The Jewish Mother’s Prayer: Mothers in Late Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Jewish Women’s Prayer Books

Abstract

This chapter examines the genre of nineteenth-century Hungarian Neolog Jewish women's prayer books. It argues that the prayer books must be read in the context of emancipation and the increasing secularization of Hungarian society. It also describes the creation of prayers that sanctify a vocation of motherhood and child-rearing, which charged mothers with passing Jewish identity on to their children in the home. The chapter talks about Neolog prayer books that imagine the Jewish mother as a bulwark against secularization and simultaneously invest mothers with the power to recreate tradition in the face of emancipation. It points out how mothers are idealized and entrusted with the past for the sake of the future, enabling fathers to become part of public life outside the home.