Textures and Meaning: Thirty Years of Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2004
Considering the consequences of gender is a significant development in recent Jewish historiograp... more Considering the consequences of gender is a significant development in recent Jewish historiography. While historians of previous eras tended to assume that social circumstances
Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, by Avraham Grossman, trans. Jonathan Chipm... more Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, by Avraham Grossman, trans. Jonathan Chipman. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2004. 329 pp. $29.95. This important and pioneering book presents a panoramic overview of the lives of Jewish women in the Muslim and Christian worlds of the Middle Ages, as well as in the transitional environment of medieval Spain. Grossman, Professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, brings a thoroughgoing expertise in the legal, exegetical, ethical, social, and literary sources of medieval Jewish life to this systematic exposition of what can be surmised about that voiceless female half of medieval Jewry who left virtually no written documents of any kind. A regrettable weakness of this abridged translation of a Hebrew original, published in 2001, however, is that much of the scholarly apparatus and bibliography, as well as many excerpts from primary texts, are absent in the English version. The topics discussed in Pious and Rebellious include the image of woman in rabbinic literature, the parameters of medieval Jewish family life and marriage, woman's domestic and social status and her place in economic and religious life, female education and roles in family religious ceremonies, violence against women, and the position of the divorcee and the widow in various Jewish societies. Grossman also examines what the sources have to say about women's behavior in moments of crisis, such as the First Crusade of 1096. Each chapter begins with a brief discussion of the relevant biblical and talmudic heritage underlying the topic at hand, followed by a comparative survey of Muslim and Christian practice. Grossman then goes on to examine separately the evidence for Jewish communities in the Muslim world, Germany and France, Spain, and occasionally Italy. In the first chapter, Grossman is candid on the negative ways in which woman were constructed as "other" and as morally inferior to men in the foundation texts of rabbinic Judaism. Ever aware of the medieval impact of these negative descriptions, both on men's perceptions of women and women's self-images, he also delineates the persistent connections between women and sorcery in rabbinic writings and their afterlife in medieval folk literature and mystical teachings. Conversely, Grossman also highlights rabbinic expressions of love and praise for compliant wives, insisting that, "One must not blindly accept the negative image of women as reflecting the actual attitude toward women in society and in the family" (p. 31). Still, as the body of his book makes clear, at no time or place in the Middle Ages did Jewish men ever imagine that women were their equals. The core emphasis of each of this volume's thirteen chapters is Jewish life in France and Germany (known to Jews as Ashkenaz) between 1000 and 1300. Grossman argues that women's position markedly improved during this time period, relative both to the talmudic era and to the situation of Jewish women in Muslim countries. The reason was the economic success that transformed the relatively small Jewish communities of Ashkenaz into a bourgeois society. As Jews prospered in trade and money lending, Jewish women played an increasingly vital and often autonomous part in their family's economic lives, both as merchants and as financial brokers. Indeed, Jewish women's influential position and activities during the High Middle Ages parallel those of Christian women within the upper bourgeoisie, as both groups of women achieved literacy and financial skills and ran their households and economic affairs effectively during their husbands' absences, whether on mercantile or military endeavors. …
IDRA ormations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature JUDITH R. RASKIN rn ... MIDRASHIC WOMEN &qu... more IDRA ormations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature JUDITH R. RASKIN rn ... MIDRASHIC WOMEN "This One E7RW-EQF-5HY1 ... BRANDEIS SERIES ON JEWISH WOMEN Shulamit Reinharz, General Editor Joyce Antler, Associate Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate ...
The recognition that gender plays an overwhelming role in shaping an individual’s socialization, ... more The recognition that gender plays an overwhelming role in shaping an individual’s socialization, educational and vocational opportunities, and spiritual and creative endeavors has changed how many scholars approach and interpret their research data. Before the last quarter of the 20th century, with some exceptions, most studies of Judaism and the Jewish experience had little to say about differences between men’s and women’s lives and status. It was only in the 1970s and 1980s, influenced by methodologies emerging from women’s studies, that scholars of Jewish law and practice, history, literatures, thought, mysticism, religious movements, and cultural production began to use gender as a category of analysis. This attention to women and the ramifications of gender were driven in great part by the unprecedented number of women who were than entering doctoral studies and undertaking academic careers in numerous areas of Jewish studies. In recent decades, many female and male scholars have explored the constructions and consequences of gender in Jewish societies of many times and places. At the same time, popular interest in women and gender has grown as a result of the feminist movement of the last third of the 20th century and its impact in expanding women’s personal and professional options. In the Jewish community, a burgeoning interest in scholarly analyses of Jewish women and their activities and representations has accompanied the ordination of women as rabbis and cantors in many Jewish religious movements; the expansion of intellectual, spiritual, and leadership roles for women in many synagogues and communal organizations; and an increased attention to the education of girls and women in all forms of contemporary Judaism. These developments, in turn, have promoted significant anthropological and sociological studies analyzing the impact of these changes. Interest in Jewish gender relations and cultural constructions of male identity in various Judaisms is a more recent development. However, increasing numbers of researchers are investigating how the relatively rigid roles mandated for men and women in rabbinic Judaism and performed in Jewish legal, religious, and social life over the centuries have defined the expectations that Jewish women and men have projected onto the gendered self and the gendered other. This article principally gathers English-language book-length studies and published collections of essays that focus on the contemporary Jewish community and the Jewish past from the biblical era through the 20th century. With a few exceptions, the large body of anthologies and monographs addressing Jewish literatures and gender is not discussed here.
