Jewish women includes significant histories of the involvement of Jewish women in broader women’s movements: for those in Germany, see Kaplan 1979; for those in the United States, see Klapper 2013; and for those in both the United States and Britain, see Kuzmack 1990.
  1782.  
  1783. Kaplan, Marion. The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany: The Campaigns of the Judischer Fraunbund, 1904–1938. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979.
  1784.  
  1785. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1786.  
  1787. This study offers a comprehensive account of Jewish feminist activism in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century and before the Holocaust. It is a rich account of the breadth and range of this key feminist organization, its leaders, and its work.
  1788.  
  1789. Find this resource:
  1790.  
  1791. Klapper, Melissa. Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890–1940. New York: New York University Press, 2013.
  1792.  
  1793. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1794.  
  1795. A study of the impact of Jewish women in the American movements for birth control, suffrage, and peace. Important research that goes beyond individual biography to consider Jewish women’s activism in context. Based on primary sources and archival research.
  1796.  
  1797. Find this resource:
  1798.  
  1799. Kuzmack, Linda G. Women’s Cause: The Jewish Woman’s Movement in England and the United States, 1881–1933. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990.
  1800.  
  1801. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1802.  
  1803. Comparison of Jewish women’s feminist activism in England and in the United States; combines Jewish women’s fights within Judaism and around broader public issues, like the right to vote and equal pay. English Jewish activism was largely limited to upper-class Jewish women, whereas in the United States, Jewish women’s activism included middle-class women, working-class women, and trade unionists. Based on archival research.
  1804.  
  1805. Find this resource:
  1806.  
  1807. American Jewish History
  1808. The story of Jews in the United States has been a robust site for a great deal of Jewish feminist scholarship. Not only have some of the most senior and important Jewish historians turned their attention to these matters in sustained individual book projects, this has also been an area for a great deal of important collaborative work, from the very earliest writing on women in Jewish studies, such as Baum, Hyman, and Michel’s work, The Jewish Woman in America (Baum, et al. 1976, cited under Encyclopedic, Overviews, Immigration), to Hyman and Dash Moore’s award-winning 1997 encyclopedia, Jewish Women in America (Hyman and Dash Moore 1997, cited under Encyclopedic, Overviews, Immigration). Topics have included key historical figures and social movements as well as a broad range of religious transformations, from mixed seating to the entry of women into the American rabbinate.
  1809.  
  1810. Encyclopedic, Overviews, Immigration
  1811. Scholarship on American Jewish women is now anchored by the two-volume encyclopedia Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (see Hyman and Dash Moore 1997). This work replaced Marcus 1981, the overview The American Jewish Woman. Other early efforts included Baum, et al. 1976 and Stahl Weinberg 1988, a groundbreaking history of Eastern European Jewish women. This book was the critical response to Irving Howe’s very popular World of our Fathers (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). These works often looked to the mass migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States and at the specific legacy of these immigrant women. Ongoing scholarship on these immigrant women include Glenn 1991 on labor and Goldstein 2007 on Jewish women who were abandoned by their husbands. Nadell 2003 is an excellent sourcebook that includes essays from the colonial period to the early 21st century. Nadell and Sarna 2001 collects essays from a conference that specifically addressed the transformation of Judaism and its practice in the United States.
  1812.  
  1813. Baum, Charlotte, Paula Hyman, and Sonya Michel, eds. The Jewish Woman in America. New York: Dial, 1976.
  1814.  
  1815. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1816.  
  1817. A very early (note the 1976 publication date) collection of primary sources for Jewish women’s history in the United States. Useful to see the state of the field in 1976, as compared to Hyman and Dash Moore 1997.
  1818.  
  1819. Find this resource:
  1820.  
  1821. Glenn, Susan. Daughters of the Shtel: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation. Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1991.
  1822.  
  1823. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1824.  
  1825. A study of the lives of Eastern European Jewish women from 1880 to 1925 as they made their new lives in the United States, told with a focus on work and labor.
  1826.  
  1827. Find this resource:
  1828.  
  1829. Goldstein, Bluma. Enforced Marginality: Jewish Narratives on Abandoned Wives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
  1830.  
  1831. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1832.  
  1833. A study of the lives of Eastern European Jewish women who were abandoned by their husbands in America. A scholar of German and Jewish literature at Berkeley, CA, Goldstein uses Yiddish newspaper ads and other primary sources to construct this history.
  1834.  
  1835. Find this resource:
  1836.  
  1837. Hyman, Paula, and Deborah Dash Moore, eds. Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  1838.  
  1839. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1840.  
  1841. From two foremost historians, a two-volume compendium with eight hundred entries for Jewish women’s lives from 1654 to the date of publication, and over one hundred essays about themes, trends, historical events, politics, institutions, and more, as well as Jewish women’s contributions to American history and to Jewish history. Important research tool; contains full index, annotated bibliography, and notes on archival resources.
  1842.  
  1843. Find this resource:
  1844.  
  1845. Marcus, Jacob Rader. The American Jewish Woman, 1654–1980. New York: Ktav, 1981.
  1846.  
  1847. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1848.  
  1849. This is an early compendium by the preeminent American Jewish Historian Jacob Rader Marcus that presents and explores a full range of primary sources, many of which come from the American Jewish Archive he founded in Cincinnati.
  1850.  
  1851. Find this resource:
  1852.  
  1853. Nadell, Pamela, ed. American Jewish Women’s History: A Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
  1854.  
  1855. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1856.  
  1857. This well-organized anthology covers the colonial period to the early 21st century, with a broad focus on women’s shaping roles in Jewish community and identity, and in political and educational movements.
  1858.  
  1859. Find this resource:
  1860.  
  1861. Nadell, Pamela, and Jonathan Sarna, eds. Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2001.
  1862.  
  1863. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1864.  
  1865. This anthology emerged out of, Consultation of the Religious Lives of American Jewish Women, sponsored by the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History in Philadelphia, Spring 1998. It covers American Jewish women’s history since the 1700s with a specific focus on Jewish religion, on women in synagogues, and religious life both at home and as volunteers in the public sphere, and on how this changed the concept of Jewish womanhood.
  1866.  
  1867. Find this resource:
  1868.  
  1869. Stahl Weinberg, Sydney. The World of Our Mothers: The Lives of Jewish Immigrant Women. New York: Schocken, 1988.
  1870.  
  1871. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1872.  
  1873. This feminist response to Irving Howe’s popular book World of Our Fathers fills in the contours of that story by offering an account of the lives of immigrant Jewish women. It is an early second-wave feminist attempt to address the role of women in the history of Eastern European immigrant life in America.
  1874.  
  1875. Find this resource:
  1876.  
