"Iudeae benemerenti": Towards a Study of Jewish Women in the Western Roman Empire

Abstract

epitaphs.2 Many of these epitaphs are formulaic in the extreme, while others offer us brief glimpses of emotion. Some are in Latin, many more in Greek. Only by collating and comparing as many of these epitaphs as possible will we squeeze any information about Jewish women's lives from these stones. Recently, the lives ofJewish women in classical antiquity have begun to attract scholarly notice. Bernadette Brooten was the first modern scholar to studyJewish women's epitaphs as a separate entity. Her work primarily assesses whether the titles of leadership in the synagogue given to women on inscriptions were functional or honorific. She concluded that women's socio-political status in