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The Unknown History of Jewish Women Through the Ages
On Learning and Illiteracy: On Slavery and Liberty
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Rachel Elior
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Translated by:
Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2023
About this book
Co-publication with Magnes Press.
The Unknown History of Jewish Women—On Learning and Illiteracy: On Slavery and Liberty is a comprehensive study on the history of Jewish women, which discusses their absence from the Jewish Hebrew library of the "People of the Book" and interprets their social condition in relation to their imposed ignorance and exclusion from public literacy.
The book begins with a chapter on communal education for Jewish boys, which was compulsory and free of charge for the first ten years in all traditional Jewish communities. The discussion continues with the striking absence of any communal Jewish education for girls until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the implications of this fact for twentieth-century immigration to Israel (1949-1959)
The following chapters discuss the social, cultural and legal contexts of this reality of female illiteracy in the Jewish community—a community that placed a supreme value on male education. The discussion focuses on the patriarchal order and the postulations, rules, norms, sanctions and mythologies that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, laid the religious foundations of this discriminatory reality.
The book begins with a chapter on communal education for Jewish boys, which was compulsory and free of charge for the first ten years in all traditional Jewish communities. The discussion continues with the striking absence of any communal Jewish education for girls until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the implications of this fact for twentieth-century immigration to Israel (1949-1959)
The following chapters discuss the social, cultural and legal contexts of this reality of female illiteracy in the Jewish community—a community that placed a supreme value on male education. The discussion focuses on the patriarchal order and the postulations, rules, norms, sanctions and mythologies that, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, laid the religious foundations of this discriminatory reality.
Author / Editor information
Rachel Elior, Jerusalem, Israel.
Reviews
"Elior's Magnum opus provides a treasure trove full of fascinating materials, which future reseachers as well as interested readers will no doubt find invaluable." Sylvia Barack Fishma in: Contemporary Jewry, 18.05.2024
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Acknowledgements
VII -
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Contents
IX -
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Notes on the Translation
XIII -
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Chapter 1 A Community of Memory
1 -
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Chapter 2 Communal Education in Traditional World
36 -
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Chapter 3 Marriage in Patriarchal Society
77 -
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Chapter 4 Patriarchy and Education
86 -
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Chapter 5 Exclusive Authority over Knowledge
92 -
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Chapter 6 On the Right to Literacy and Equality
114 -
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Chapter 7 On the Connection between Ignorance and Enslavement: The Different Faces of Liberty
140 -
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Chapter 8 ‘And He Shall Rule Over You’
155 -
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Chapter 9 Myths that Constitute and Create Consciousness
185 -
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Chapter 10 Jewish Law and Gender Difference
228 -
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Chapter 11 The Sin of Eve and the Punishment of Her Daughters: ‘He has made you to rule over her spirit so that she may walk according to your pleasure’
236 -
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Chapter 12 Woman as ‘Other’: From the Menacing Lilith of Myth to the Real Woman Burnt as a Witch
281 -
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Chapter 13 The Patriarchal Order
341 -
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Chapter 14 A Woman’s Duties to Her Husband and His Right to Beat Her, since ‘She is under His Authority’
362 -
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Chapter 15 Status: The Place Where Women May not Stand
386 -
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Chapter 16 Erasure from Memory
392 -
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Chapter 17 Exclusive Authority over Knowledge and Control of Literacy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
424 -
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Chapter 18 The Beginning of the Revolution: New Thoughts on Relations between Men and Women
473 -
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Chapter 19 The Beginnings of Jewish Feminism and its General Feminist Context
491 -
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Chapter 20 Equal Rights for Women
512 -
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Chapter 21 The Beginnings of Women’s Education
527 -
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Chapter 22 History: Looking at the Past and the Present
551 -
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Chapter 23 Testimonies about Women Writers and Women’s Writings in the Jewish Library
575 -
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Chapter 24 Women and Death in Antiquity and Late Antiquity
579 -
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Chapter 25 Women in the First Millennium
611 -
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Chapter 26 Women in the First Half of the Second Millennium in the East and West
614 -
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Chapter 27 Women Copyists, Printers and Scholars
635 -
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Chapter 28 Women in the Early Modern Era
652 -
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Chapter 29 Women Writers in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Yiddish-Speaking Ashkenazi Society
657 -
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Chapter 30 Jewish Women in the Muslim World in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
667 -
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Chapter 31 Women in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century: The Beginning of the Struggle for Independence and Equality
672 -
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Chapter 32 ‘To Create a New World’
684 -
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Chapter 33 On History, Literature, and Gender
711 -
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Conclusion
721 -
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Chronology
727 -
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Bibliography
735 -
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Index
776
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
May 22, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9783111043913
Hardcover published on:
May 22, 2023
Hardcover ISBN:
9783111042770
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
10
Main content:
793
Keywords for this book
Jewish women; Jewish history; enforced illiteracy; patriarchal order; discriminatory laws
Audience(s) for this book
Scholars in the field of Jewish history, gender studies, women studies, Jewish thought, anthropology.
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Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
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