Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women

2001 ◽  
Vol 92 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 188
Author(s):  
J. H. Chajes ◽  
Chava Weissler
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Women

Esther und ihre Töchter. Geschlechterrollen und Wirtschaftstätigkeit jüdischer Frauen in der Vormoderne

Aschkenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-324
Author(s):  
Christian Porzelt
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Country People

Abstract This essay examines the commercial activities of Jewish women in the Franconian town of Kronach, a district seat in the northern part of the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg, in the early modern period. It focuses on the widow Esther (c. 1645–1727), a contemporary of the famous merchant woman Glikl bas Judah Leib in Altona. Esther’s business activities, which are documented for a period of more than four decades, included the sale of household goods and textiles as well as the marketing of agrarian products. In addition, she was involved in credit transactions and pawnbroking. Numerous contacts with town dwellers and country people demonstrate her involvement in Christian economic and credit networks. As the biographies of Esther’s daughters Ella and Jüdla show, married women also played central roles within households and working communities. They not only supported their husbands, but continued to run their businesses in their absence and engaged in trade on their own accounts.

Law and love: the Jewish family in early modern Italy

2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
HOWARD TZVI ADELMAN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The Law

In legal texts, women, acting on their own volition, are actually described as individuals in negative terms. This study examines clandestine betrothals and marriages; adultery, especially the treatment of adulterous women; the abused wife and her ability to initiate divorce proceedings against her husband; and testaments left with Christian notaries by Jewish women.While they were limited by various laws and customs, individuals managed to use laws and social structures for their own advantage, negotiated space for themselves, and devised strategies to fulfil their wishes, which could be described as the pursuit of love, by circumventing obstacles placed in their way by communities, families, and the law. These practices raise questions about familial control, rabbinic authority, and communal power.

Chava Weissler

2001 ◽  
pp. 385-387
Author(s):  
Norma Baumel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Material ◽  
Religious Lives

This chapter focuses on Chava Weissler's book on the personal devotional prayers of early modern Jewish women, Voices of the Matriarchs. Blending previously published articles, new material, and important methodological insights, this book brings to the reader a fully developed picture of the context, concerns, and religious lives of a previously invisible group. It also raises serious questions regarding our ability to know about and understand the past. The chapter shows how the author is candid about her own purposes, reservations, loyalties, and aspirations. Throughout the book, the author presents distinct texts, often several concerning the same function, in order to portray the variety of religious personalities exposed in these Yiddish prayers.

Menstruation in sacred spaces. Medieval and early-modern Jewish women in the synagogue

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
Evyatar Marienberg
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Jewish Women ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Visible Part ◽  
The Mind

How sacred is the Synagogue? Can a woman enter this holy place while menstruating? What is more sacred: the space, or the Holy objects within it? In the classic sources of the Halakhah, the Jewish Law, one can find no restrictions on women from entering a synagogue while being in the state of Niddah, the state of menstrual impurity. Nevertheless, in the medieval period, more and more sources indicate that many women avoided going to the synagogue when at this state. Why?  Was this custom created by women, or by men? Where did it originate? The article suggests it was the same religious mentality that pushed Jewish and Christian women to avoid going to their respective Houses of Worship while menstruating. The custom was socially problematic, as it prevented women from participating, at least passively, in the service, and from being a visible part of the community in its weekly reunion. It is suggested that in order to solve this issue, the notion of the sacrality of the synagogue was reduced to some extent in the mind of many Jewish women in the early-modern period. The Sacred was the Torah Scroll, the holiest object in the synagogue, and not so much the Synagogue itself. By doing that, women created a new viable solution: they could enter the synagogue without feeling to be transgressing its sacrality. Their respect to the Holy was shown by them avoiding looking at the Torah Scroll when it was presented to the worshippers.

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