Until recent times, Jewish roles in both the private and public realms of life were significantly... more Until recent times, Jewish roles in both the private and public realms of life were significantly determined by gender. In the rabbinic vision of the ideal ordering of human society, which guided Jewish life for almost two millennia, special position and status-conferring obligations were reserved for eligible males, while females were seen as a separate and secondary category of human creation. Nevertheless, both females and males are essential for human continuity, and Judaism has traditionally understood marriage as the desirable state for all adults. Marriage has provided a means of Jewish continuity, a haven for personal intimacy, and a family setting in which children could be raised to adulthood and educated in traditional values and rituals. Moreover, in a system of theological imagery that envisions marriage as the closest approximation of the intimacy that can exist between human beings and God, the relationship between wives and husbands has assumed sacred significance. Wherever Jews have lived, wives have assumed domestic nurturing roles, providing for the daily needs of their husbands and children, and overseeing the early educations of their offspring. Women have also labored with their spouses in the economic support of their households. Prior to the modern period, vocational endeavors were understood as a domestic activity. Wives worked closely with their husbands in crafts and trades, and some undertook business activities that supplemented economic resources or wholly supported their families so that husbands could devote themselves to learning.
In recent decades, the study of medieval Jewry has been enriched by a variety of new research que... more In recent decades, the study of medieval Jewry has been enriched by a variety of new research questions and innovative approaches. These include the use of gender as a category of analysis, an increased interest in the social, economic, and religious lives of ordinary Jews, and investigations of Jews on the social margins. In addition, nuanced and contextualized readings of literary texts have revised older understandings of historical events and their representations. In many cases, these late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries explorations of the past have been facilitated by online resources of various kinds. 1 Consideration of evidence from material culture and architecture have also enhanced scholarly understandings of the richness and diversity of medieval Jewish life. 2
Textures and Meaning: Thirty Years of Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2004
Considering the consequences of gender is a significant development in recent Jewish historiograp... more Considering the consequences of gender is a significant development in recent Jewish historiography. While historians of previous eras tended to assume that social circumstances
Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, by Avraham Grossman, trans. Jonathan Chipm... more Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, by Avraham Grossman, trans. Jonathan Chipman. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2004. 329 pp. $29.95. This important and pioneering book presents a panoramic overview of the lives of Jewish women in the Muslim and Christian worlds of the Middle Ages, as well as in the transitional environment of medieval Spain. Grossman, Professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, brings a thoroughgoing expertise in the legal, exegetical, ethical, social, and literary sources of medieval Jewish life to this systematic exposition of what can be surmised about that voiceless female half of medieval Jewry who left virtually no written documents of any kind. A regrettable weakness of this abridged translation of a Hebrew original, published in 2001, however, is that much of the scholarly apparatus and bibliography, as well as many excerpts from primary texts, are absent in the English version. The topics discussed in Pious and Rebellious include the image of woman in rabbinic literature, the parameters of medieval Jewish family life and marriage, woman's domestic and social status and her place in economic and religious life, female education and roles in family religious ceremonies, violence against women, and the position of the divorcee and the widow in various Jewish societies. Grossman also examines what the sources have to say about women's behavior in moments of crisis, such as the First Crusade of 1096. Each chapter begins with a brief discussion of the relevant biblical and talmudic heritage underlying the topic at hand, followed by a comparative survey of Muslim and Christian practice. Grossman then goes on to examine separately the evidence for Jewish communities in the Muslim world, Germany and France, Spain, and occasionally Italy. In the first chapter, Grossman is candid on the negative ways in which woman were constructed as "other" and as morally inferior to men in the foundation texts of rabbinic Judaism. Ever aware of the medieval impact of these negative descriptions, both on men's perceptions of women and women's self-images, he also delineates the persistent connections between women and sorcery in rabbinic writings and their afterlife in medieval folk literature and mystical teachings. Conversely, Grossman also highlights rabbinic expressions of love and praise for compliant wives, insisting that, "One must not blindly accept the negative image of women as reflecting the actual attitude toward women in society and in the family" (p. 31). Still, as the body of his book makes clear, at no time or place in the Middle Ages did Jewish men ever imagine that women were their equals. The core emphasis of each of this volume's thirteen chapters is Jewish life in France and Germany (known to Jews as Ashkenaz) between 1000 and 1300. Grossman argues that women's position markedly improved during this time period, relative both to the talmudic era and to the situation of Jewish women in Muslim countries. The reason was the economic success that transformed the relatively small Jewish communities of Ashkenaz into a bourgeois society. As Jews prospered in trade and money lending, Jewish women played an increasingly vital and often autonomous part in their family's economic lives, both as merchants and as financial brokers. Indeed, Jewish women's influential position and activities during the High Middle Ages parallel those of Christian women within the upper bourgeoisie, as both groups of women achieved literacy and financial skills and ran their households and economic affairs effectively during their husbands' absences, whether on mercantile or military endeavors. …
IDRA ormations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature JUDITH R. RASKIN rn ... MIDRASHIC WOMEN &qu... more IDRA ormations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature JUDITH R. RASKIN rn ... MIDRASHIC WOMEN "This One E7RW-EQF-5HY1 ... BRANDEIS SERIES ON JEWISH WOMEN Shulamit Reinharz, General Editor Joyce Antler, Associate Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate ...
