Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, Second Edition / Edition 2

by Chava Weissler, Deborah Hertz, Deborah S. Bernstein, Ellen E. Umansky, Frances Malino

Overview

A collection of fully-revised and new essays that explore the richness of Jewish women's history.

The last decades have seen a growing debate over the status of women in contemporary Judaism. As the conditions of secular Western life have allowed women greater choice in their educational and vocational opportunities and society has begun to endorse female equality with men, dissatisfaction with traditional Jewish limitations on women's participation in communal, religious, and scholarly activities has increased. Whilst there have been numerous contemporary responses to traditional Jewish views of women's roles, perspectives from the past have been missing from the ongoing discussion. This collection of essays is intended to provide such a historical excursion. Each essay provides an overview of the period in question, and asks serious questions about the general situations of Jewish women and their activities in a male-dominated public and intellectual Jewish life, as well as in a larger non-Jewish cultural environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814327135
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	12/01/1998
Edition description:	2ND
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Judith R. Baskin is a professor and the chair of the Department of Judaic Studies at the State University of New York at Albany.

Table of Contents

1. Portrayals of Women in the Hebrew Bible

2. Jewish Women in the Diaspora of Late Antiquity

3. The Image and Status of Women in Classical Rabbinic Judaism

4. Jewish Women in the Middle Ages

5. Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

6. Italian Jewish Women

7. Prayers in Yiddish and the Religious World of Ashkenazic Women

8. Emancipation though Intermarraige? Wealthy Jewish Salon Women in Old Berlin

9. Engendering Liberal Jews: Jewish Women in Victorian England

10. Tradition and Transition: Jewish Women in Imperial Germany

11. The Women Teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, 1872-1940

12. East European Jewish Women in an Age of Transition, 1880-1930

13. Daughters of the Nation: Between the Public and Private Spheres in Pre-State Israel

14. Gender and the Immigrant Jewish Experience in the United States

15. Spiritual Expressions: Jewish Women's Religious Lives in the United States in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Editorial Reviews

Baskin has provided an excellent introduction to the issues and a well-balanced collection of essays.

Hadassah