Results by title

59 books match the query 'Jewish women' and 4 start with c

cover of Citizenship, Faith, and Feminism: Jewish and Muslim Women Reclaim Their Rights

Citizenship, Faith, and Feminism

Jewish and Muslim Women Reclaim Their Rights

Jan Feldman

Brandeis University Press, 2011

Religious women in liberal democracies are “dual citizens” because of their contrasting status as members of both a civic community (in which their gender has no impact on their constitutional guarantee of equal rights) and a traditional religious community (which distributes roles and power based on gender). This book shows how these “dual citizens”—Orthodox Jewish women in Israel, Muslim women in Kuwait, and women of both those faiths in the U.S.—have increasingly deployed their civic citizenship rights in attempts to reform and not destroy their religions. For them, neither “exit” nor acquiescence to traditional religious gender norms is an option. Instead, they use the narrative of civic citizenship combined with a more authentic, if alternative reading of their faith tradition to improve their status.
[more]
cover of Cosella Wayne: Or, Will and Destiny

Cosella Wayne

Or, Will and Destiny

Cora Wilburn, edited and introduced by Jonathan D. Sarna

University of Alabama Press, 2019

The first novel written and published in English by an American Jewish woman
 
Published serially in the spiritualist journal Banner of Light in 1860, Cosella Wayne: Or, Will and Destiny is the first coming-of-age novel, written and published in English by an American Jewish woman, to depict Jews in the United States and transforms what we know about the history of early American Jewish literature. The novel never appeared in book form, went unmentioned in Jewish newspapers of the day, and studies of nineteenth-century American Jewish literature ignore it com­pletely. Yet the novel anticipates many central themes of American Jewish writing: intermar­riage, generational tension, family dysfunction, Jewish-Christian relations, immigration, poverty, the place of women in Jewish life, the nature of romantic love, and the tension between destiny and free will.
 
The narrative recounts a relationship be­tween an abusive Jewish father and the re­bellious daughter he molested as well as that daughter’s struggle to find a place in the com­plex social fabric of nineteenth-century Amer­ica. It is also unique in portraying such themes as an unmarried Jewish woman’s descent into poverty, her forlorn years as a starving or­phaned seamstress, her apostasy and return to Judaism, and her quest to be both Jewish and a spiritualist at one and the same time.
 
Jonathan Sarna, who introduces the volume, discovered Cosella Wayne while pursuing research at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. This edition is supplemented with selections from Cora Wilburn’s recently rediscovered diary, which are reprinted in the appendix. Together, these materials help to situate Cosella Wayne within the life and times of one of nineteenth-century American Jewry’s least known and yet most prolific female authors.
 
[more]
cover of Covenant of Justice: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations from Women of Reform Judaism

Covenant of Justice

Prayers, Poems, and Meditations from Women of Reform Judaism

Women of Reform Judaism

Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2025

Covenant of Justice is a dynamic collection of prayers, poems, and reflections on the most pressing social justice issues of our time, viewed through the lens of Jewish tradition and covenant. Written by a diverse group of female, nonbinary, and genderfluid contributors, the pieces address key topics including racial equity, climate justice, gender equality, and reproductive rights. With a focus on action rooted in the Jewish value of tikkun olam (repairing the world), this book serves as both an educational resource and a call to action. Practical insights, historical context, and modern interpretations of Jewish texts make this an essential guide for individuals and communities striving to effect positive change. Covenant of Justice is an accessible, inspiring resource and call to action for readers from all walks of life seeking to build a more just world.

Copublished with Women of Reform Judaism
[more]
cover of Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955

Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation

A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955

Sandra McGee Deutsch

Duke University Press, 2010

In Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation, Sandra McGee Deutsch brings to light the powerful presence and influence of Jewish women in Argentina. The country has the largest Jewish community in Latin America and the third largest in the Western Hemisphere as a result of large-scale migration of Jewish people from European and Mediterranean countries from the 1880s through the Second World War. During this period, Argentina experienced multiple waves of political and cultural change, including liberalism, nacionalismo, and Peronism. Although Argentine liberalism stressed universal secular education, immigration, and individual mobility and freedom, women were denied basic citizenship rights, and sometimes Jews were cast as outsiders, especially during the era of right-wing nacionalismo. Deutsch’s research fills a gap by revealing the ways that Argentine Jewish women negotiated their own plural identities and in the process participated in and contributed to Argentina’s liberal project to create a more just society.

Drawing on extensive archival research and original oral histories, Deutsch tells the stories of individual women, relating their sentiments and experiences as both insiders and outsiders to state formation, transnationalism, and cultural, political, ethnic, and gender borders in Argentine history. As agricultural pioneers and film stars, human rights activists and teachers, mothers and doctors, Argentine Jewish women led wide-ranging and multifaceted lives. Their community involvement—including building libraries and secular schools, and opposing global fascism in the 1930s and 1940s—directly contributed to the cultural and political lifeblood of a changing Argentina. Despite their marginalization as members of an ethnic minority and as women, Argentine Jewish women formed communal bonds, carved out their own place in society, and ultimately shaped Argentina’s changing pluralistic culture through their creativity and work.

[more]