front cover of The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965
The Women Who Reconstructed American Jewish Education, 1910-1965
Carol K. Ingall
Brandeis University Press, 2011
The conventional history of Jewish education in the United States focuses on the contributions of Samson Benderly and his male disciples. This volume tells a different story—the story of the women who either influenced or were influenced by Benderly or his closest friend, Mordecai Kaplan. Through ten portraits, the contributors illuminate the impact of these unheralded women who introduced American Jews to Hebraism and Zionism and laid the foundation for contemporary Jewish experiential education. Taken together, these ten portraits illuminate the important and hitherto unexamined contribution of women to the development of American Jewish education.
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front cover of Environmental Futures
Environmental Futures
An International Literary Anthology
Caren Irr
Brandeis University Press, 2024
A global anthology, curated by experts from around the world, draws on fiction and poetry to examine environmental challenges and their implications for communities.
 
Featuring short stories, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction from around the world, this anthology showcases contemporary literature to envision the future of the environment. While environmental literature written in English has been dominated by English and American men who make solo explorations into an unspoiled natural world, Environmental Futures emphasizes local and indigenous writers contending with global landscapes that are far from pristine. Their work opens up decolonial perspectives from Anglophone Africa, South Asia, India, China, South America, the peripheries of Europe, and BIPoC North America. Introducing many writers who will be unfamiliar to English-speaking readers, this collection explores resistance to the oil economy, the impact of storms and natural disasters, extinction, and relations between humans and animals, among other themes.
 
The pieces are organized by geographical area in five sections: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. Expert scholars and translators—Kurt Cavender, Roberto Forns-Broggi, Cajetan Iheka, Upamanyu (Pablo) Mukherjee, Irina Sadovina, and Shaobo Xie—selected the works and provided critical introductions for each section.
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front cover of Fertility and Jewish Law
Fertility and Jewish Law
Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature
Ronit Irshai
Brandeis University Press, 2012
This book presents, from the perspective of feminist jurisprudence and feminist and liberal bioethics, a complete study of Jewish law (halakhah) on contemporary reproductive issues such as birth control, abortion, and assisted fertility. Irshai examines these issues to probe gender-based values that underlie the interpretations and determinations reached by modern practitioners of halakhah. Her primary goal is to tell, through common halakhic tools, a different halakhic story, one that takes account of the female narrative and its missing perspective.
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front cover of Holy Rebellion
Holy Rebellion
Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel
Ronit Irshai
Brandeis University Press, 2024
An in-depth study of Jewish religion and law in Israel from a gendered perspective.
 
In Holy Rebellion, Ronit Irshai and Tanya Zion-Waldoks examine social change in Israel through a rigorous analysis of the shifting entanglements of religion, gender, and law in times of cultural transformation. They explore theological, halakhic, political, and sociological processes and show how they interact with one another in ways that advance women’s rights, as well as how they are met with a conservative backlash in the discourses and actions of the rabbinic establishment. Irshai and Zion-Waldoks build on legal philosopher Robert Cover’s 1982 paper “Nomos and Narrative,” which explained how cultural narratives and legal norms are reciprocally enforced or transformed. Expanding on this notion, Irshai and Zion-Waldoks propose a “narrative ripeness test,” an analytic tool that evaluates the relationship between culture and law to assess how and when change within a minority cultural community may be accelerated or hindered by state intervention. 
 
Religious feminisms are emerging around the world, not solely in Israel, and this book helps elucidate how they create enduring and radical change. Many liberal states are also confronting an illiberal backlash and question the multicultural framework’s ability to serve the needs of minorities within minorities. Therefore, the theoretical framework offered by Irshai and Zion-Waldoks is applicable beyond the Israeli case, even as it offers deeper insights into an Israeli society in turmoil.
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