Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women: Patterns in a Feminist Sampler

Description

Jewish women of all ages and backgrounds come together in Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women to explore and rejoice in what they have in common--their heritage. They reveal in striking personal stories how their Jewishness has shaped their identities and informed their experiences in innumerable, meaningful ways. Survivors, witnesses, defenders, innovators, and healers, these women question,... Read more

Jewish women of all ages and backgrounds come together in Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women to explore and rejoice in what they have in common--their heritage. They reveal in striking personal stories how their Jewishness has shaped their identities and informed their experiences in innumerable, meaningful ways. Survivors, witnesses, defenders, innovators, and healers, these women question, celebrate, and transmit Jewish and feminist values in hopes that they might bridge the differences among Jewish women. They invite both Jewish and non-Jewish readers to share in their discussions and stories that convey and celebrate the multiplicity of Jewish backgrounds, attitudes, and issues.

In Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women, you will read about cultural, religious, and gender choices, conversion to Judaism, family patterns, Jewish immigrant experiences, the complexities of Jewish secular identities, antisemitism, sexism, and domestic violence in the Jewish community. As the pages unfold in this wonderful book of personal odysseys, the colorful patterns of Jewish women’s lives are laid before you. You will find much cause for rejoicing, as the authors weave together their compelling and unique stories about:

midlife Bat mitzvah preparations
the transmission of Jewish values by Sephardi and Ashkenazi grandmothers
traditional Sephardi customs
the sorrow and healing involved in coping with the Holocaust
a lesbian’s fascination with Kafka
the external and internal obstacles Jewish women encounter in their efforts to study Jewish topics and participate in Jewish ritual
becoming a Reconstructionist rabbi
the difficulties and benefits of being the teenaged daughter of a rabbi

A harmonious chorus of individual voices, Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women will delight and inspire Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike. It reminds each of us how diverse and distinctive Jewish women’s lives are, as well as how united they can be under the wonderful fold of Judaism. This book will be of great interest to all women, as well as to rabbis, Jewish community leaders and professionals, mental health workers, and those in Jewish studies, women’s studies, and multicultural studies. Read less

Preface
Section I: From Generation to Generation: The Meanings of Mishpacha
Living in a Glass Bowl: Tales of a Rabbi’s Daughter
Bris, Britah: Parents’ First Lessons in Balancing Gender, Culture, Tradition, and Religion
Married--Without a Chupa
Queer Jewish Women Creating Families: New Perspectives on Jewish Family Values
Mothers, Judaism, and True Honor
Backwards and Forwards in America
Personal Reflections on Being a Grandmother: L’Chol Dor Va Dor
Section II: Wandering Jews: Lives Fractured by Geography
Jewish Identity Lost . . . and Found
Trials and Tribulations in the First Year of a “Mixed Sephardi/Ashkenazi Marriage”
The Joys of Mitsvoth
In Search of Eden
Family Memories and Grave Anxieties
Section III: The Journey Home
Really Jewish
You Don’t Know Me Because You Can Label Me: Self-Identity of an Orthodox Feminist
The Journey Home: Becoming a Reconstructionist Rabbi
Becoming Jewish
How Jewish Am I?
The Politics of Coming Home: Gender and Jewish Identities in the 1990s
Why Kafka? A Jewish Lesbian Feminist Asks Herself
Section IV: Eve and the Tree of Knowledge: Woman’s Place Among the People of the Book
“I Don’t Know Enough”: Jewish Women’s Learned Ignorance
Learning to Leyn
Better Late than Early: A Forty-Eight-Year-Old’s Bat Mitzvah Saga
Exploring Adolescent Jewish Female Identity: Reflections About Voice and Relation
First There Are Questions
Section V: Pain and Healing, Sorrow and Hope
Jewish Battered Women: Shalom Bayit or a Shonde?
Canadian Jewish Women and Their Experiences of Antisemitism and Sexism
We Are Not As We Were: Jewish Women After the Holocaust
Violent Legacies--Dialogues and Possibilities
Glossary
Index

Author(s)

Biography

Esther D Rothblum, Rachel J Siegel, Ellen Cole

Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women Patterns in a Feminist Sampler

Description

Table of Contents

Author(s)

Biography

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Secure Shopping Payment Options