  1877. American Jewish Histories
  1878. American Jewish history is strongly represented in Jewish feminist studies because of its central place in the creation of our knowledge of Jewish women’s history. Goldman 2000 studies 19th-century American synagogue architecture to demonstrate the growing role of Jewish women in American synagogues. Prell 1999 examines the politics of assimilation and makes clear the gender trouble at the heart of Eastern European immigrant culture. The collection in Diner, et al. 2010 offers new insight into postwar American Jewish culture and the shifting role of Jewish women in the 1950s. Diner and Benderly 2002 and Klapper 2005 use diaries and memoirs to shed new light on the lives of American Jewish girls and women. McGinity 2009 is a study of contemporary American Jewish women and intermarriage, and Rogow 1993 was the first major examination of the National Council of Jewish Women.
  1879.  
  1880. Diner, Hasia, and Beryl Benderly. Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Basic, 2002.
  1881.  
  1882. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1883.  
  1884. Jewish communities and Jewish women have had a long history in America, long predating the popular “arrived at Ellis Island” narrative. The focus here is on mutual transformation: how America changed Jewish women, and how Jewish women changed America.
  1885.  
  1886. Find this resource:
  1887.  
  1888. Diner, Hasia, Shira Kohn, and Rachel Kranson, eds. A Jewish Feminine Mystique: Jewish Women in Postwar America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
  1889.  
  1890. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1891.  
  1892. In the era of “the feminine mystique,” how did Jewish women fare? These essays show the many ways that Jewish women defied the feminine mystique and the ways they led public lives of influence during a period in which middle-class women were said to be at home. Wide-ranging essays that contextualize Jewish women’s experiences against the possibilities of the era. Includes essays on Jewish women comedians, social activists, immigrant women, and many others.
  1893.  
  1894. Find this resource:
  1895.  
  1896. Goldman, Karla. Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
  1897.  
  1898. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1899.  
  1900. Classic study of the 19th-century synagogue and its architecture, to demonstrate the growing role of Jewish women in American synagogues. This careful archival study challenges Eurocentric studies of religious reform to show how gender inclusion happened differently in North America.
  1901.  
  1902. Find this resource:
  1903.  
  1904. Klapper, Melissa. Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860–1920. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
  1905.  
  1906. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1907.  
  1908. Uses archival materials, including letters and diaries, to investigate Jewish girls’ adolescences against the backdrop of immigration and acculturation during the period 1860–1920.
  1909.  
  1910. Find this resource:
  1911.  
  1912. McGinity, Keren. Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
  1913.  
  1914. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1915.  
  1916. Provides historical context and analysis for women’s decisions to intermarry, using interviews and a multigenerational approach that shows differences in the consequences of intermarriage, for women and their children, over the stretch of the 20th century.
  1917.  
  1918. Find this resource:
  1919.  
  1920. Prell, Riv-Ellen. Fighting to Become Americans: Assimilation and the Trouble between Jewish Women and Jewish Men. Boston: Beacon, 1999.
  1921.  
  1922. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1923.  
  1924. Critically important volume of Prell’s essays, from the early 20th century Jewish “Ghetto Girls” to the “JAP,” to ask how gender was entangled with various projects of assimilation throughout the 20th century, and how gender and assimilation together are entangled with anti-Semitic stereotypes.
  1925.  
  1926. Find this resource:
  1927.  
  1928. Rogow, Faith. Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893–1993. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.
  1929.  
  1930. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1931.  
  1932. Full history of the National Council of Jewish Women, and an important model for researching the history of this and similar women’s institutions.
  1933.  
  1934. Find this resource:
  1935.  
  1936. Material Culture and American Jewish Women
  1937. These works include Jenna W. Joselit’s groundbreaking scholarship on American Jews and material culture and the author’s collaborative curatorial work, The Wonders of America (see Joselit 1994), which specifically attends to gender and the role of Jewish women. Her early curatorial efforts focus on food and the home (Joselit and Braunstein 1990) and on Jews and clothing (Joselit 2002). All of these works reveal the importance of quotidian objects in shaping American Jewish life. This work is complemented by museum exhibition catalogues that address the lives of Jewish women regionally: Schloff 1996 on the Upper Midwest and Schreier 1994, a catalogue on a show on immigrant Jewish women and clothing. In a different way, Nadell 1999, a history of women in the rabbinate, enables readers to envision the ways that women embody Judaism in the United States.
  1938.  
  1939. Joselit, Jenna W. The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880–1950. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.
  1940.  
  1941. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1942.  
  1943. A social history of daily life that focuses on the material culture of Jews. Argues for the ingenious ways that Jews adapted to American culture and created American Jewishness. Takes topics like over-the-top bar mitzvahs and weddings, Chanukah bushes, and chocolate-covered matzahs as worthy of academic focus, and as crucial pieces for understanding Jewish materiality.
  1944.  
  1945. Find this resource:
  1946.  
  1947. Joselit, Jenna W. A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America. New York: Holt, 2002.
  1948.  
  1949. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1950.  
  1951. Uses material culture to offer perspectives on Jewish culture, with the twist of looking at the clothes that Jews wore.
  1952.  
  1953. Find this resource:
  1954.  
  1955. Joselit, Jenna W., and Susan L. Braunstein. Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home, 1880–1950. New York: Jewish Museum, 1990.
  1956.  
  1957. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1958.  
  1959. This catalogue from the Jewish Museum exhibit explores everyday life and Jewish domesticity from the beginning of the great migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States up through the end of the Second World War. It includes important essays by the editors and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
  1960.  
  1961. Find this resource:
  1962.  
  1963. Nadell, Pamela. Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889–1985. Boston: Beacon, 1999.
  1964.  
  1965. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1966.  
  1967. Researches the movement around women’s desires for equal ordination to the rabbinate, showing that the vision and demand began much earlier than expected, far before second-wave feminism.
  1968.  
  1969. Find this resource:
  1970.  
  1971. Schloff, Linda Mack. “And Prairie Dogs Weren’t Kosher”: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest since 1855. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1996.
  1972.  
  1973. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1974.  
  1975. Uses the voices of four generations of Jewish women who settled in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, and Wisconsin to show how they transported and transformed their cultural and religious lives in this region, a place with few Jews. This book accompanied an exhibit produced by the Minnesota Historical Society.
  1976.  
  1977. Find this resource:
  1978.  
  1979. Schreier, Barbara A. Becoming American Women: Clothing and the Jewish Immigrant Experience, 1880–1920. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1994.
  1980.  
  1981. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1982.  
  1983. A social history that emphasizes the primacy of clothing in immigrant assimilation. This is an exhibition catalogue of a show on this topic that was first mounted at the Chicago Historical Society.
