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Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook » (Revised)

Book cover image of Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook by Ellen M. Umansky

Authors: Ellen M. Umansky, Dianne Ashton
ISBN-13: 9781584657309, ISBN-10: 1584657308
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Date Published: December 2008
Edition: Revised

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Author Biography: Ellen M. Umansky

ELLEN M. UMANSKY is Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies, Department of Religious Studies, Fairfield University. DIANNE ASHTON is Professor of Religion and Director of the American Studies Program at Rowan University.

Book Synopsis

The only comprehensive volume of Jewish women's spiritual writing from the sixteenth century to the present

Publishers Weekly

Various works composed between 1560 and 1990 by some 100 Jewish women living in Europe, America and the stet/pk land of Israel testify to a strong, age-old female religious self-identity. Defending herself to a Catholic cleric in a 1641 pamphlet, Italian poet Sara Copia Sullam declares her belief in the immortality of the soul; 17th-century German merchant Gluckel of Hamelnsp ok urges her children to set aside time for the study of Torah and to be honest in money matters with both Jews and gentiles; and also offered here is a prayer, found in an anomymous 1648 Amsterdam collection, that women said when they put the Sabbath bread into the oven. During the 19th century, American Emma Lazarus honors, in a poem, the Touro Synagogue of Newport, R.I., and American Penina Moise composes English-language hymns for use in Reform temples. In 1916, American Zionist Henrietta Szold explains in a letter that she will defy Jewish tradition and say kaddish for her mother; and Hungarian-born WW II heroine Hannah Senesh dreams of a national homeland for the Jews. Contemporary voices create new rituals as they meditate on menstruation, sexual abuse and rape, miscarriage, conversion, feminism and nuclear arms. Umansky and Ashton are religion academics. (July)

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