Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women: Patterns in a Feminist Sampler

by Siegel; Rachel J

• ISBN13: 9780789000866
• ISBN10: 0789000865
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-09-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Jewish women of all ages and backgrounds come together in Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women to explore and rejoice in what they have in common--their heritage. They reveal in striking personal stories how their Jewishness has shaped their identities and informed their experiences in innumerable, meaningful ways. Survivors, witnesses, defenders, innovators, and healers, these women question, celebrate, and transmit Jewish and feminist values in hopes that they might bridge the differences among Jewish women. They invite both Jewish and non-Jewish readers to share in their discussions and stories that convey and celebrate the multiplicity of Jewish backgrounds, attitudes, and issues. In Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women, you will read about cultural, religious, and gender choices, conversion to Judaism, family patterns, Jewish immigrant experiences, the complexities of Jewish secular identities, antisemitism, sexism, and domestic violence in the Jewish community. As the pages unfold in this wonderful book of personal odysseys, the colorful patterns of Jewish women "s lives are laid before you. You will find much cause for rejoicing, as the authors weave together their compelling and unique stories about: midlife Bat mitzvah preparations the transmission of Jewish values by Sephardi and Ashkenazi grandmothers traditional Sephardi customs the sorrow and healing involved in coping with the Holocaust a lesbian "s fascination with Kafka the external and internal obstacles Jewish women encounter in their efforts to study Jewish topics and participate in Jewish ritual becoming a Reconstructionist rabbi the difficulties and benefits of being the teenaged daughter of a rabbi A harmonious chorus of individual voices, Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women will delight and inspire Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike. It reminds each of us how diverse and distinctive Jewish women "s lives are, as well as how united they can be under the wonderful fold of Judaism. This book will be of great interest to all women, as well as to rabbis, Jewish community leaders and professionals, mental health workers, and those in Jewish studies, women "s studies, and multicultural studies.

Table of Contents

Editors	xi	(2)
About the Authors	xiii	(8)
Foreword	xxi	(6)
Marcia Cohn Spiegel
Preface	xxvii
Rachel Josefowitz Siegel
Ellen Cole
SECTION I: FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION: THE MEANINGS OF MISHPACHA	3	(66)
Chapter 1. Living in a Glass Bowl: Tales of a Rabbi's Daughter	3	(6)
Elisheva Glass
Chapter 2. Bris, Britah: Parents' First Lessons in Balancing Gender, Culture, Tradition, and Religion	9	(10)
Susan Steinberg-Oren
Chapter 3. Married - Without a Chupa	19	(10)
Roslyn Mendelson
Chapter 4. Queer Jewish Women Creating Families: New Perspectives on Jewish Family Values	29	(10)
Susie Kisber
Chapter 5. Mothers, Judaism, and True Honor	39	(6)
Paula J. Caplan
Chapter 6. Backwards and Forwards in America	45	(12)
Sandra Butler
Chapter 7. Personal Reflections on Being a Grandmother: L'Chol Dor Va Dor	57	(12)
Rachel Aber Schlesinger
SECTION II: WANDERING JEWS: LIVES FRACTURED BY GEOGRAPHY	69	(56)
Chapter 8. Jewish Identity Lost...and Found	69	(12)
Trudi Alexy
Chapter 9. Trials and Tribulations in the First Year of a "Mixed Sephardi/Ashkenazi Marriage"	81	(14)
Sarah Taieb Carlen
Chapter 10. The Joys of Mitsvoth	95	(16)
Rebecca L. Bradley
Chapter 11. In Search of Eden	111	(8)
Pnina Granirer
Chapter 12. Family Memories and Grave Anxieties	119	(6)
Susan Weidman Schneider
SECTION III: THE JOURNEY HOME	125	(76)
Chapter 13. Really Jewish	125	(14)
Jane Marie Law
Chapter 14. You Don't Know Me Because You Can Label Me: Self-Identity of an Orthodox Feminist	139	(8)
Norma Baumel Joseph
Chapter 15. The Journey Home: Becoming a Reconstructionist Rabbi	147	(12)
Elisa Goldberg
Chapter 16. Becoming Jewish	159	(8)
Brenda Lynn Siegel
Chapter 17. How Jewish Am I?	167	(10)
Hannah Lerman
Chapter 18. The Politics of Coming Home: Gender and Jewish Identities in the 1990s	177	(10)
Rachel N. Weber
Chapter 19. "Why Kafka?" A Jewish Lesbian Feminist Asks Herself	187	(14)
Evelyn Torton Beck
SECTION IV: EVE AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: WOMAN'S PLACE AMONG THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK	201	(60)
Chapter 20. "I Don't Know Enough": Jewish Women's Learned Ignorance	201	(10)
Rachel Josefowitz Siegel
Chapter 21. Learning to Leyn	211	(8)
Michele Clark
Chapter 22. Better Late Than Early: A Forty-Eight-Year-Old's Bat Mitzvah Saga	219	(12)
Nina Perlmutter
Chapter 23. Exploring Adolescent Jewish Female Identity: Reflections About Voice and Relation	231	(16)
Carol Philips
Chapter 24. First There Are the Questions	247	(14)
Ellyn Kaschak
SECTION V: PAIN AND HEALING, SORROW AND HOPE	261	(52)
Chapter 25. Jewish Battered Women: Shalom Bayit or a Shonde?	261	(18)
Lenore E. A. Walker
Chapter 26. Canadian Jewish Women and Their Experiences of Antisemitism and Sexism	279	(12)
Nora Gold
Chapter 27. We Are Not As We Were: Jewish Women After the Holocaust	291	(10)
Joan Fisch
Chapter 28. Violent Legacies-Dialogues and Possibilities	301	(12)
Judith Chalmer
Glossary	313	(8)
Index	321