  1984.  
  1985. Find this resource:
  1986.  
  1987. Selected European Jewish History
  1988. These works primarily focus on the case of German Jewish women’s histories: Kaplan 1991, an important work on German Jewish women becoming middle class; various works on Jewish women and salon culture, including Bilski and Braun 2005 and Hertz 1988; and Freidenreich 2002, a study of educated German-speaking Jewish women. Parush 2004 offers a compelling account of the role of literacy in the secular education of Eastern European Jewish women. Las 1996 provides the history of the International Council of Jewish Women (ICJW). Sheridan 1998 covers women in the British rabbinate. Marks 1994 discusses immigrant Jewish mothers in East London.
  1989.  
  1990. Bilski, Emily, and Emily Braun. Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation. New York: Jewish Museum, 2005.
  1991.  
  1992. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1993.  
  1994. Jewish women’s salons, from 1780 Berlin to 1930s California, were spaces of intellectual engagement and social change. From the Jewish Museum exhibit.
  1995.  
  1996. Find this resource:
  1997.  
  1998. Freidenreich, Harriet. Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
  1999.  
  2000. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2001.  
  2002. A study of 460 middle-class Jewish women in pre–Nazi Germany and Austria, all of whom attended university and became lawyers, physicians, and academics. When first published, this was a surprise to those who thought Jewish families did not educate Jewish women this early, and shifted the understanding around Jewish families and secular education for girls.
  2003.  
  2004. Find this resource:
  2005.  
  2006. Hertz, Deborah. Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
  2007.  
  2008. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2009.  
  2010. The first full-length discussion of the role of Jewish women as salonnières in Berlin, 1780 to 1806, including Rahel Varnhagen and Henriette Herz. The focus is on how their salons created new institutions that allowed for social mixing.
  2011.  
  2012. Find this resource:
  2013.  
  2014. Kaplan, Marion. The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  2015.  
  2016. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2017.  
  2018. The middle-class Jewish family in Germany and the role that women played in creating it, while in the process both acculturating and sustaining Jewish traditions.
  2019.  
  2020. Find this resource:
  2021.  
  2022. Las, Nelly. Jewish Women in a Changing World: A History of the International Council of Jewish Women (ICJW), 1899–1995. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996.
  2023.  
  2024. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2025.  
  2026. The ICJW organized Jewish women from over forty nations. This book is a discussion of Jewish women’s organizing across national borders, and as such, the movement toward the connection and internationalization of Jewish women as Jewish women, something that had not existed before.
  2027.  
  2028. Find this resource:
  2029.  
  2030. Marks, Lara. Model Mothers: Jewish Mothers and Maternity Provision in East London, 1870–1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
  2031.  
  2032. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2033.  
  2034. In the late 1800s, London authorities were concerned about infant mortality and the working class. They turned to Jewish mothers as “model mothers” to encourage better practices among other ethnic groups. This critical study shows the challenges these supposedly model mothers had to face, including their own extreme poverty, new immigration, and lack of familiarity with the society around them.
  2035.  
  2036. Find this resource:
  2037.  
  2038. Parush, Iris. Reading Jewish Women: Marginality in Nineteenth Century Eastern European Jewish Society. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004.
  2039.  
  2040. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2041.  
  2042. When women were excluded from rabbinic learning, they turned to secular literature and became channels for the entry of Enlightenment ideals into the Jewish community. This book challenges the assumption that eastern Jewish women were culturally limited. Many read widely in Polish, Yiddish, German, and Russian.
  2043.  
  2044. Find this resource:
  2045.  
  2046. Sheridan, Sybil. Hear Our Voice: Women in the British Rabbinate. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.
  2047.  
  2048. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2049.  
  2050. Regina Jonas was the first woman rabbi to be ordained in Britain (1935). This book is a history of the decades since then, by contemporary British women rabbis, where by 1994, only nineteen women had been ordained in the Liberal and Reform movements. Introduction by Rebecca Alpert.
  2051.  
  2052. Find this resource:
  2053.  
  2054. Medieval and Early Modern
  2055. Research on medieval and Early Modern Jewish life, primarily in Europe, includes Baumgarten 2007 on mothers and children, and broader accounts such as the groundbreaking study in Zemon Davis 1997 of 17th-century women’s lives. Biddick 2003 offers a theoretically sophisticated rereading of the trope of circumcision in medieval Christian discourse. Works of medieval Jewish history that pay at least minor attention to gender include Siegmund 2006 on Florence and Dubin 1999 on the Jewish community of Trieste. Barkai 1998 looks at the history of gynecological Jewish texts. Grossman 2004 is an overview of Jewish women in medieval Europe, while Lamdan 2000 addresses Jewish women in 16th-century Palestine, Syria, and Egypt.
  2056.  
  2057. Barkai, Ron. A History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic, 1998.
  2058.  
  2059. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2060.  
  2061. A study of medieval medicine, with significant inclusion of texts around gynecology and Jewish women’s medicine. Focus is on fifteen medieval Jewish gynecological texts.
  2062.  
  2063. Find this resource:
  2064.  
  2065. Baumgarten, Elisheva. Mothers and Children: Jewish Life in Medieval Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
  2066.  
  2067. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2068.  
  2069. Family is the basis of community in medieval Jewish life; this text presents new arguments about the roles of mothers and children. Draws on primary sources with attention to a comparative history of Jewish and Christian communities.
  2070.  
  2071. Find this resource:
  2072.  
  2073. Biddick, Kathleen. The Typological Imaginary: Circumcision, Technology, History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
  2074.  
  2075. DOI: 10.9783/9780812201277Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2076.  
  2077. Theoretically sophisticated study of the way that Jews were cut off from Christians in medieval Europe through the Christian translation of circumcision, the supersession of Old Testament by New Testament, and the separating of Jews and Christians in contemporary academic study.
  2078.  
  2079. Find this resource:
  2080.  
  2081. Dubin, Lois. The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
  2082.  
  2083. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2084.  
  2085. Integration into modern Europe, with a focus on the Habsburg monarchy. The Trieste port saw trade from Italy, the East, and Central Europe. Mercantilism, diversity, Habsburgian enlightened absolutism, and the specificity of Italian Jewish traditions provide a different look at Jewish acculturation, one at odds with the usual narratives of Jews in Paris and Berlin.
  2086.  
  2087. Find this resource:
  2088.  
  2089. Grossman, Avraham. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004.
  2090.  
  2091. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2092.  
  2093. A study of Jewish women in Europe between 1000 and 1300, the High Middle Ages. Argues that women’s status was improving, bolstered by the rabbinic complaint that they were becoming “rebellious.” Women engaged in commercial projects, and had more connection to Christian Europe. Ends with discussion of attempts to limit women’s new status.
