Topics in Jewish History:
American Jewish Women’s History
Prof. Pamela S. Nadell
American University
Spring 2008

     This semester we explore the history of Jewish women in America from the colonial era to the beginning of the twenty-first century. This course uses the prism of gender to refine our understanding of American Jewish history and of United States women’s history. Topics include migration, domesticity, economic life, voluntarism, political activism, religion, Zionism, and feminism.

Required texts:

• 1. Pamela S. Nadell and Jonathan D. Sarna, eds. Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives.
• 2. Pamela S. Nadell, ed. American Jewish Women’s History.
• 3. Dara Horn, In the Image.

• · “An Angle of Vision”: Gender as a Category of Analysis in American History and Jewish History
• · “Introduction,” in Women and American Judaism, eds. Pamela S. Nadell and Jonathan D. Sarna, 1-14
• · “Introduction,” in American Jewish Women’s History, ed. Pamela S. Nadell, 1-7

• A. Jewish Women in Colonial America and the Early Republic
• · Ellen Smith, “Portraits of a Community: The Image and Experience of Early American Jews,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 13-25
• · Holly Snyder, “Queens of the Household: The Jewish Women of British America, 1700-1800,” in Women and American Judaism, 15-43
• · Aviva Ben-Ur, “The Exceptional and the Mundane: A Biographical Portrait of Rebecca Machado Phillips (1746-1831),” in Women and American Judaism, 46-80
• · Edith Gelles, ed., The Letters of Abigaill Levy Franks, 1733-1748, letter dated 7 June 1743, pp. 123-30; access via Google Books.
• B. Jewish Women, Republican Motherhood, and the Age of Association
• · Dianne Ashton, The Lessons of the Hebrew Sunday School in American Jewish Women’s History, 26-42
• · Secular and Religious Works of Penina Moïse, edited and compiled Charleston Section, Council of Jewish Women, read pages i-ix, “To Persecuted Foreigners,” page, 177; “Hymn 154,” p. 136; access at Google Books.
• C. Women and American Judaism in the Nineteenth Century
• · Karla Goldman, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism, pp. 38-99
• · Felicia Herman, “From Priestess to Hostess: Sisterhoods of Personal Service in New York City, 1887-1936,” in Women and American Judaism, 148-81
• D. Self-Definition
• · Eric L. Goldstein, “Between Race and Religion: Jewish Women and Self-Definition in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” in Women and American Judaism, 182-200
• · Jonathan D. Sarna, “A Great Awakening: The Transformation That Shaped Twentieth-Century American Judaism,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 43-63
• · Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893-1993,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 64-74
• · Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (poem), p. 202; access at Google Books.

• A. Der Heym: The East European Background
• · Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History, 50-92
• B. Coming to America
• · In class viewing of the film Hester Street (89 minutes)
• C. Migration and Settlement
• · Mary Antin, The Promised Land, 180-240; access at Google Books.
• · Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive, 1-8, 44-54
• · Shelly Tenenbaum, “Borrowers or Lenders Be: Jewish Immigrant Women’s Credit Networks,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 79-90
• D. Work
• · Linda Mack Schloff, “‘We Dug More Rocks’: Women and Work,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 91-99
• · Alice Kessler-Harris, “Organizing the Unorganizable: Three Jewish Women and their Union,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 100-15
• · Susan A. Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation, 132-73
• E. Politics: In the Neighborhood and for Suffrage
• · Paula E. Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 116-28
• · Elinor Lerner, “Jewish Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement,” American Jewish History (June 1981): 442-61
• F. Turning to Zion
• · Joyce Antler, “Zion in Our Hearts: Henrietta Szold and the American Jewish Women’s Movement,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 129-50
• · Erica Simmons, “Playgrounds and Penny Lunches in Palestine: American Social Welfare in the Yishuv,” American Jewish History 92, 3 (September 2004), 263-297;

• A. At Home in American Judaism
• · Jenna Weissman Joselit, “The Jewish Priestess and Ritual: The Sacred Life of American Orthodox Women,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 153-74
• · Beth S. Wenger, “Mitzvah and Medicine: Gender, Assimilation, and the Scientific Defense of ‘Family Purity’,” in Women and American Judaism, 201-22
• · Regina Stein, “The Road to Bat Mizvah,” in Women and American Judaism, 223-34
• · Jenna Weissman Joselit, The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950, 135-170
• B. Confronting the Great Depression and Antisemitism
• · Beth S. Wenger, “Budgets, Boycotts, and Babies: Jewish Women in the Great Depression,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 185-200
• · Julia L. Foulkes, “Angels ‘Rewolt!’: Jewish Women in Modern Dance in the 1930s,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 201-18
• · Rona Sheramy, “There are Times When Silence is a Sin”: The Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Nazi Boycott Movement,” American Jewish History, 89, 1 (2001) 105-121
• C. New Occupations: “My Daughter, the Teacher”
• · Ruth Jacknow Markowitz, My Daughter, the Teacher: Jewish Teachers in New York City Schools, 1-17, 75-92

• A. Private Lives and Public Representations
• · Joan Jacobs Brumberg, The ‘Me’ of Me: Voices of Jewish Girls in Adolescent Diaries of the 1920s and 1950s, in American Jewish Women’s History, 223-37
• · Riv-Ellen Prell, “Rage and Representation: Jewish Gender Stereotypes in American Culture,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 238-55
• B. We Are What We Eat
• · Marcie Cohen Ferris, “’From the Recipe File of Luba Cohen’: A Study of Southern Jewish Foodways and Cultural Identity,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 256-80
• · Hasia Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration, pp. 178-219
• C. “With Vision Flying”: New Perspectives on Women’s and Gender History
• · Keynote: Beyond the Gender Turn
• · Kathy Peiss, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
• · History and Film
• · “Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg”: Narrating Women’s History through Documentary Film
• · Aviva Kempner, Independent Filmmaker
• D. Jewish Women as Religious Leaders
• · Shuly Rubin Schwartz, “Ambassadors without Portfolio? The Religious Leadership of Rebbetzins in Late-Twentieth-Century American Jewish Life,” in Women and American Judaism, 235-67
• · Pamela S. Nadell, “The Women Who Would Be Rabbis,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 175-84
• · In class viewing of And the Gates Opened: Women in the Rabbinate
• E. The View from Orthodoxy
• · Lynn Davidman, Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism, 1-25, 136-73
• · Stephanie Wellen Levine, Mystics, Marvericks, and Merrymakers, 1-66
• F. Inventing Fictions
• · Dara Horn, In the Image (all)
• G. Political Commitments I
• · Emma Goldman “The Traffic in Women,” access at “The Traffic in Women”
• · Joyce Antler, “Justine Wise Polier and the Prophetic Tradition,” Women and American Judaism, 268-91
• · Debra L. Schultz, “Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 281-96
• H. Political Commitments II: Feminism
• · Joyce Antler, The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America, pp. 259-84
• · Alix Kates Shulman, “A Marriage Disagreement, or Marriage by Other Means,” in The Feminist Memoir Project, edited by Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ann Snitow, pp. 284-303
• I. Feminist Judaism
• · Deborah E. Lipstadt, “Feminism and American Judaism: Looking Back at the Turn of the Century,” in Women and American Judaism, 291-308
• · Paula E. Hyman, “Jewish Feminism Faces the American Women’s Movement: Convergence and Divergence,” in American Jewish Women’s History, 297-312
• · “JOFA: Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance,” browse the website at http://www.jofa.org.
• J. Jewish Families Today
• · Sylvia Barack Fishman, Double or Nothing?: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage, pp. 1-54

• 1.Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), xiv.