The recognition that gender plays an overwhelming role in shaping an individual’s socialization, ... more The recognition that gender plays an overwhelming role in shaping an individual’s socialization, educational and vocational opportunities, and spiritual and creative endeavors has changed how many scholars approach and interpret their research data. Before the last quarter of the 20th century, with some exceptions, most studies of Judaism and the Jewish experience had little to say about differences between men’s and women’s lives and status. It was only in the 1970s and 1980s, influenced by methodologies emerging from women’s studies, that scholars of Jewish law and practice, history, literatures, thought, mysticism, religious movements, and cultural production began to use gender as a category of analysis. This attention to women and the ramifications of gender were driven in great part by the unprecedented number of women who were than entering doctoral studies and undertaking academic careers in numerous areas of Jewish studies. In recent decades, many female and male scholars have explored the constructions and consequences of gender in Jewish societies of many times and places. At the same time, popular interest in women and gender has grown as a result of the feminist movement of the last third of the 20th century and its impact in expanding women’s personal and professional options. In the Jewish community, a burgeoning interest in scholarly analyses of Jewish women and their activities and representations has accompanied the ordination of women as rabbis and cantors in many Jewish religious movements; the expansion of intellectual, spiritual, and leadership roles for women in many synagogues and communal organizations; and an increased attention to the education of girls and women in all forms of contemporary Judaism. These developments, in turn, have promoted significant anthropological and sociological studies analyzing the impact of these changes. Interest in Jewish gender relations and cultural constructions of male identity in various Judaisms is a more recent development. However, increasing numbers of researchers are investigating how the relatively rigid roles mandated for men and women in rabbinic Judaism and performed in Jewish legal, religious, and social life over the centuries have defined the expectations that Jewish women and men have projected onto the gendered self and the gendered other. This article principally gathers English-language book-length studies and published collections of essays that focus on the contemporary Jewish community and the Jewish past from the biblical era through the 20th century. With a few exceptions, the large body of anthologies and monographs addressing Jewish literatures and gender is not discussed here.
Until recent times, Jewish roles in both the private and public realms of life were significantly... more Until recent times, Jewish roles in both the private and public realms of life were significantly determined by gender. In the rabbinic vision of the ideal ordering of human society, which guided Jewish life for almost two millennia, special position and status-conferring obligations were reserved for eligible males, while females were seen as a separate and secondary category of human creation. Nevertheless, both females and males are essential for human continuity, and Judaism has traditionally understood marriage as the desirable state for all adults. Marriage has provided a means of Jewish continuity, a haven for personal intimacy, and a family setting in which children could be raised to adulthood and educated in traditional values and rituals. Moreover, in a system of theological imagery that envisions marriage as the closest approximation of the intimacy that can exist between human beings and God, the relationship between wives and husbands has assumed sacred significance. Wherever Jews have lived, wives have assumed domestic nurturing roles, providing for the daily needs of their husbands and children, and overseeing the early educations of their offspring. Women have also labored with their spouses in the economic support of their households. Prior to the modern period, vocational endeavors were understood as a domestic activity. Wives worked closely with their husbands in crafts and trades, and some undertook business activities that supplemented economic resources or wholly supported their families so that husbands could devote themselves to learning.
In recent decades, the study of medieval Jewry has been enriched by a variety of new research que... more In recent decades, the study of medieval Jewry has been enriched by a variety of new research questions and innovative approaches. These include the use of gender as a category of analysis, an increased interest in the social, economic, and religious lives of ordinary Jews, and investigations of Jews on the social margins. In addition, nuanced and contextualized readings of literary texts have revised older understandings of historical events and their representations. In many cases, these late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries explorations of the past have been facilitated by online resources of various kinds. 1 Consideration of evidence from material culture and architecture have also enhanced scholarly understandings of the richness and diversity of medieval Jewish life. 2
Jewish Studies on Premodern Periods: A Handbook, 2023
The essays in this volume provide the development over the last three decades in the field of pre... more The essays in this volume provide the development over the last three decades in the field of premodern Jewish studies. International experts on the First Temple Period, the Second Temple Period, the Rabbinic Period, and the Medieval Period explore major trends and current debates in scholarship through the lenses of history, religion, literature, and art, as well as the questions that will animate the field in the foreseeable future.
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