  2094.  
  2095. Find this resource:
  2096.  
  2097. Lamdan, Ruth. A Separate People: Jewish Women in Palestine, Syria and Egypt in the Sixteenth Century. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic, 2000.
  2098.  
  2099. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2100.  
  2101. How Jewish women fared in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt under the Ottoman Empire, Early Modern period.
  2102.  
  2103. Find this resource:
  2104.  
  2105. Siegmund, Stefanie. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
  2106.  
  2107. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2108.  
  2109. Social history of the Florence Jewish ghetto, with some attention to women.
  2110.  
  2111. Find this resource:
  2112.  
  2113. Zemon Davis, Natalie. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
  2114.  
  2115. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2116.  
  2117. A study of three ordinary Early Modern women, including Glikl bas Judah Leib, a Hamburg Jewish woman merchant otherwise known from her diaries as Glickl (or Gluckl) of Hameln.
  2118.  
  2119. Find this resource:
  2120.  
  2121. Memoirs and Biographies
  2122. First-person writings and biographies make up some of the earliest and most important historical sources that scholars have at their disposal for understanding the everyday lives of Jewish women. These sources constitute an important subfield of Jewish feminist historical scholarship. Scholars continue to find new texts and produce critical editions of the sources that are already available. To date, these sources include European, North American, and Israeli and Zionist sources. The growing work in Mizrahi and Sephardi studies are promising, as is Silliman’s collection of narratives by Jewish women from India.
  2123.  
  2124. European
  2125. An early but important genre within the history of Jewish women was the translation and republishing of memoirs, autobiographical texts, and classic biographies about historical Jewish women. These include Hannah Arendt’s account of the salonnière Rahel Varnhagen, edited into a critical edition in Weissberg 1997. This is a powerful account of both the life of the salonnière and of her biographer, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt who wrote this book just as the Nazis came to power; included as well is the German Jewish feminist Bertha Pappenheim and her book on Gluckel of Hameln (Pappenheim 1910). Also significant are Rakovsky 2002, the memoirs of a Zionist feminist, and Wengeroff 2010, the first volume of Wengeroff’s life as a Jewish woman in 19th-century Russia. Umansky 1983 offers readers an account of Lilly Montagu, the powerful female leader of the liberal Jewish community in England.
  2126.  
  2127. Pappenheim, Bertha. Die Memoiren der Glückel von Hameln (aus dem judish-Deutschen von Bertha Pappenheim). Vienna: Stefan Meyer and Wilhelm Pappenheim, 1910.
  2128.  
  2129. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2130.  
  2131. An example of early Jewish feminist scholarship, this 1910 translation by German Jewish feminist Bertha Pappenheim brought attention to Jewish businesswoman Gluckel of Hameln, who in 1690 began this journal of her business and homelife with fourteen children. Gluckel’s memoris have become a key source for the history of women in the seventeenth century, and is available in English translation.
  2132.  
  2133. Find this resource:
  2134.  
  2135. Rakovsky, Puah. My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
  2136.  
  2137. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2138.  
  2139. This memoir presents the experiences of a Polish Jewish woman (1865–1955). It describes her break with tradition to become a professional educator, Zionist activist, and feminist leader, and offers insights into the life experience of East European Jewry in this period of social change. Published originally in Yiddish (1954), this annotated translation has a historical introduction by Paula Hyman.
  2140.  
  2141. Find this resource:
  2142.  
  2143. Umansky, Ellen. Lily Montagu and the Advancement of Liberal Judaism: From Vision to Vocation. New York: Edwin Mellen, 1983.
  2144.  
  2145. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2146.  
  2147. British Jewish woman Lily Montagu was the founder of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and the British movement Liberal Judaism. First study of her achievements and historical context.
  2148.  
  2149. Find this resource:
  2150.  
  2151. Weissberg, Liliane, ed. Rahel Varhagen: The Life of a Jewess. By Hannah Arendt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
  2152.  
  2153. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2154.  
  2155. Critical edition of the salonnière Rahel Varnhagen, with attention also to her biographer, Hannah Arendt. This is the most important scholarly account of this work by Arendt.
  2156.  
  2157. Find this resource:
  2158.  
  2159. Wengeroff, Pauline. Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century. Vol. 1. Translated by Shulamit Magnus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
  2160.  
  2161. DOI: 10.11126/stanford/9780804768795.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2162.  
  2163. It was rare for a 19th-century Jewish woman to write and publish a memoir. Wengeroff did just that. This is a critical edition that shows the history and culture of Russian Jews and the Enlightenment, to frame Wengeroff’s work.
  2164.  
  2165. Find this resource:
  2166.  
  2167. American
  2168. Efforts to tell the biographical stories of American Jewish women include Ashton 1997, a biography of Rebecca Gratz; Calof 1995, the publication of the memoir of homesteader Rachel Calof; and Lerner 2002, the autobiography of feminist historian Gerda Lerner. The memoir Pogrebin 1991 tells a compelling story of how the author’s second-wave feminist activism led her back to Judaism. In addition to these works, the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) has built a strong collection of archival materials on the lives of numerous American Jewish women and has collaborated with Barnard College on a special issue of The Scholar & Feminist that is devoted to cross-generational conversations among contemporary Jewish feminists in the United States, Jewish Women Changing America.
  2169.  
  2170. Ashton, Dianne. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997.
  2171.  
  2172. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2173.  
  2174. A long-awaited biography of Rebecca Gratz, the Philadelphia Jewish philanthropist and founder of new Jewish institutions like the first American Jewish foster home society, Jewish women’s charitable society, and the first Jewish Sunday school, thereby creating parallel Jewish versions of the Protestant establishment institutions.
  2175.  
  2176. Find this resource:
  2177.  
  2178. Calof, Rachel. Rachel Calof’s Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains. Edited by James Sanford Rikoon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
  2179.  
  2180. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2181.  
  2182. In the late 19th century, Rachel Calof left Russia for the United States, and then traveled to North Dakota to meet her arranged-marriage husband, Abraham Calof. This volume combines her memoir of prairie life, which she wrote in 1936, with essays that provide historical and cultural context for her migrations, immigrations, and travels, and for the way she wrote about her experiences.
  2183.  
  2184. Find this resource:
  2185.  
  2186. Jakobsen, Janet, ed. Special Issue: Jewish Women Changing America; Cross-Generational Conversations. Scholar & Feminist 5.1 (Fall 2006).
  2187.  
  2188. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2189.  
