America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today by Pamela S. Nadell

Abstract

Reviewed by: America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today by Pamela S. Nadell Rachel Kranson Pamela S. Nadell . America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today . New York : W. W. Norton , 2019 . 352 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000653 The publication of The Jewish Woman in America in 1976 signaled the emergence of a subfield that would revolutionize the study of American Jewish history. Scholars of American Jewish women opened up new areas of investigation, training their lens on unexplored topics such as the home, clothing, food-ways, marriage, divorce, sexuality, reproduction, and childrearing. At the same time, they uncovered the stories of remarkable women who made their mark on [End Page 209] institutions that did not always welcome their contributions, such as America's unions, courtrooms, and synagogues. In America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today , Pamela Nadell weaves together more than forty years of scholarship. The resulting narrative—the first synthesis of American Jewish women's history to be published since Hasia Diner and Beryl Lief Benderley's Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present , in 2002—testifies to the ongoing richness of this vital area of inquiry. In all, America's Jewish Women is the rare volume that serves as a scholarly contribution, a teaching tool, and an engaging read for an interested popular audience. Nadell synthesizes major contributions of the field without ever sacrificing readability and accessibility. Replete with insights from the scholarship and peppered with stories of fascinating American Jewish women, it offers a valuable resource to readers both inside and outside the academy. The volume begins with a brief discussion of what it might mean for American Jewish women to have a history distinct from other American women, in spite of their diversity and the manifold ways they have engaged with their Jewishness. While always attuned to religious, political, and economic differences, America's Jewish Women successfully demonstrates that significant groups of American Jewish women often shared a common set of concerns and circumstances, though they certainly did not all respond to these conditions in the same ways. That being said, America's Jewish Women does not engage more complex questions of definition, such as what it means to write women's history at a moment when we can no longer assume that gender is static or binary, or what complex legacies Americanness may have conferred upon Jewish women apart from relative religious freedom. This strikes me as appropriate for a synthetic volume aimed at a cross-over audience and does not prevent America's Jewish Women from being an excellent tool for anyone interested in a comprehensive overview of the field. Those looking for a denser theoretical discussion of the intersections of Americanness, Jewishness, and womanhood, however, may have to search elsewhere. The bulk of the volume takes us chronologically from the early years of the republic through the present moment, tracing challenges, accomplishments, and changes in the lives of American Jewish women. Nadell circles back to similar themes in each successive chapter, demonstrating the shifting ways in which American Jewish women tackled issues such as marriage, reproduction, childrearing, education, work, religion, and culture. Building on a long-standing feminist commitment to personal politics, the narrative moves deftly between the home and the workplace, domestic rituals and the synagogue, courtship and the courts. Implicitly, America's Jewish Women reminds readers that the public and private have never really been separate spheres, and that human lives are shaped as much by personal circumstance as by public achievements. Each of these chapters reflects not only Nadell's mastery of American Jewish women's history, but also her immersion in the broader field of American women's history. For instance, while most studies of American Jewish history begin their analyses of the early twentieth century with the immigration restrictions of 1924, Nadell takes her cues from women's historians and starts her [End Page 210] discussion with the ratification of women's suffrage in 1920. And instead of introducing her post-1945 chapter with reflections on the Holocaust, Nadell opens with the conservative gender dynamics of...