This volume, an amazing act of historical recovery and
reconstruction, offers a comprehensive examination of Jewish women
in Europe during the High Middle Ages (1000-1300). Avraham Grossman
covers multiple aspects of women's lives in medieval Jewish
society, including the image of woman, the structure of the family
unit, age at marriage, position in family and society, her place in
economic and religious life, her education, her role in family
ceremonies, violence against women, and the position of the
divorcee and the widow in society.
Grossman shows that the High Middle Ages saw a distinct improvement
in the status of Jewish women in Europe relative to their status
during the Talmudic period and in Muslim countries. If, during the
twelfth century, rabbis applauded women as "pious and pure" because
of their major role in the martyrdom of the Crusades of 1096, then
by the end of the thirteenth century, rabbis complained that women
were becoming bold and rebellious. Two main factors fostered this
change: first, the transformation of Jewish society from agrarian
to "bourgeois," with women performing an increasingly important
function in the family economy; and second, the openness toward
women in Christian Europe, where women were not subjected to strict
limitations based upon conceptions of modesty, as was the case in
Muslim countries. The heart of Grossman's book concerns the
improvement of Jewish women's lot, and the efforts of secular and
religious authorities to impede their new-found status.
Bringing together a variety of sources including halakhic
literature, biblical and talmudic exegesis, ethical literature and
philosophy, love songs, folklore and popular literature,
gravestones, and drawings, Grossman's book reconstructs the
hitherto unrecorded lives of Jewish women during the Middle Ages.
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