Jewish Women's History from Antiquity to the Present

Jewish Women’s History from Antiquity to the Present, edited by Federica Francesconi and Rebecca Lynn Winer, pays homage to Judith Baskin and her scholarship on Jewish women’s history, as well as to other contributors to the field. According to the editors, it is the first study to take a comprehensive look at Jewish women’s history since the publication of Baskin’s second edition of Jewish Women in Historical Perspective (Wayne State University Press) in 1998 (3). The book frames itself as a continuation of Baskin’s collections stating “this volume, although it stands on its own merits, as its breadth of chronological and geographic coverage implies, is the latest chapter in an important story in Jewish women’s history. Judith R. Baskin began it, and it is truly fitting that this edition is dedicated to her” (ix). In fact, Baskin’s collections are mentioned no less than nine times in the preface and introduction alone. The chapters are organized for the most part along the same lines and cover much of the same material, with a few new topics such as mysticism, refugee experiences, conversion rates, domestic service, the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, Jewish Orthodox women, and Jewish lesbians interspersed. A chapter on the Holocaust, a topic covered in Baskin’s first edition but left out of the second, has also been included. The book aims for a broad geographic scope, a global approach, and an interdisciplinary methodology (3-5). That Jewish women were agents of change and makers of history is a theme that runs through several chapters, and the volume succeeds, for the most part, in its stated goals: to expand “Jewish women’s history into fields that have flourished in the last twenty years” (xi), “to make the cutting-edge work of historians of Jewish women visible to all historians and history students” (6), and to explore “the diversity of gender and Jewish women’s experiences within its different sociocultural and economic contexts” (8).

The editors list intersectionality, focusing on ordinary Jewish women’s lives, reconceptualizing Jewish history and its periodization, exploring Jewish women’s religious lives, using new sources and methodologies, adding diversity, and dismantling the private/public dichotomy as some of the book’s innovations. In terms of exploring diversity, it adds material on Sephardic women, Orthodox Jewish women, and LBGTQ Jews, but falls short in addressing the lives of Jewish women beyond mainstream communities. Of the nineteen core chapters, most cover the same topics found in Baskin’s volumes, such as the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic Literature, Early Modern Italy, Nineteenth-Century Britain, Mandatory Palestine, and Spirituality in the United States. Three are new versions of chapters from Baskin’s collection (Baskin on medieval Jewish women, Renee Levine Melammed and Winer on Jewish women in Sefarad and beyond, and Frances Malino on Jewish women in the Alliance schools) and twelve are on areas covered in one of the Baskin editions, but written by different authors. Though some subjects are reorganized or broken down differently and new research and sources are considered, most of the chapters are similar in scope to the essays in the Baskin volumes, and the editors do not explain why some authors are retained and others are not.

Four chapters are on new topics: Sharon Faye Koren on gender in the Zohar, Dina Danon on Sephardic Jewish women in the modern age, Marla Brettschneider on Jewish lesbians, and Sylvia Barack Fishman on American Jewish women’s lives today. Koren’s essay is a welcome addition, though it focuses on “the lives of the cosmic feminine, describing the gendered godhead, feminine imagery, and cosmic gynecology in Zoharic literature” rather than on the lives of actual historical women (123). Danon’s chapter brings attention to the often-neglected topic of Eastern Sephardic women and their unique struggles in becoming bourgeois. Brettschneider’s piece on Jewish lesbians provides an overview of the field for general readers, showing the ways Jewish lesbians have been active but excluded from feminist and Jewish scholarship, though queer Jewish studies might be integrated throughout the book rather than relegated to this one chapter. The addition of Fishman’s essay addressing American Jewish women (the last chapter of the volume) makes for a total of three chapters focused on the United States, while other geographical regions are left out (see below). Since the book ends with a consideration of Jewish women’s lives today, why not include Jewish women throughout the world?

While several important themes and perspectives have been added, there are still omissions. Perhaps most glaring is the lack of a chapter on Jewish women in the Habsburg Monarchy/Austria-Hungary, home to the world’s second largest Jewish community in 1900 and encompassing several major cities with formerly large Jewish populations, including Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Czernowitz, Lemberg, and Brody. Also largely absent are Jewish women in France, Interwar Poland and Romania, the Soviet Union, Yemen, Ethiopia, India, South and Central America, and Sephardic American women. While one volume cannot be expected to cover the entire spectrum of Jewish women’s history, more focus on underrepresented communities would be welcome especially given the stated goals of incorporating cultural and geographic diversity and intersectionality.

Furthermore, while most of the chapters provide overviews of their respective fields, some are narrow in focus. For example, Natalia Aleksiun’s chapter on the Holocaust concentrates specifically on young Jewish women. Tal Ilan focuses on rabbinic literature and makes important points about the different views on women held by various schools of rabbinic thought, but the close analysis of archeological and other non-rabbinic sources found in Ross Kraemer’s essay on late antiquity (in Baskin’s collection) is missing. Furthermore, there are too many references to “many scholars,” “recent studies,” and similar general statements that fail to provide explanatory footnotes (e.g., 55, 112, 134, 146, 161, 220).

Despite these shortcomings, the book makes several valuable contributions. The editors are correct in identifying the need for a new, comprehensive book on Jewish women’s history and right to highlight the work of Judith Baskin, her scholarship, and other early contributors to the field. While this collection incorporates new sources and perspectives and fills in some gaps, there is still much work to be done to provide a truly comprehensive, intersectional, and diverse picture of the state of the field.

Alison Rose is a part-time faculty member in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

Alison Rose

Date Of Review:

July 30, 2023