The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

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Michal Ben Ya'akov

Michal Ben Ya’akov lectures in the history department of the Efrata College of Education in Jerusalem. She received her doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a thesis on the patterns of immigration and settlement of North African Jews in nineteenth-century Erez Israel.

Her current work continues to focus on Jewish women in North Africa and Erez Israel in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine.

Articles by this author

About two dozen adults and children pose for a group photo.

Widows in the North African Jewish Communities of Late Ottoman Palestine

By the mid-1870s, approximately a quarter of the Jewish population of Palestine, excluding Jerusalem, was North African, and the overwhelming majority of adult Jews were women. This discrepancy was due to a large number of widows, who experienced economic and physical hardship in their new home but also a new sense of freedom.