Enforced Marginality: Jewish Narratives on Abandoned Wives

This illuminating study explores a central but neglected aspect of modern Jewish history: the problem of abandoned Jewish wives, or agunes ("chained wives")—women who under Jewish law could not obtain a divorce—and of the men who deserted them. Looking at seventeenth— and eighteenth—century Germany and then late nineteenth—century eastern Europe and twentieth—century United States, Enforced Marginality explores representations of abandoned wives while tracing the demographic movements of Je...