  2190. This special issue of the online publication The Scholar & Feminist offers a critical overview of North American Jewish feminist activism, writing, and cultural production c. 2006. The special issue emerged from a four-panel conference at Barnard that was devoted to cross-generational critical engagement with Judaism. Includes transcripts, video clips, and slideshow, including one from the Jewish Women’s Archive, “Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.”
  2191.  
  2192. Find this resource:
  2193.  
  2194. Jewish Women’s Archive.
  2195.  
  2196. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2197.  
  2198. JWA is the central online collection of archival materials, photographs, letters, and videos to create storytelling about Jewish women, in North America and beyond. Founded in 1995, JWA has an encyclopedia of Jewish women, online exhibits, and other research and educational materials. Key resource, with a mandate for including Jewish women in the narratives of Jewish history.
  2199.  
  2200. Find this resource:
  2201.  
  2202. Lerner, Gerda. Fireweed: A Political Autobiography. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
  2203.  
  2204. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2205.  
  2206. Lerner is the guiding force behind women’s history as it developed in the 1970s; she is the author of books like The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Her memoir places her life as a feminist intellectual into Jewish contexts: her Viennese Jewish family, living in Europe during the early fascist years, her immigration to the United States, and her secularly Jewish-inflected life as an activist and scholar.
  2207.  
  2208. Find this resource:
  2209.  
  2210. Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America. New York: Crown, 1991.
  2211.  
  2212. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2213.  
  2214. Classic and widely read memoir by the Jewish women feminist activist and cofounder of Ms. Magazine. Pogrebin sees her specific family memories of household Jewish life as part and parcel—and thus, as fuel for critique and understanding—of American Jewish culture and religious culture, as well as its impact and possibilities.
  2215.  
  2216. Find this resource:
  2217.  
  2218. Israel and Zionism
  2219. A growing literature on the historical role of women in Zionism includes scholarship that looks at the writing of early pioneering women. This includes Bernstein 1992, and Raider and Raider-Roth 2002. Bernstein 1987 addresses the role of urban women workers in Palestine, before the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. The role of American Jewish women in Zionism is addressed in the anthology Reinharz and Raider 2004; and in Kalpana and Rich 2003, a discussion is presented of general feminist scholarship and activism in contemporary Israel.
  2220.  
  2221. Bernstein, Deborah. The Struggle for Equality: Urban Women Workers in Prestate Israeli Society. New York: Praeger, 1987.
  2222.  
  2223. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2224.  
  2225. Discussion of how and why women remained marginal in Israel’s state formation; in employment, due to the dominance of the construction trades; and in the law making of the Mandate and the World Zionist Organization, despite efforts to explain the problem and change it.
  2226.  
  2227. Find this resource:
  2228.  
  2229. Bernstein, Deborah, ed. Pioneers and Homemakers: First Wave Feminism in Pre-state Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
  2230.  
  2231. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2232.  
  2233. Essays address the role of urban women workers in Palestine, before 1948. Rectifies a more general absence of women in the histories presented of Zionism and Jews during this period. Argues that women were explicitly arguing for a feminist sense of their rights and opportunities in the Yishuv and in the imagined state.
  2234.  
  2235. Find this resource:
  2236.  
  2237. Kalpana, Misra, and Melanie Rich, eds. Jewish Feminism in Israel: Some Contemporary Perspectives. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2003.
  2238.  
  2239. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2240.  
  2241. Interdisciplinary essays on women, gender, and feminism in Israel, including domestic violence, Women in Black, women and religion in Israel, Mizrahi feminism, and new feminist art.
  2242.  
  2243. Find this resource:
  2244.  
  2245. Raider, Mark, and Miriam Raider-Roth, eds. The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine; A Critical Edition. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002.
  2246.  
  2247. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2248.  
  2249. The Plough Woman was a group memoir of young Zionist women in Palestine, in which they wrote about the kibbutz/communal living and other elements of the “egalitarian” societies they hoped to bring about. This is a critical edition of that 1932 text. Includes introductory essays that engage the tensions between the Zionist movement and radical feminists of the prestate period.
  2250.  
  2251. Find this resource:
  2252.  
  2253. Reinharz, Shulamit, and Mark Raider, eds. American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004.
  2254.  
  2255. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2256.  
  2257. Essays engage women’s roles in the American Zionist movement, a shift in the historiography that tended to exclude their roles. Attention to individuals like Henrietta Szold, Golda Meir, and Emma Lazarus, and organizations like Hadassah, Mizrachi Women’s Organization, and the Pioneer Women. Essays include personal accounts and testimony.
  2258.  
  2259. Find this resource:
  2260.  
  2261. Mizrahi and Sephardi
  2262. These works reflect attention to the legacies of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jewish communities. Shohat 2008 is at the center of the critical study of Mizrahi Jewish communities; it is informed by critical theory and raises questions about gender in this broader matrix. Stein 2008 is a history of Jews and global commerce that includes gender within that broader discussion, as does Ben-Ur 2009—a history of Sephardic Jewish life in the Americas. Finally, Silliman 2001 is a lyrical collection that gives voice to the stories of Jewish women from the Indian subcontinent. These works shift the focus from Europe and the United States toward a more global vision of Jewish history.
  2263.  
  2264. Ben-Ur, Aviva. Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
  2265.  
  2266. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2267.  
  2268. An important book that aims to rectify the Ashkenazi focus of Jewish history. Includes gender issues within a broader history of Sephardic Jewish Life in the Americas.
  2269.  
  2270. Find this resource:
  2271.  
  2272. Shohat, Ella. Taboo Memories: Diasporic Voices. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
  2273.  
  2274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2275.  
  2276. Postcolonial theorist Ella Shohat’s collection of essays that critically reconsiders feminist theory through the consequences of its Eurocentrism and engages multiple intersections.
  2277.  
  2278. Find this resource:
  2279.  
  2280. Silliman, Jael. Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women’s Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope. Hanover, NH, and London: Brandeis University Press, 2001.
  2281.  
  2282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2283.  
  2284. From the author of Shalom India Housing Society (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2009), a recounting of multiple generations of Jewish women in her family, which tells the history of the Jewish community of Calcutta through women’s stories. By a scholar who grew up in the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta.
  2285.  
  2286. Find this resource:
  2287.  
  2288. Stein, Sarah A. Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
  2289.  
  2290. DOI: 10.12987/yale/9780300127362.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2291.  
  2292. This fascinating and award-winning account uses the global trade in ostrich feathers to uncover a history of Jewish traders, from the 1800s until World War I. Illustrates the interactions among and between different Jewish communities, and the role of commerce, fashion, and gender in these relationships.
  2293.  
  2294. Find this resource:
  2295.  
