DECEMBER 9 • 2021 | 47
society, but narratives often show women
subverting male leadership. God appears as
a king, husband, male lover, but also has a
woman in mourning and as a mother who
loves us as her children. Adelman quotes
the late Tikva Frymer-Kensky (professor of
Semitics at Wayne State University), who
noted that stories of atrocities committed
against women might serve as “critiques of
the social situations that they portray.
”
Tal Ilan (professor of Jewish Studies at
the Freie University in Berlin and editor of
volumes of a feminist commentary on the
Talmud) considers “Gender and Women’s
History in Rabbinic Literature.
” Ilan begins
with the observation that the classic rabbin-
ic texts are prescriptive, rather than descrip-
tive: They describe how the rabbis believe
that people should behave, rather than how
people do behave. Composed by one group
of men — the rabbis — for study by men,
the texts deal with theoretical women as
they properly relate to men. And yet, the
texts do, from time to time, disclose infor-
mation “about real women and what they
actually did.
”
After surveying texts about women
throughout the Tosefta, Mishnah and both
Talmudim, Ilan admits that “the gender
historian must be resourceful and look
for evidence outside Rabbinic texts in
the Greco-Roman world at large, at other
sources reflecting Jewish society (such as
inscriptions and papyri) and the observa-
tions of gender historians the world over.
”
Moshe Rosman (professor emeritus
of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University
in Israel) reconstructs the history of
Jewish women in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, which lasted from 1569
until the end of the 18th century. Religious
documents written by men intended for
men’s reading, Rosman shows, praise obe-
dient women who enable their husbands
to study Torah and who behave modestly.
The texts praise women who manage their
households well and who excel in business.
During this period, women become more
involved in synagogue attendance, and
a growing literature for women presents
Jewish religious learning in the Yiddish lan-
guage. A learned woman in the 18th centu-
ry, Leah Horowitz, writes Yiddish prayers
for women, prefaced by her Hebrew and
Aramaic essays declaring that women must
take responsibility for their own observance
of commandments, including Torah study.
Women in this period did operate a variety
of businesses, as revealed in contracts, wills,
court records, rabbinic decisions and com-
munal legislation. Married Jewish women
often worked in their husbands’ businesses;
widows either sold their assets or continued
the business.
A fascinating essay by Frances Malino
(professor emerita of Jewish Studies at
Wellsley College) considers the impact of
the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools
on girls across the Sephardic world in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Young
women from North Africa, the Ottoman
Empire and across the Middle East acquired
both a Jewish and a French education in
these schools. Some of the outstanding stu-
dents went to France to prepare to become
teachers at the same schools. Many also
became outspoken feminists (they used the
word), advocating more challenging studies
for their students. They sometimes defied
the male administration of the program,
insisting that girls must learn real history,
not just moralizing stories.
More than one set of teachers ordered
sewing machines, against the instructions
of the administrators, so that their school-
girls could run ateliers of French fashion,
learning skills to support themselves and
also raising funds for the schools. Jacques
Bigart, secretary of the Alliance, maintained
a correspondence with each of the dozens
of women who taught in these schools (and
with each of the men who taught in the
boys’ schools). He kept the teachers’ deeply
personal letters to him, which now give
scholars an extraordinary insight into the
lives of these brave women.
Natalia Aleksiun (professor of Modern
Jewish History at Touro College Graduate
School of Jewish Studies) presents “Coming
of Age During the Holocaust.
” She builds
on diaries of adolescent girls, only some of
whom survived, and memoires of their ado-
lescence by survivors.
In the final essay in this collection, Sylvia
Barack-Fishman (professor emerita of
Contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis
University) considers “Choices and
Challenges in American Jewish Women’s
Lives Today,
” including intermarriage,
alternatives to marriage, opportunities for
religious leadership by women in all Jewish
movements and the “inverse Jewish gender
gap,
” in which men have become less prom-
inent in many Jewish roles as women have
become more prominent.
Anyone with an interest in Jewish history,
gender studies or, indeed, the history of any
place where Jews have lived, will find much
of value in Jewish Women’s History from
Antiquity to the Present.
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