Dmaltby

I intend to create an article researching the role of Jewish women in the early modern history period. While our textbook goes to great lengths detailing the critical role of men in Jewish society, it neglectfully (or inadequately) details the role of women. Nor does Wikipedia have an article depicting this topic. I plan to include subsections in three of the critical regions of the early modern time period: Poland-Lithuania, Italy, and the Ottoman empire. I have reason to believe women played different roles in each of these different societies, and I want to explore and detail those differences. I believe this is an important topic, as 50% of the population has gone virtually unexplored in Jewish history. I wish to give others interested in this topic a summation of the importance of women in Jewish history and culture. Although this doesn't coincide with my topic chosen for the analytic paper, the role of Jewish women in politics and religion may ultimately show significance, which in turn may correspond well with my analytic paper.

Several sources I have chosen for this article are as follows:

-Jewish Women in Historical Perspective by Judith Baskin, 1998

-In the House of the law: gender and islamic law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine by Judith Tucker

-A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. 16, Poland-Lithuania by Salo Baron

-Encyclopedia of the Renaissance by Paul Grendler

-Jewish Women's Archive jwa.org

–Great start. Prof. Bitzan Amos26 (talk) 18:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Outline:

Jewish Women in Ottoman Empire:

• Sephardi women private life
  • Moslem influence on confinement to the household, Portuguese men keeping women at home

• • Education: responsibility of girls' mothers: domestic work (spinning, knitting, weaving); illiteracy common

• Sephardi women public life
  • Places where women would go to do chores: get water, laundry, oven, spinning/weaving

• • Bathhouses

• • Professions:
    • medics, urban middle class women had more freedom for work: merchants and moneylenders,

• Sephardi Widows

Jewish Women in Italy:

• • Private Life
    • Education: taught to read and write Italian, occasionally Hebrew, letter correspondance,
    • Marriage: engaged as soon as they hit puberty, dowries, divorce
  • Public Life
    • in Paduasome laws for women under 30 to not be in public eye at all 1599, 1630
    • Clothing was regulated by men: sumptuary laws
    • worship:
      • separate women's section, translations of services intended for women, disruptions in service, maps, not to be involved in ascetic practices,
    • Professions:
      • Authors:
      • Ritual Slaughterers
      • Business Jewish Women in Poland-Lithuania

Jewish Women in Poland-Lithuania

• Private Life:
  • centered on home, little male contact
  • Education: hired tutors or family members, yet sometimes they could attend heder
  • Worship: role of private prayer
• Public life:
  • Professions: intended to limit professional women; however some worked as peddlers, merchants, crafts like needlework widows as leaseholders
  • Couldn't hold public office