{"title":"Linguistic Liaisons: Wives and Vows in the Babylonian Talmud (Bt Nedarim 66A–B)","authors":"D. Stein","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article addresses language as a rabbinic thematic focal point where geographic and especially institutional boundaries are staged. Applying notions introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu regarding language and social order to a late rabbinic narrative in the Babylonian Talmud—in BT Nedarim 66a–b—it looks at women and words as semiotic markers that regulate institutional order.The tale introduces a domestic crisis triggered by linguistic misunderstandings and resolved, or at least compensated for, by the intervention of a sage. Thus, it presents the institution of the family, and the patriarchal authority and reproduction that the family entails, as subordinate to and dependent on the institution of the sages. The crux of the implied institutional rift is staged in the linguistic arena, which is the explicit theme of the entire textual unit (sugya) where the tale appears. The thematic framework of the sugya is vows (nedarim)—specifically vows made by husbands toward their wives that can be annulled by sages. The institutional division of labor whereby sages have control over (the annulment of) husbands' and fathers' vows, while the latter are granted the authority to release their wives and daughters from their own vows, is seen as creating an underlying cultural-institutional anxiety for which the last story in the sugya offers a (utopian) solution. Read in light of Bourdieu's notions of language, the sugya that stands at the center of this article may be construed as a meta-discourse, negotiating the linguistic symbolic capital that underlies rabbinic hegemony.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"25 1","pages":"176 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85700768","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 Doorway Of Their Own: Female Ethos in Dialogue in the Talmuds","authors":"Moshe Simon-Shoshan","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper examines four talmudic stories that portray women giving food to beggars who come to their doors. This motif represents a distinct female social and ethical perspective that contrasts with and critiques the dominant male rabbinic ethos. However, The talmudic editors frequently position, interpret and modify such stories in ways that draw attention away from, and even undermine, the female characters and the values they represent. Nevertheless, these strong female voices and characters are not totally silenced. They become part of a wider dialogic framework, remaining an integral part of the Talmud's discourse.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"33 1","pages":"127 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74914793","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":"Jewish Social Workers in Mandatory Palestine: Between Submission and Subversion under Male Leadership","authors":"A. Halpern","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines relations between the first social workers in the Yishuv—the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine (1918–1948)—and their male leadership, with emphasis on the decade between 1930 and 1940. It sheds light on the gender conflict between male administrative leaders and female service providers and the tension between social work as an arm of the nation state and as a tool of social activism.Feminist methodology and a qualitative analysis yield the following themes: (1) the social workers' gender approach; (2) their perception by men; and (3) the conflicts involved in their multifaceted dynamics with the Zionist establishment.The findings indicate that social workers operated at the interface between the interests of the establishment and those of their clients. With their commitment to nation-building, their professional principles and their concern for women's rights and social justice, these pioneers blazed a trail to female independence and public activism, while at the same time remaining committed and subordinate to a gender discourse dominated by men and national values.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"83 1","pages":"74 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83736470","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":"What R. Eliezer Taught a Wise Woman","authors":"Sheldon Kimmel","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Talmud describes conversations in which women addressed questions to the sage R. Eliezer, and his responses seem offensive. This article explains that R. Eliezer used a consistent educational method, reflected both in his conversations with these women and in his teaching of R. Akiva: He answered all of them with fiery words of Torah, allowing them to hear either an insult or an invitation to engage in a struggle that promoted their moral growth. This approach to teaching is part of the context of his (in)famous saying that \"One who teaches his daughter Torah, teaches her tiflut.\" That saying is commonly read as indicating that he disapproved of teaching women. However, the relevant texts support an alternative reading: His saying was a complaint about the way fathers taught their daughters Torah—watering down fiery words of Torah and thereby teaching their daughters worthless words, tiflut.