Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal

“I Thought I Could Endure Him But Now I Cannot” – Gendered Sensory Landscapes in MKetubot 7.7-10 and Parallels

Natalie C. Polzer — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:39 -0500

Four consecutive mishnayot, Mishna Ketubot 7.7-7.10, concerning the rights of men and women to end marriage and betrothal are examined through the lens of two overlapping theoretical frames, anthropology of the senses and legal aesthetics, in the process expanding traditional scholarly methodologies used to examine early rabbinic halakhah and the culture in which it emerged through the use of interdisciplinary theory. Using these theoretical frames, as yet unexploited as far as rabbinic halakhah is concerned, this study highlights the intersection of sensory experience and gender in rabbinic ideologies of marriage, through analysis of the language, rhetoric and formal structure of early rabbinic halakhic texts.

Jewish Women and Positive Time-bound Commandments: Reconsidering the Rabbinic Texts

Anat Israeli — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:40 -0500

The starting point of this article is that Jewish law defined the difference between the sexes and created a gender hierarchy through a broad generalization (accompanied by a long list of exceptions) which created a link between halakhic obligation, gender and time. It argues that there is no coincidence that the halakhic starting point on this issue depends on a time-bound definition. From its inception, Judaism has dealt with the formation of a uniquely Jewish conception of time, different from that of its surroundings, including both linear and circular characteristics, a concept of time widely expressed already in the Bible. After the destruction of the second Temple this Jewish concept of time had an additional challenge to deal with – the structuring of Jewish time as a central component of Jewish identity, which both preserves and protects it. Women were perceived as both belonging and not belonging, capable and incapable, only partial partners in the great cultural and spiritual Jewish challenge. The definition of women’s partial partnership through time is therefore well suited to the place and importance of time in the Jewish concept of the world in general, and the rabbinical one in particular.

Elderly Swedish Jewish Men and Egalitarianism: A Narrative Study

Elisabeth Punzi — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:40 -0500

This work is based on interviews with four elderly Jewish men, members of a Swedish congregation who advocate egalitarianism. A narrative analysis found that the participants’ perception of egalitarianism was connected to their own life experiences and to emotionally significant turning points in which the participants became aware how women were excluded. They perceived egalitarianism as a reassurance for a future Jewish life and described the development and preservation of traditions as intermingled rather than as opposed to each other. Gender equality in this study should not be viewed as specifically related to younger congregants and/or women but as connected to life experiences of the individual concerned.

Chava Rosenfarb’s Early Life Writing: “Bergen-Belsen Diary, 1945”

Ruth Panofsky — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:40 -0500

This essay analyses Chava Rosenfarb’s Bergen-Belsen diary as a work of life writing that pays meticulous attention to details of voice, craft, and narrative development. Suffering gave her a subject and Rosenfarb turned to the diary as a means of recording and coming to terms with a life irrevocably altered by tremendous loss. That artistry shaped a work produced in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust confirms that Rosenfarb was first and always a writer. Moreover, that her writerly persona—not her actual person—emerged intact and mature from the unmitigated trauma of the death camp is evidence that writing was a source of solace and hope that helped carry her through to survival.

Home and the Female Scholar: Re-visiting the Salamans’ Archives

Ann Lazarsfeld-Jensen — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:41 -0500

It took me just one month in the Salaman archives of Cambridge University Library to accumulate hundreds of digital images relating to the life of a female Hebrew scholar born at the fin de siecle, Nina Salaman, a Sephardic Jew of rare beauty who died young. It has taken several years to revisit and analyse the resonance I experienced at that time. In reading the Salamans’ lives I felt like I had fallen among interesting friends and I wanted to enter the rich diversity of their artistic and scholarly lives. The sheer volume of material in the archives attracts several historians, and that led me to question why I was working beyond my own scope and practice. The Salamans had deep roots in England. Their intellectual networks dipped into a dozen disciplines, touching many lives, questioning greater minds, gathering grass roots support for causes that were feminist, Zionist, and often far to the left. They shared my ancestors’ ethnicity and even attended the same synagogue in London, but the similarity ends there. One branch of my family has no recorded legacy, as though all our creativity sprang up spontaneously. The Salamans’ writing is often evocative auto ethnography, transparent and poignant, particularly the letters and unpublished memoir of patriarch Dr. Redcliffe N. Salaman and the books and memoirs of his daughter-in-law, Esther Polianowski. Nina Salaman’s heart beat is in her translations of medieval poetry from the tragedy of the Arabic-Spanish period (S. Litman, 1957). What interested me was the way Nina’s Jewish spirituality mapped out family life, education and expectations. At a time when my own family had lost one another through the death of my grandmother aged just 33, the Salamans were consolidating around the thing we denied: Jewishness. Yet both Redcliffe Salaman and Esther Polianowski were agnostic as were so many others in the family, and their passion for Zion was a cultural and political yearning. In returning to explore the personal lives of the Salamans I constructed a Foucault’s genealogy of family and home itself, to explore its hegemonic power and the cost and beauty of its perpetuation. In this work I regard myself as a Foucauldian Detective discovering the family values of my own lost tribe.

Chalmers, Beverly. Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women’s Voices Under Nazi Rule. Surrey, UK: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd., 2015

Rachel E. Silverman — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:41 -0500

Gindin, Thamar E. The Scroll of Esther: Behind the Mask (Megillat Ester: Me-’ahorei ha-masekhah), Zeresh Publications, 2015.

Rachel Adelman — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:42 -0500

Dunlap, Annette B. The Gambler’s Daughter: A Personal and Social History. Albany, NY: Excelsior Editions, 2012.

Jennifer Lander — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:42 -0500

Goodman, Pearl. Peril: From Jackboots to Jack Benny. Dundas, Ontario: Bridgeross Communications, 2012.

Susan Landau-Chark — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:42 -0500

Abraham-Klein, Dahlia. Spiritual Kneading Through the Jewish Months: Building the Sacred through Challah. [n.p.] Shamashi Press, 2015. PDF.

Rebecca K. Scheckler — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:43 -0500

Zarchi, Nurit. In Her Shadow. Tel-Aviv: Miscal – Yediot Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books, 2013. [Hebrew]

Nitza Keren — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:43 -0500

Govrin, Michal. Love on the Shore, A Novel. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2013. [Hebrew].

Nitza Keren — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:43 -0500

Anton, Maggie. Rav Hisda’s Daughter, Book 1: Apprentice: a Novel of Love, the Talmud, and Sorcery. New York: Plume, 2012.

David B. Levy — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:43 -0500

Gillis-Carlebach, Miriam. “Each Child is My Only One: Lotte Carlebach-Preuss, The Portrait of a Mother and Rabbi’s wife.” Translated by Dorothea Shefer Vanson. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014.

Beverley Chalmers — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:43 -0500

Moskowitz, Nathan. Kuzmino Chronicles: Memoirs of Teenage Holocaust Survival (Kindle Edition), 2015. E-book.

Merle Carrus — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:44 -0500

The Fevered World: A Poetry Review Essay

Edith Covensky — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:44 -0500

This poetry review covers selected poems from eight collections of poetry.

Dreaming of Mashiach

Ricky Rapoport Friesem — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:11:44 -0500