Glimpses Into American Jewish History (Part 49)

Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal

This essay studies emergent themes in American Jewish women’s history and integrates them within the broader, often sustained, themes in the field of American Jewish women’s history. Beginning with a brief historiography of the field of American Jewish women’s history as it emerged in the late 1970s, this examination traces its transformation over the following decades and its evolution to today. In addition to presenting the field’s persistent themes, including work and domesticity (women’s roles in both the public and private spheres), politics and social activism, religiosity, and feminism, looking at key texts from both feminist scholars as well as recent works in the field of modern Jewish history, this essay highlights the emergence of new lines of scholarly inquiry spanning contemporary social, cultural, political, economic, and broad intersectional discourse. Moreover, this essay advances and emphasizes two clear patterns of emergent literature based on this assessment. Firs...

The most powerful fundraising method in the nineteenth-century United States was the charity fair. Organized by women, the biggest of these fairs could raise in excess of a million dollars in a matter of weeks. This was a staggering sum for the period.. No other method of fundraising-neither banquets, balls, and benefit performances, nor subscriptions and appeals-produced so much money so fast. However, the stated purpose of these fairs-to raise money for a good cause-is not the whole story. These events did much more. They shaped public life and placed women at its center, and they did so artfully. They also marked the transformation of charity into philanthropy, an important shift in Jewish life. Just how they did this is the subject of this essay. Before the Civil War, single organizations scheduled fairs of modest scope and duration. Known variously as church fairs, ladies' fairs, fancy fairs, charity fairs, and bazaars, these events, based on English models, had been popular in New England since the 1830s. 2 They featured women's needlework as well as donated goods, refreshments, and various entertainments. Jewish charity fairs in the United States date from at least the 1850s. A reporter for the Jewish Messenger remembered attending "a bright Fair, even though it was of small dimensions, in 1859, which was held in a store on Broadway near 12th Street for the benefit of a society of the Portuguese Congregation." 3 It was during the Civil War that the blockbuster fair was born. They were known as sanitary fairs because they were prompted by the urgent need to address unsanitary medical conditions on the battlefield. During the Civil War, more men were dying in infirmaries than on the battlefield due to unsanitary conditions, inadequate medical supplies, and understaffing. Many women lost husbands, fiancés, brothers, fathers, and other loved ones. Widows, many with children, were left without support. Compassion for the men on the field and for the women and children they left behind prompted women to lobby the government to form the United States Sanitary Commission. Women then set about raising millions of dollars through the sanitary fairs they organized in many parts of the country. These spectacular events wedded the purposes and style of the venerable ladies' fair with aspects of three contemporaneous developments: world's fairs, department stores, and museums. Like world's fairs (the first was held in London in 1851 and New York hosted its own Crystal Palace in 1853), the sanitary fairs, which were organized by existing voluntary associations or by their own committees, encouraged broad national and international participation. Individual states were represented at the sanitary fairs as were various nations. Britain, for example, showed support for the United States Sanitary Commission's compassionate efforts to care for sufferers on both sides of the Civil War by being represented at the 1864 Metropolitan Fair, as this Manhattan sanitary fair was known. Even the exhibits and entertainments at sanitary fairs owed something to world's fairs, which were famous for their reconstructions of historical settings and presentations of exotic cultures. Thus, the Metropolitan Fair featured the Indian Department, which included not only Indian "relics" but also the performance of "War Dances." 4 Like the department store (the first was Bon Marché in Paris in 1852), sanitary fairs were organized into departments based on types of goods and designed to make a grand impression. They included not only booths full of merchandise, but also refreshments, exhibitions, and entertainment. Sanitary fairs also served as temporary museums. Indeed, the excitement generated by the art exhibition at the 1864 Metropolitan Fair prompted New Yorkers to call for the establishment of an art museum, and resulted in the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870. The early Jewish fairs were relatively small affairs and generally organized by a single Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Moral Sublime, p. 2 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Moral Sublime, p. 3 Jewish charity fairs offer a living picture-a panorama-of the Jewish community as it understood itself and wanted to be seen. Part snapshot and part formal portrait, the fairs were exercises in self-definition as well as image management. They were also agents of solidarity and an early experiment in community-wide action. New York's burgeoning and diversified Jewish community was characterized by a proliferation of associations, institutions, and congregations that marked divisions based on class, gender, age, place of origin, religious ideology, and occupation. Their friendly and not so friendly rivalry was frequently noted. New York's Jews, whose numbers increased tenfold between 1840 and 1860, were exceptional in their proclivity to organize. According to historian Hasia Diner, "Between 1848 and 1860, when Jews made up somewhere between two and five percent of the city's

