{"title":"Home","authors":"Drita Tutunović","doi":"10.1109/sustech57309.2023.10129603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/sustech57309.2023.10129603","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Drita Tutunović’s story “Home” is an autobiographical narrative on Sephardic life in the period before and after World War II, printed here in both English and the original Djudezmo. The protagonist is Drita’s mother, Matilda. The history of Drita’s Sephardic family, the tragedy of the Holocaust and a pathway to a new life in Belgrade are described through the metaphor of keys to one’s home, which Sephardic Jews have carried with them for centuries when forced to leave one place of residence for another.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"54 1","pages":"141 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84869860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Summoning Spirits in Egypt: Jewish Women and Spiritualism in Early Twentieth-Century Cairo","authors":"Samuel Glauber-Zimra","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:A rare account of Jewish women’s spiritualist activity is preserved in R. Aaron Mendel Hakohen’s Haneshamah vehakadish (1921), an early-twentieth-century Hebrew religious treatise on the soul and the afterlife. The anonymous women depicted in it held regular séances in the company of their families in their Cairo home, in which they utilized a planchette, a popular spirit communication device, in order to contact the departed. This article presents and analyzes Hakohen’s account, considering his role as a literary intermediary relating the women’s communication with the dead, the activities of the Cairo circle in comparison to broader spiritualist practice, and the place of spiritualist doctrine within Hakohen’s theology of the afterlife. A full translation of the account into English is presented in the .","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"74 1","pages":"25 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79217408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cross-Dressing in Jewish Law and the Construction of Gender Identity","authors":"Ronit Irshai","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article reassesses certain assumptions concerning the conception of gender as a rigid binary structure within Jewish tradition, through the analysis of the scriptural ban on cross-dressing (Deut. 22:5), and its development within past and contemporary Jewish legal discourse. It proposes that the prohibition on cross-dressing has traditionally been interpreted in two opposing manners—an essentialist approach and a functionalist approach. Both options, from the early rabbinic literature down to the contemporary responsa literature, were seen as halakhically valid. Thus, the standard contemporary theology affirming a rigid gender binary as the sole halakhic truth represents just one hermeneutic option. This halakhic “truth” has served as a political device wielded against Jewish religious feminism.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"14 1","pages":"46 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89704984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A Never Ending Source of Wonder”: The Women of Hadassah Create a Modern Medical Center in Jerusalem","authors":"S. Rotem","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The inauguration of the Hadassah University Medical Center in 1939 was a milestone in the activities of the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America in Eretz Israel. Until that point, the organization had focused on developing and providing curative and preventative health and social care in Palestine. The establishment of a modern medical center, incorporating nursing and medical schools, changed the organization’s objectives to include medical and scientific research. The building was designed by renowned architect Erich Mendelsohn and became not only one of his most celebrated successes but also an outstanding example of pre-state Israeli architecture. This article examines the influence of Hadassah’s mission and vision on the outcome of the building. What cultural and ideological values were manifested in the architecture of this hospital, built in pre-state Israel by a group of American Jewish Zionist women?","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"38 1","pages":"124 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89115181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“If Both are Equally Good”: An Unusual Depiction of Marriage and Women in a Midrash from the Cairo Genizah","authors":"Moshe Lavee, Shana Strauch Schick","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article offers a critical analysis of one section of a previously lost midrashic text found in the Cairo Genizah, termed Midrash ḥad-shenati (MḤS) by Louis Ginzberg and Jacob Mann. We examine the section on the parashah of Toledot and demonstrate how various traditions have been brought together in it to form a composition with its own literary and thematic concerns relating to marriage, procreation and lineage. MḤS: Toledot is distinct in centering on an active female protagonist, portraying her in an exclusively positive light, and idealizing a mutual (and monogamous) marriage relationship between Isaac and Rebecca. Aside from uncovering forgotten perspectives that diverge from what is generally found in the rabbinic canon, the textual and thematic analyses offered here enable us to identify the literary placement of this unique midrashic collection in the history of midrashic activity and its larger geographical and cultural context.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"94 1","pages":"69 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82387787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sarah Our Rebbe: R. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira’s Feminine Spiritual Leadership in the Warsaw Ghetto","authors":"Daniel Reiser","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Theological argument with and protest against God has deep roots in Jewish tradition. Usually the role models for such protests are male biblical figures, such as Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Jonah and Job. In this article, I will present an exceptional hasidic interpretation of Sarah’s death as an act of “protest within faith.” According to Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, a hasidic rebbe in the Warsaw ghetto, Sarah “our matriarch” committed “suicide” for the sake of the people of Israel. Sarah died in order to demonstrate to God that her excessive suffering in the wake of Isaac’s near sacrifice was absolutely unbearable. R. Shapira found himself at a time of utter collapse and extreme personal crisis at the beginning of World War II. I argue that, in his biblical exegesis, R. Shapira took Sarah’s mode of besieged protestation upon himself as a spiritual leader of the Jewish people, a mantle he carried until his tragic death.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"79 1","pages":"24 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83921316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A Bubble of Happiness and Visionary Beauty”: The Mystical Feminist Art of Barbara Mendes","authors":"Judith Margolis","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.0149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.0149","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"17 1","pages":"149 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79058758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Looking and Listening Differently: Crimes and Misdemeanors, II Samuel 11–12 and #Metoo","authors":"Wendy Zierler","doi":"10.2979/nashim.38.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.38.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article sets out to look back at and “rehear” a film, Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, and a biblical text, the story of David and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11–12, in the aftermath of the Trump presidency and in light of the #MeToo movement. Employing the interpretive method used in my book, Movies and Midrash, as well as the feminist epistemological insights of Evelyn Fox Keller and Miranda Fricker, the article concentrates on and critiques the would-be throwaway, comic, #Metoo-relevant moments of the Woody Allen film, those not typically addressed in critical and Jewish interpretations of the film, including my own book. It then offers a contemporary, #MeToo, feminist, midrashic close reading of the David and Bathsheba story. Throughout the David and Bathsheba narrative, men and a masculine God are depicted as seeing, often broadly and from a distance, but only Bathsheba actually hears. The aim of the article is to engage in an exercise in self-observation, re-listening and constructive re-interpretation that also speaks to the kind of broader historical, epistemological and hermeneutical shifts that allow us as a culture to read differently.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"28 1","pages":"118 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81950089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The \"Vulnerable Hero\" and His Wife: PTSD and Shifting Dynamics of Gender and Care in Contemporary Israel","authors":"K. Friedman-Peleg","doi":"10.2979/nashim.37.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.37.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article seeks to contribute to the growing discussion on the shifting dynamics of gender and care. Based on participant observations in a support group for Jewish-Israeli women married to men diagnosed with security-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the article explores what happens when the application of professional recommendations regarding the treatment of PTSD simultaneously resonates with and challenges collective gendered expectations of care. In the face of the men's new status as \"vulnerable heroes\" in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the twofold role of the emotional language of therapy is exposed and discussed. While the group's therapists operated as mediators between the participants' marital relations and the broader social context, offering the language of therapy as a means to help the women help their husbands by extending their care responsibilities, the participants themselves turned the group into an \"accelerator\" for exploring their daily lives beyond their traditional roles as caregivers. Utilizing their new familiarity with the linguistic register of therapy as a \"Trojan horse\" within the intervention framework of a highly nationalized disorder, the participants paved an unforeseen pathway toward expressing, recognizing and challenging collective gendered expectations.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"56 1","pages":"14 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85752985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}