Authors: Adrienne Baker, Jo Campling (Editor), Susie Orbach
ISBN-13: 9780814712108, ISBN-10: 081471210X
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: New York University Press
Date Published: October 1993
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Adrienne Baker is a lecturer in Women's Studies at Birkbeck College, London University, and Director and Tutor in Counselling at Regent's College, London. She is also a member of the Chief Rabbi's working party researching issues of concern to Jewish women.
What does it mean to be a Jewish woman today? To an Orthodox woman, it means living a religious way of life in which serving God totally defines her self-perception and her role as wife and mother. For the secular woman, it means having a sense of belonging, although not necessarily to a specific Jewish community. Most contemporary Jewish women fall somewhere in between, but at the core of all of their identities is a complex interweaving of religious and ethnic elements, a shared history, and a collective memory of periods of prejudice, persecution, wandering, and resettlement.
Focusing on Jewish women in the United States and Britain, Adrienne Baker examines such issues as women's role in religious law, the spectrum of synagogue observance, the mother's role as conveyor of tradition, conversion and inter- faith marriages, and sexuality. In particular, the book examines the impact of feminism on Jewish women and their culture, uncovering the counterinfluences of tradition and new freedoms on women's lives.
Preface | ||
Acknowledgements | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
I | The Cultural Background | 7 |
1 | Setting the Scene | 9 |
Jewish immigration into Britain | 9 | |
The American incoming | 12 | |
On being an immigrant | 14 | |
Ashkenazim and Sephardim | 16 | |
Demography: facts and fears | 23 | |
II | Women and Judaism | 33 |
2 | Women's Role in Judaism | 35 |
'Blessed art thou...Who hast not made me a woman' | 35 | |
Woman's rightful realm | 35 | |
Images and stereotypes | 41 | |
3 | Religious Law | 45 |
Women's status | 45 | |
Prayer | 48 | |
Religious study | 50 | |
Divorce | 54 | |
Agunah, the 'anchored woman' | 58 | |
Can the law change? | 61 | |
4 | The Religious Scene | 65 |
America | 66 | |
Britain | 74 | |
Ritual | 86 | |
The secular Jew | 92 | |
What does it mean to me, being a Jewish woman? | 97 | |
5 | Aspects of Onhodoxy | 102 |
The ultra-Orthodox | 102 | |
The Chassidim | 108 | |
The ba'alot t'shuva: women who 'return' to strict Orthodoxy | 115 | |
III | Family Life | 121 |
6 | The Jewish Woman at Home | 123 |
The Jewish family in history | 124 | |
The daughter's apprenticeship | 125 | |
Myths | 132 | |
Food | 135 | |
Handing on tradition | 143 | |
7 | Marriage, Childbearing and Sexuality | 147 |
The meaning of marriage | 147 | |
Choosing a partner and the wedding ceremony | 150 | |
The marital relationship and the Laws of Family Purity | 155 | |
'Be fruitful and multiply' | 158 | |
Sexual morality | 163 | |
Staying single | 164 | |
Lesbianism | 166 | |
8 | Areas of Difficulty | 172 |
Intermarriage | 172 | |
Conversion | 175 | |
Family breakdown and domestic violence | 179 | |
Single parent families | 183 | |
Women as carers | 186 | |
IV | Areas of Change | 189 |
9 | Changing Perspectives | 191 |
Secular education | 191 | |
Voluntary work | 194 | |
Jobs and careers | 196 | |
10 | Feminism | 204 |
Within the family | 205 | |
Within religion | 206 | |
Woman's legal status in relation to divorce and agunah | 207 | |
Feminism and Zionism | 209 | |
Ambivalence and change | 212 | |
Bibliography | 216 | |
Index | 224 |