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"215 1","pages":"153 - 175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76669157","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":"Circular Landscapes: Montage and Myth in Dvoyre Fogel's Yiddish Poetry","authors":"A. Torres","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the iconoclastic Modernist poetry of the Polish writer and critic Dvoyre Fogel (Debora Vogel, 1900–1942) and presents the first English translation of selections from her Yiddish poetry collection Manekinen (Mannequins, Warsaw 1934). Using poetic strategies of repetition, montage and stasis, Fogel developed a unique style informed by Unist and Constructivist visual art. Her representations of domestic space, materiality, sex work and reproductive labor anticipated elements of postwar feminist aesthetics. Despite her contributions to the Polish avant-garde, Fogel's writing has largely been eclipsed by her relationship with Bruno Schulz, whose work she profoundly influenced. My article examines three primary aspects of her work: the principle of simultaneity (simultanizm—the representation of multiple spatiotemporal perspectives); critiques of commodification, as in the suite of ballads on sex work and material consumption; and her mythologization of industry and commerce. The recovery of Fogel's poetry and literary theory invites a reconsideration of stillness and domesticity—alongside the prevailing focus on dynamism, self-revelation and mobility—as significant aspects of Yiddish modernism.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"50 1","pages":"40 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72500486","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":"He Found a Hair and it Bothered Him: Female Pubic Hair Removal in the Talmud","authors":"N. Bickart","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Three passages in the Babylonian Talmud directly address female pubic hair, the offensive presence of which is connected both to sexual assault and to national catastrophe. The passages also display formal similarities, in that they are all essentially Babylonian biblical commentaries into which Palestinian comments regarding pubic hair depilation are inserted. This paper argues that late Babylonian editors, living in a Sassanian Zoroastrian milieu in which pubic hair and its removal had vastly different connotations than in the Roman West, transposed their assumptions onto the sources they arranged. In doing so, they mapped their ideas about the female body onto their traditions about the past, actively composing terrifying tales of national destruction.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"14 1","pages":"128 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81897244","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":"\"La Jalutzah del Galuth\": Fundraising and Women's Folk Creativity among OSFA–WIZO Members in Argentina","authors":"Jacqueline Laznow","doi":"10.2979/nashim.35.1.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.35.1.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In recent years, much has been written about women's critical contribution to the Zionist project through women's organizations. However, the contribution of Jewish women in Latin America to the Zionist project is scarcely documented or referred to in the historiography of their communities. In the present article I will focus on the activities of the Argentinean federation of the Women's International Zionist Organization (OSFA–WIZO) between 1926 and 1970, and on how the organization utilized home-based praxis to raise funds and promote goals set by its leaders in Israel and Argentina.The historical and cultural context within which the organization operated shaped a unique public feminine endeavor. Thousands of Jewish women responded to the call to become a Jalutzah del Galuth—a woman pioneer of the galut (exile, Diaspora)—and enlisted to work for women and children in the Land of Israel. Zionist ethos, folk creativity and feminine currency stood at the core of the network that was woven between Jewish women in Argentina and Israel, despite the physical and cultural distance. The attempt to instill a Hebrew culture that included concepts such as manual labor and gender equality among Jewish women in Argentina demanded that the discourse be adapted to the local culture. The call to women through slogans and images to integrate these values and become embodiments of the \"new Hebrew woman\" demanded navigation between tradition and modernity. As the community at large examined the imported Zionist discourse, the Argentinean WIZO women sought to embrace the values of sisterhood and gender equality presented to them by the Zionist ideology. They did so while simultaneously maintaining their locally assigned gender roles as housewives and mothers. In retrospect, the organization contributed to the empowerment of Jewish women in Argentina by bestowing appreciation and public recognition upon their efforts.","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"137 1","pages":"39 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78197232","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":"Professional Women in the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine: Shaping a New Society and a New Hebrew Woman","authors":"Margalit Shilo, R. Avital","doi":"10.2979/nashim.34.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/nashim.34.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The purpose of this article is to shed new light on the entry of Jewish women into the public sphere in this period and on their achievements, and to briefly hint at the difficulties they encountered. It will outline the contours of the collective contribution made by professional women to the civil society of pre-State Israel during the first half of the twentieth century. In this pilot study, I will discuss only a few extraordinary professional women who strongly influenced their respective fields. I will focus on four areas—medicine, social work, education and dance—with special attention to the new social approaches that these professional women tried to institute. My goal is to consider the subject from a comprehensive perspective: How did the work of women contribute to the public sphere in the Mandate years, and to the forging of another kind of new Hebrew woman?","PeriodicalId":42498,"journal":{"name":"Nashim-A Journal of Jewish Womens Studies & Gender Issues","volume":"48 1","pages":"33 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91388543","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}