Student # 997243852

Shofar, 2006

Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 2006

1996

Historians, sociologists, and contemporary critics have used the trope of the “feminization of the synagogue” to describe and critique gendered changes in American Judaism. Yet, given its many usages, the concept has proven too ambiguous and wide-ranging to function as a useful analytical description. This article begins by parsing the multiple uses of the term feminization: Who uses it, and what might they mean? Equipped with this map of the many meanings of the concept, the article then takes the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a case study. In this period, there is little historical evidence to support the idea that a single, identifi able phenomenon we should call feminization of the synagogue occurred. The persistence of the scholarly trope of feminization of the synagogue, despite the uneven evidence and slipperiness of the term, suggests the need for greater specificity and clarity in scholarly use. Key words: feminization, gender, women, American Judaism

The homesteading experience is being revisited with the regrowth of Midwestern Studies. What has been ignored and is now being investigated are the women homesteaders, who worked with their men (husband, brother, or father) to build farms on the wild plains. However, often forgotten among these women are the Jewish women who battled to keep their religion in an environment that was unknown to them. By understanding this minority in the western expansion experience, a greater understanding of the American experience can be uncovered.

2010

the hbi series on jewish women, created by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, publishes a wide range of books by and about Jewish women in diverse contexts and time periods. Of interest to scholars and the educated public, the hbi Series on Jewish Women fills major gaps in Jewish Studies and in Women and Gender Studies as well as their intersection. the hbi series on jewish women is supported by a generous gift from Dr. Laura S. Schor.

InJanuary 1690, Gliklchen, daughter of Leib Stern, appeared before the lay leaders, or parnassim, of Altona and Hamburg. Gliklchen had agreed to act as a guarantor for Yissakhar ha-Kohen, in order to help him attain hezkat kahal, o⁄cial right of settlement within the Jewish community. Gliklchen took an oath in the presence of witnesses, in which she a⁄rmed that she would take responsibility for ''all that is incumbent upon him [Yissakhar], according to his worth, to pay to the community, and to pay his past and future debts to the community of Altona and of Hamburg, be they what they may, without any condition or limit. '' 1 Gliklchen agreed to pay the hefty sum of up to ¢ve hundred Reichstahler if Yissakhar were to leave the community of Altona without having paid his debts; this responsibility was binding upon her and her heirs. That a woman had access to such a large sum of money highlights the economic heights to which women could ascend. Indeed, legislation governing women's access to, control over, and responsibility for property is generally seen as indicative of the division of labour within the household and the economic life of the household. 2 Women's access to property is also informative with respect to the status of women within their communities. The interaction between Gliklchen and Yissakhar ha-Kohen, for example, was far more than the case of a wealthy benefactress who had agreed to act as a guarantor for debts should the need arise. Yissakhar and Gliklchen performed a legal transaction, known as a kinyan sudar, an * Much of the research for this article was conducted with assistance from a Yad ha-Nadiv/ Beracha Foundation Fellowship. I am grateful to the foundation for the opportunity to work on this project. A portion of this article was also delivered as a paper at the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem Summer Workshop entitled 'Overlapping Spheres'. I am grateful to the Institute for the opportunity to participate in the programme, and the academic and ¢nancial assistance that made this work possible. I also thank Edward Fram, whose insights and research encouraged me to write the article, and Elisheva Baumgarten, whose comments helped improve this work. All errors remain my own. 1 Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (hereafter CAHJP) AHW 14 [147]. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.