Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870 (review)

Abstract

Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870, by Benjamin Maria Baader. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. 292 pp. $39.95. Feminist historians often portray as a bulwark of patriarchy and misogyny. Women's rights activists from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Mary Daly have denounced organized as a major barrier to women's emancipation. And many a feminist biographer has celebrated a female protagonist's disillusionment with her religious heritage as her first step toward liberation. But most nineteenth-century women did not share this view of as the enemy of emancipation. Rather, many expressed their aspirations to dignity and self-determination through an increased commitment to their faith communicies. The trend known as the feminization of religion has been examined in several histories of German Protestant and Catholic religious life in the nineteenth century. Now, Benjamin Maria Baader traces the development of women's status in Judaism during the same century. Baader, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, bases this study on archival and published materials produced by German Jewish women and men during the first part of the nineteenth century. During this era, a Jewish culture based on ancient customs and rituals was transformed by new aspirations to modernity, middle-class status, and German citizenship. Among Jews as among Christians, familial norms that stressed authority and subordination were superseded by a new view of the home as a center of love and intimacy. Moralists and religious leaders placed a high value on women's work as wives, mothers, and educators. And women assumed active and visible roles in congregations and communities. Marion Kaplan has traced this transition as it affected secular activities such as housekeeping, organizational life, and education. Baader completes this picture by showing us the relationship between domestic and religious cultures. Baader looks at changing gender roles in several areas: congregational worship, private devotions, education, organizations, and theology. In the synagogue, a service that had privileged the traditional Jewish learning that was available only to men became accessible to women through the inclusion of German-language sermons and choral music. Some synagogues modified or eliminated gender segregation in worship, and others introduced a confirmation ceremony for girls. …