Motherhood

Mother of Micah: Bible

The story of Micah’s mother in Judges 17 is short, but it offers a key insight into ancient Israelite women’s important role as a leader in household worship.

Mother of Micah: Midrash and Aggadah

One midrash posits that Delilah was Micah’s mother, based on two stories in the Bible that mention Delilah and Micah immediately after one another. However, Rashi argued that the timelines of Delilah and Micah’s lives meant that they could not be related.

Mother of Samson: Bible

Though her name is never mentioned, Samson’s mother plays a vital role in shaping her son, one of the greatest among the Judges. When notified by a divine messenger that her son must be a Nazirite, she herself keeps the Nazirite vows, ensuring that he could grow up to become a hero to Israel.

The Jewish Family in Early Twentieth-Century United States

As poor Jewish immigrant families poured into the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, concerned social workers, rabbis, sisterhood presidents and journalists sounded an alarm about the state of the Jewish family. Women often bore the blame for what was seen as the weakening of the Jewish home, and communal organizations devoted much attention to strengthening the Jewish family.

Medieval Ashkenaz (1096-1348)

The Jews of medieval Ashkenaz are known for their prolific rabbis and for the Ashkenazic customs that became characteristic of many European Jewish communities. During the High Middle Ages, the women in these communities had many important roles women within the family and in the communal, economic, and religious life.

Matriarchs: A Liturgical and Theological Category

Among egalitarian religious congregations throughout the world, the most popular addition to the traditional liturgy is the mention of the Matriarchs in birkat avot (the blessing of the ancestors), the opening blessing of the Amidah.

Portrayals of Women in Israeli Media

Representations of women in a variety of Israeli media, such as advertising, news, and entertainment, reflect and perpetuate the marginality of women in Israeli society. While representations have diversified over the years, showing Israeli women in more varied professional roles and enjoying sexual freedom and independence, overall the gender inequity remains and women are still marginalized in Israeli media.

Martyred mother with seven sons (4MACC): Apocrypha

4 Maccabees is a philosophical retelling of 2 Maccabees, intended to inspire Jews by the martyred mother’s actions to accept the supremacy of devout reason.

Martyred Mother with seven sons (2MACC): Apocrypha

Following the passage of King Antiochus IV’s laws prohibiting the practice of Judaism, an unnamed mother leads a family through martyrdom.

Levant: Women in the Jewish Communities after the Ottoman Conquest of 1517

Following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, many Jews settled in Palestine, Egypt, and Syria – regions which fell under Ottoman Control in 1517. Girls in the Levant were married at young ages, polygamy was common, and obtaining a get was very difficult. Nevertheless, many Jewish women worked outside the home and kept their earnings.

Kurdish Women

Jews lived in Kurdistan for 2,800 years, until a mass migration to Israel in the 1950s. This Jewish community’s ancient roots and relative seclusion in the Kurdistan region fostered unique religious, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. Despite assimilation and the loss of traditional practices, the community remained tight-knit.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook

Although he credited women for their emotions and intuition and valued them for their essential position in the family, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook generally regarded women as inferior to men. He believed women should not be educated but rather should be limited to the home and to serving as their husband and family’s housekeeper.

A flock of white doves settle in a tree.

Kinnim (Tractate)

Tractate Kinnim (“nest” or “birds in a nest”), the last tractate in Order Kodashim (Holy Things), deals with the smallest type of sacrifice, a pair of turtledoves or young pigeons—one nest, hence the title.

A smiling woman stands behind a planter box watering flowers

Kibbutz Ha-Dati Movement (1929-1948)

Beginning in 1929, the religious kibbutz (Kibbutz Ha-Dati) movement represented the confluence of progressive ideals of equality and collectivism and traditional customs of Judaism. As a result, women in the movement lived at a crossroads.

A woman washes laundry by hand with a tin tub and washboard.

Kibbutz

Although the kibbutz was intended as an equalitarian, democratic utopia, attempts to achieve gender equality have been limited by traditional masculinities and male-controlled spheres and gender inequalities have persisted.

Shirley Kaufman

Shirley Kaufman’s poetry deals with family relationships, personal identity, aging and death, violence, and the meaning of Jewish fate. Moving to Israel later in life, she worked on many translations of Hebrew poetry and was noted for her series of poems about the suffering of women in the Bible, set in modern Israel.

Karaite Women

Family law and personal status of women are important aspects of both the daily life and the halakhah of Karaite communities. Karaite legal sources often deal with rules pertaining to betrothal, marriage, divorce, ritual purity, and incest.

Helena Kagan and Rachel Kagan at the WIZO Jerusalem Baby Home, 1955

Rachel Kagan (Cohen)

One of two women to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Rachel Kagan shaped women’s rights in the new state. She left a powerful legacy from her work in social welfare in addition to her time as a Knesset member.

Israeli Women's Writing in Hebrew: 1948-2004

Women writers faced many obstacles in the early years of modern Hebrew, but by the end of the twentieth century they had overcome marginalization to become a central part of the country’s literature. The achievements of women’s writing in Hebrew rank among the unquestionable triumphs of Israeli feminism.

Manuscript page with Hebrew text and red embellishment around section headings

Early Modern Italy

A study of the role of Jewish women in household formation, the household, and household dissolution, as well as their engagement in Jewish culture in early modern Italy, raises the question of how much of Jewish practice reflected the context of the surrounding society and how much engaged options in traditional Jewish practices, which were selected to meet their own needs. Despite the wealth of information about some well- known women and reports of the activities of many unnamed women, Jewish women, like Christian women, still functioned in the context of women and the period does not represent a Renaissance for women.

Izieu, Women of

Nazi Klaus Barbie’s capture, deportation, and murder of forty-four Jewish children living at a home in Izieu, France, in 1944 is known primarily as a story of children, but the bravery of five women is also a significant part of the tale. Sabine Zlatin, Léa Feldblum, Suzanne Levan-Reifman, Fourtunée Benguigui, and Ita-Rosa Halaunbrenner were workers at the home or mothers of children who lived there. They played critical roles testifying against Barbie in his 1987.

Iraqi Jewish Women

Jews lived in Iraq for thousands of years. Life for Iraqi Jewish women was determined by tradition, custom, and religious law, with a patriarchal system that emphasized child-rearing and household duties. These traditions shifted with the secularizing British Mandate in Iraq, and again with the assimilation the Iraqi Jewish community experienced upon immigration to Israel.

Infertile Wife in Rabbinic Judaism

Only men are legally obligated to procreate, but there is disagreement over whether that obligation compels a man to divorce his wife after ten childless years. The initial infertility of the matriarchs reinforces the efficacy of prayer by demonstrating that the individual matriarchs’ suffering and supplications are what provoked a divine response.

Imma Shalom

In the 1st century CE, Imma Shalom was the sister of a powerful Rabbi and wife of an eminent sage. She defended her husband when he disobeyed the wishes of his colleagues. She also challenged the tradition of giving shares of a father’s estate only to his sons and a judge awarded her part of her father’s estate, although the judge reversed himself after being bribed by her brother.

Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman

Rebekah Gumpert Hyneman was one of a small group of American Jewish women who published their work in the nineteenth century. She used her writing to showcase her love and devotion to Judaism. In her work, she encouraged American Jews to resist assimilation and understand the significance of their religion and also aimed to educate uninformed and anti-semitic non-Jews.

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