  2296. Holocaust
  2297. Jewish feminist scholarship on the Holocaust falls into two categories: historical works, both single volumes and anthologies, and works on memory and literary studies. The category of Holocaust theology contains a single and important citation.
  2298.  
  2299. Theological
  2300. Raphael 2003 is the first Jewish feminist Holocaust theology that uses the legacies of the suffering of Jewish women in the camps as a way into a new theology.
  2301.  
  2302. Raphael, Melissa. The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust. London: Routledge, 2003.
  2303.  
  2304. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2305.  
  2306. This work by British feminist theologian Melissa Raphael takes as its focus Jewish women who suffered in death and work camps during the Holocaust and asks about the role of God in standing with these women in their suffering.
  2307.  
  2308. Find this resource:
  2309.  
  2310. History of Women during the Holocaust
  2311. Within the field of history, feminist scholarship has focused on the specific roles of gender and sexuality in the Holocaust; on women survivors, and an important work on women perpetrators, see Koonz 1987. Heineman 2003 treats the particular experiences of marriage; Hertzog 2008 and Tec 2003 focus on motherhood, children, and families as well as sexual violence against women during this time. The life histories of survivor women have been traced in Rosen 2008. Saidel 2006 and Buber Agassi 2014 look at the history of Ravenbruck, a women’s camp. This feminist focus on women’s experiences has been seen as controversial within the field of Holocaust studies, especially with the publication of Ringelheim 1985, a famous essay that demanded a reconsideration of the legacy of women in Holocaust scholarship. Traces of this controversy remain in the reception of this scholarship, where some scholars continue to worry about competing trauma, with fears that competition over who has suffered more could be seen as interrupting solidarity among survivors. Most of the feminist scholarship on the Holocaust has insisted that understanding how gender operated does not take away from the earlier narrative of the field, but that it adds an important element to it and deepens appreciation.
  2312.  
  2313. Buber Agassi, Judith. Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbruck. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2014.
  2314.  
  2315. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2316.  
  2317. Buber Agassi interviewed 138 survivors of Ravensbruck on four continents. Using these testimonies to corroborate her research from major archives in Germany, Israel, and the United States; transport and death registration lists; and records that were smuggled out of the camp before liberation, she constructs an image of the women of Ravensbruck: the only major concentration camp for women.
  2318.  
  2319. Find this resource:
  2320.  
  2321. Heineman, Elizabeth. What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
  2322.  
  2323. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2324.  
  2325. In this study of unwed, divorced, widowed, and married women at work and at home across three political regimes, Heineman traces the transitions from early National Socialism through the war, and on to the consolidation of democracy in the West and communism in the East. She shows the significance of marital status in these different German regimes.
  2326.  
  2327. Find this resource:
  2328.  
  2329. Hertzog, Esther. Life, Death, and Sacrifice: Women and Family in the Holocaust. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2008.
  2330.  
  2331. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2332.  
  2333. The book contains articles by prominent feminist scholars in the field of Holocaust studies who tell the stories of women who were humiliated, tortured, and murdered. The collection is based on three international conferences on women in the Holocaust, held in Israel at Beit Berl Academic College (Gender Issues in the Holocaust, 2005, The Family During the Holocaust, 2003), Beit Theresienstadt, and the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum (50th Anniversary Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, 2001).
  2334.  
  2335. Find this resource:
  2336.  
  2337. Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New York: Saint Martin’s, 1987.
  2338.  
  2339. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2340.  
  2341. This award-winning book opened the discourse of women’s history to address the legacy of Nazi women. It is an unflinching account and a detailed investigation into the historical and cultural roles played by German women in the Nazi regime and its leaders, as well as ordinary German women, mothers, daughters, and wives who participated from home.
  2342.  
  2343. Find this resource:
  2344.  
  2345. Ringelheim, Joan. “Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of the Research.” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10.4 (1985): 741–761.
  2346.  
  2347. DOI: 10.1086/494181Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2348.  
  2349. Ringelheim’s groundbreaking article was the first to fully address the issue of women in Holocaust studies. It was a powerful provocation and was both widely read and controversial. It insisted that the experience of women be addressed as such, and could not be simply incorporated into general studies of “the survivor.”
  2350.  
  2351. Find this resource:
  2352.  
  2353. Rosen, Ilana. Sister in Sorrow: Life Histories of Female Holocaust Survivors from Hungary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008.
  2354.  
  2355. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2356.  
  2357. Rosen addresses the world of Hungarian Holocaust survivors through the stories of fifteen survivors, as told by thirteen women and two spouses living in Hungary and Israel. Analyzing the accounts as oral narratives, Rosen, a scholar of folklore, explores the histories and the consciousness of the narrators as well as the difficulty for contemporary audiences to fully grasp these accounts.
  2358.  
  2359. Find this resource:
  2360.  
  2361. Saidel, Rochelle. The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
  2362.  
  2363. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2364.  
  2365. This study builds on over sixty narratives and interviews of women who survived this camp—now living in the United States, Israel, and Europe—as well as unpublished testimonies, documents, and photographs. Saidel provides a collective portrait of these women’s experiences, including new perspectives and information about satellite camps (there were about seventy slave labor subcamps).
  2366.  
  2367. Find this resource:
  2368.  
  2369. Tec, Nachama. Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
  2370.  
  2371. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2372.  
  2373. Tec offers insights into the differences between the experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust. Her research draws on wartime diaries, postwar memoirs, a range of archival materials, and extensive interviews with Holocaust survivors. Tec demonstrates how women and men developed distinct coping strategies and how mutual cooperation and compassion operated across gender lines.
  2374.  
  2375. Find this resource:
  2376.  
  2377. Anthologies
  2378. The following compile feminist scholarship to offer overviews of women’s experiences: Baer and Goldenberg 2003, Ofer and Weitzman 1998, and Roth and Rittner 1993. For a collection that explores the legacy of sexual violence, see Hedgepeth and Saidel 2010. This topic is a new and growing concern in Holocaust studies due to memoirs by women survivors who belatedly express these experiences, often very late in their lives and after living with these memories for many decades. Dublon-Knebel 2010 addresses these issues in the context of the women’s camp at Ravensbruck.
  2379.  
  2380. Baer, Elizabeth Roberts, and Myrna Goldenberg, eds. Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.
  2381.  
  2382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2383.  
  2384. This book offers sustained gendered analysis of women and the Holocaust with essays that portray the experiences of women of various religious and ethnic backgrounds, and that draw from the fields of English, religion, nursing, history, law, comparative literature, philosophy, French, and German.
  2385.  
  2386. Find this resource:
  2387.  
