A Political Tradition? American Jewish Women and the Politics of History

Abstract

Abstract In 1997, the publication of Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia announced to the world of American Jewish historical scholarship that the consistent neglect of women and women’s activities in the Jewish past had come to an end. After even a cursory skim of the encyclopedia’s 1,770 pages with its 910 entries-800 biographical profiles and 110 topical entries-no one could possibly claim that Jewish women did not have a history worth telling, or that their lives had been lived out in such domestic obscurity that they could not be reconstructed. Topical entries included sports, science, law, medicine, scholarship, literature, art, dance, and academia, all of which represented zones of endeavor in which Jewish women contributed mightily. Moreover, Jewish Women in America made it abundantly clear that women helped to shape the American Jewish world. ln the realm of American Judaism as a system of ritual and belief, Jewish women played formative roles in sustaining traditional practice, fostering Jewish learning and loyalty, and creating new modes of expression and behavior.