  2388. Dublon-Knebel, Irith, ed. A Holocaust Crossroads: Jewish Women and Children in Ravensbruck. Portland, OR: Valentine Mitchell, 2010.
  2389.  
  2390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2391.  
  2392. This collection of essays provides a sociohistorical, in-depth analysis of the singularity of the female Jewish experience of the Holocaust. It focuses on the Jewish experience in the microcosm of Ravensbruck, the women’s concentration camp. It contextualizes the encounter of the various women in this camp with those they encountered in the surrounding towns and villages.
  2393.  
  2394. Find this resource:
  2395.  
  2396. Hedgepeth, Sonja, and Rochelle Saidel, eds. Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010.
  2397.  
  2398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2399.  
  2400. This interdisciplinary collection was the first to fully address the heretofore-taboo issue of sexual violence against Jewish women as a part of the Holocaust. Using testimonies, Nazi documents, memoirs, and artistic representations, this volume broadens and deepens our comprehension of Jewish women’s experiences of rape and other forms of sexual violence during the Holocaust.
  2401.  
  2402. Find this resource:
  2403.  
  2404. Ofer, Dalia, and Lenore Weitzman, eds. Women in the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
  2405.  
  2406. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2407.  
  2408. This is the first book of original scholarship devoted to women in the Holocaust. Testimonies of Holocaust survivors and chapters by eminent historians, sociologists, and literary experts shed light on women’s lives in the ghettos, the Jewish resistance movement, and the concentration camps.
  2409.  
  2410. Find this resource:
  2411.  
  2412. Roth, John, and Carol Rittner, eds. Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust. St. Paul, MN: Paragon, 1993.
  2413.  
  2414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2415.  
  2416. This was and remains a key collection of writings about women and the Holocaust. It includes scholars of religion, historians, and literary scholars. It was one of the earliest compendiums of this research, and helps situate both research in the field and some of the obstacles toward this work.
  2417.  
  2418. Find this resource:
  2419.  
  2420. Memory and Literary Studies
  2421. An important collection of first-person essays, primarily by daughters of survivors, can be found in Epstein and Lefkovitz 2001. Hirsch 2012 has forged the discourse of feminist memory studies, and Hirsch 1997 provided the language of “postmemory” to describe next generation transmission. Much of this work comes out of literary studies and engagements with feminist and critical theory. Suleiman 2006 combines close readings of Holocaust written texts and film with its author’s own childhood memories. Jacobs 2010 offers a sociological take on gender and collective memory, while Levitt 2007 considers the role of Holocaust memory and its relationship to ordinary Jewish life and loss in America. All of the scholars engaged in these questions about Holocaust memory have at times built on the traumatic legacy of Holocaust testimonials, while using feminist theory to experiment with first-person writing. Other literary studies engage in work that raises locally specific questions about gender and representation: Lassner 2008 looks at Anglo-Jewish women’s writing and questions of displacement; Horowitz 1997 addresses issues of muteness and gender in Holocaust literature. Horowitz’s essays are included in many literary and Jewish feminist collections, and are part of her further works on the writings of women survivors.
  2422.  
  2423. Epstein, Julia, and Lori Hope Lefkovitz, eds. Shaping Losses: Cultural Memory and the Holocaust. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
  2424.  
  2425. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2426.  
  2427. Informed by feminist and critical theory, this strong collection opens up the discourse of second-generation Holocaust memory. With sustained focus on how cultural memories are constructed across generations, these powerful essays openly demonstrate how trauma memory is transmitted. Essays address literature, film, photography, and art/sculpture.
  2428.  
  2429. Find this resource:
  2430.  
  2431. Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
  2432.  
  2433. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2434.  
  2435. This work introduces readers to Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory” as it focuses on the especial role of family photography in not only remembering the Holocaust, but also the range of ordinary and extraordinary legacies. Hirsch offers sustained readings of the Tower of Faces and Art Spiegelman’s work.
  2436.  
  2437. Find this resource:
  2438.  
  2439. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
  2440.  
  2441. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2442.  
  2443. In this collection of essays, Hirsch brings together memory and trauma studies, Holocaust studies, and feminist theory. It is the first sustained account of the way that feminist theory informs this work. It offers sustained engagement with a range of visual and literary texts that expand out from the Holocaust to other traumatic pasts, including Kurdistan.
  2444.  
  2445. Find this resource:
  2446.  
  2447. Horowitz, Sara. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
  2448.  
  2449. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2450.  
  2451. This work offers a sustained meditation on the question of muteness in Holocaust fiction with attention to issues of gender, both the construction of masculinity and femininity. It is the first of Horowitz’s powerful contributions to gender and Holocaust literature, including many essays, collections, and further works on survivor women writers and artists.
  2452.  
  2453. Find this resource:
  2454.  
  2455. Jacobs, Janet. Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide, and Collective Memory. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
  2456.  
  2457. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2458.  
  2459. How do collective memories of histories of violence and trauma come to be created? Jacobs offers new understandings of this crucial issue in her examination of the representation of gender in the memorial culture of Holocaust monuments and museums, from synagogue memorials and other historical places of Jewish life, to the geographies of Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Ravensbruck.
  2460.  
  2461. Find this resource:
  2462.  
  2463. Lassner, Phyllis. Anglo-Jewish Women Writing in the Holocaust: Displaced Witnesses. Basignstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
  2464.  
  2465. DOI: 10.1057/9780230227361Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2466.  
  2467. Placing these writers in the heart of British letters, Lassner shows how a range of survivor, second-generation, and other writers complicate theories of trauma and memory by using fantasy and the Gothic as a response to silence as well as to the historical and narrative relationship between endangered European Jews, and Britain’s cultural and political responses to them.
  2468.  
  2469. Find this resource:
  2470.  
  2471. Levitt, Laura. American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
  2472.  
  2473. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2474.  
  2475. Using the first person of feminist theory, Levitt addresses how different losses inform the act of commemoration, and how the ordinary losses in American Jewish life have been deferred to the enormity of the Holocaust. She demonstrates how formal connections between Holocaust texts and images inform our understanding of these other losses, using film, family photography, and literary texts.
  2476.  
  2477. Find this resource:
  2478.  
  2479. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Crises of Memory and the Second World War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
  2480.  
  2481. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2482.  
  2483. In this acclaimed collection of essays, Suleiman brings both a critical literary eye to works of Holocaust memory while constructing her own first-person account. This work introduces readers to the rich range of her work on these issues, especially her sustained engagement with a range of contemporary films.
  2484.  
  2485. Find this resource:
  2486.  
  2487. Art, Film, and Performance
  2488. This section includes the work of artists, cultural theorists, and art historians, each of whom have addressed the intersections of gender and the creativity of Jewish feminist artists. An example is Bohm-Duchen and Grodzinski 1996 on British Jewish Feminist artists. Other works are by those who themselves are artists, for instance, the American Jewish feminist Helene Aylon in Aylon 2012, and the website of the British feminist Rachel Garfield. Bloom 2006 makes the case for the Jewishness of many important feminist artists. Pellegrini 1997 is an important treatment of the early performer Sarah Bernhardt, as is Ockman and Silver 2005.
  2489.  
  2490. Aylon, Helene. Whatever is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlfriend, My Life as a Feminist Artist. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2012.
  2491.  
  2492. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2493.  
  2494. Aylon is one of the most important contemporary Jewish feminist artists in North America, and this lyrical memoir chronicles her life and artistic expression. Aylon tells the story of her Orthodox childhood, her marriage to a rabbi, motherhood, the early death of her husband, and her entry into the world of conceptual and feminist art. This work also contextualizes her important Liberation of God project.
  2495.  
  2496. Find this resource:
  2497.  
  2498. Bloom, Lisa. Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art: Ghosts of Ethnicity. New York, London: Routledge, 2006.
  2499.  
  2500. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2501.  
  2502. This sustained study of important contemporary feminist artists is the first to pay focused attention to the role of Jewishness in their work. Artists include Martha Rosler, Eleanor Antin, and Judy Chicago.
  2503.  
  2504. Find this resource:
  2505.  
  2506. Bohm-Duchen, Monica, and Vera Grodzinski. Rubies and Rebels: Jewish Female Identity in Contemporary British Art. London: Lund Humphries, 1996.
  2507.  
  2508. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2509.  
  2510. This rich catalogue from a show at the Barbican Gallery in 1996 offers an overview of a range of Jewish women artists working in Britain. It includes works by Judy Bermant, Lilian Lijn, Verdi Yahooda, and Rachel Lichtenstein, whose large-scale artwork, Kirsch Family, is especially noteworthy.
  2511.  
  2512. Find this resource:
  2513.  
  2514. Ockman, Carol, and Kenneth E. Silver. Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama. New York: Jewish Museum, 2005.
  2515.  
  2516. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2517.  
  2518. This strong catalogue from the show at the 2005 Jewish Museum offers sustained engagement with the legacy of the actress and celebrity Sarah Bernhardt. It links the figure of the Jewess to notions of celebrity and fascination, and includes a range of critical essays and beautiful images.
  2519.  
  2520. Find this resource:
  2521.  
  2522. Pellegrini, Ann. Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  2523.  
  2524. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2525.  
  2526. This book examines the relationship between race, gender, sexuality, and Jewishness at the turn of the 20th century. It revisits the feminized Jew, to focus on the Jewish woman in both psychoanalytic discourse and performance. This is a groundbreaking intervention in critical, feminist, and queer theory.
  2527.  
  2528. Find this resource:
  2529.  
  2530. Rachel Garfield.
  2531.  
  2532. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2533.  
  2534. This website offers access to the rich film, video, and websites of the British feminist filmmaker and scholar Rachel Garfield. Her contemporary work complicates notions of Jewish identity and race in the British context.
  2535.  
  2536. Find this resource:
  2537.  
  2538. Additional Popular Works
  2539. These additional and miscellaneous works do not fit in the disciplinary categories, but they have fostered broader conversations about women, gender, and Jewish life. Carnay, et al. 1992 and Weidman Schneider 1985 are resource guides to Jewish women who wish to become more involved in the feminist movement, though they are now somewhat dated, but still helpful as historical texts. Siegel and Cole 1991 raises therapeutic questions for Jewish women, while Taitz and Henry 1996 as well as Fink 1978 offer inspiration, often geared to adolescent Jewish women in search of role models. The award-winning collection The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt (see Ellenson 2005) is a fascinating guide to the feminist daughters of second-wave feminists.
  2540.  
  2541. Carnay, Janet, Ruth Ann Magder, Laura Wine Paster, Marcia Cohn Spiegel, and Abigail Weinberg, eds. The Jewish Women’s Awareness Guide: Connections for the 2nd Wave of Jewish Feminism. New York: Biblio, 1992.
  2542.  
  2543. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2544.  
  2545. This psychologically inflected collection offers feminist insights and resources for lay Jewish feminists. It is an early self-help guide, published by Biblio Press.
  2546.  
  2547. Find this resource:
  2548.  
  2549. Ellenson, Ruth Andrew, ed. The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt. New York: Dutton, 2005.
  2550.  
  2551. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2552.  
  2553. Well-written and incisive collection about all the things Jewish women are not supposed to talk about, from not calling one’s mother, divorcing the “perfect Jewish man,” marrying a German, being “selfish” enough to support one’s creative life, and not creating enough grandchildren. Takes on cultural stereotypes.
  2554.  
  2555. Find this resource:
  2556.  
  2557. Fink, Greta. Great Jewish Women: Profiles of Courageous Women from the Maccabean Period to the Present. New York: Bloch, 1978.
  2558.  
  2559. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2560.  
  2561. This is an early overview geared to lay readers and students that tells the story of Jewish foremothers. It is a popular attempt to bring the stories of Jewish women to a larger audience, filling in vast gaps in the literature and textbooks that were available in the late 1970s.
  2562.  
  2563. Find this resource:
  2564.  
  2565. Siegel, Rachel, and Ellen Cole, eds. Jewish Women in Therapy: Seen but Not Heard. New York: Routledge, 1991.
  2566.  
  2567. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2568.  
  2569. Essays discuss therapy from the perspective of therapists and clients, and the array of damaging external oppressions (anti-Semitism), internal oppressions (omission of women from Jewish rituals), and stereotypes (e.g., Jewish American Princess and Jewish mother).
  2570.  
  2571. Find this resource:
  2572.  
  2573. Taitz, Emily, and Sondra Henry. Remarkable Jewish Women: Rebels, Rabbis, and Other Women from Biblical Times to the Present. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996.
  2574.  
  2575. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2576.  
  2577. A popular book written for a general audience, with a review of Jewish women’s history throughout time. Very helpful overview that is thematic and biographical.
  2578.  
  2579. Find this resource:
  2580.  
  2581. Weidman Schneider, Susan. Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our Lives Today. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.
  2582.  
  2583. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  2584.  
  2585. From the editor of Lilith Magazine, an overview and sourcebook of how to participate fully in Jewish life and ritual as well as the politics of being a Jewish women, from claiming power to reconciling Jewishness and feminism. Originally published in 1984 as Jewish and Female: A Guide and Sourcebook for Today’s Jewish Woman (New York: Simon and Schuster).
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