Jewish women

“ The deep reasons of life lie beyond the realm of individual advantage. The Jewish spirit, pursuing its ends deliberately and wisely, demands of women and of men two different devotions. It asks of women devotion to men, to their children, to their homes; of men, devotion [70] to ideals. Jewish women do not wait to ask if men are worthy, their thought is of service. They understand that in each devotion lies an equal glory, an equal joy, and an equal honor in the sight of God and of man. ”

“ I have ventured to group these women of the Rothschild family together as a conclusion to the history of Jewish women in literature, because I take their work to be an earnest of future accomplishment. Such examples cannot fail to kindle the spark of enthusiasm slumbering in the hearts of Jewish women, and the sacred flame of religious zeal, tended once more by women, will leap from rank to rank in the Jewish army. ”

“ The history of the Jewish race, its mere preservation during the long drawn out period of suffering—sad days of national dissolution and sombre middle age centuries—is a perplexing puzzle, unless regarded with the eye of faith. But that this race, cuffed, crushed, pursued, hounded from spot to spot, should have given birth to men, yea, even women ranking high in the realm of letters, is wholly inexplicable, unless the explanation of the unique phenomenon is sought in the wondrous gift of inspiration operative in Israel even after the last seer ceased to speak. ”

“ The Jewish women wear sometimes the native dress with the Izâr, sometimes European print gowns, with gaudy Manchester shawls over their heads. The men of the Pharisees and other high-church sects, are also distinguished by the love-lock, a long lank curl which hangs down in front of the ear beside the cheek, and is, to the eyes of an European, one of the ugliest and most unmanly fashions which could be invented.
The position of Jewish women is not enviable; they are divorced on the smallest pretext, even for cooking a dinner badly, and they live in constant anxiety. ”

“ So we find in every city these evidences of the intense vitality of the Jewish women's spirit for uplifting unfortunates. We find Jewish women on the committees for improved housing in the congested sections of our cities. We find Jewish women serving on the boards of trade schools, figuring in the organization of bureaus and federations of the United Hebrew Charities, opening public baths for the poor and investigating tirelessly the conditions of health and sanitation among them. ”

“ The pleasures and the hopes which Jews might not share they came by slow degrees to hate and to despise, and the men with the yellow badges on their garments learnt to cringe and stoop under their load, and the dark-eyed women with the blue stripes to their veils lifted them only to look upon their children. Undeniably, by every outward test, the poor pariahs of the Ghetto were degenerate, and their sad and sordid lives must have looked both repellent and unpicturesque to the passer-by. ”

“ Had she anticipated, before she married, what it would be, however she might fortify herself with scorn, to breathe always the atmosphere of the Jewish religious and social oblivion of women? Had she had any experience of Jewesses, their sultry conscious femineity, their dreadful acceptance of being admitted to synagogue on sufferance, crowded away upstairs in a stuffy gallery, while the men downstairs, bathed in light, draped in the symbolic shawl, thanked God aloud for making them men and not women? ”

“ The Jewish women wear either a coloured silk handkerchief gracefully folded in turban fashion on their heads, or a white cap with projecting horns, somewhat after the style of the head-dress of the girls of Northern Holland. What the Arab women look like I cannot, of course, say; but many of the Jewesses are really handsome—a fact of which they are by no means ignorant. ”

“ In the patriarchal ages the Jewish women must have enjoyed a large share of personal freedom; for we read of all ranks engaged in the labors of the field, and going out of the cities to draw water. That they were not usually secluded from visiters seems to be implied by the question which the strangers asked Abraham, “Where is Sarah, thy wife?” ”

“ The idea that women should vie with men in the fulfilment of every law, became even for the Rabbis a notion connected only with the remotest past. This is the impression one gains when reading the legend about Michal, the daughter of Saul, putting on phylacteries, or the wife of the prophet Jonah making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the three Festivals. It would indeed seem as if women were led to strive for the satisfaction of their religious wants in another direction. Yet it was said of Jewish women, “The daughters of Israel were stringent and laid certain restrictions on themselves.” ”

“ To hold woman in such an attitude is to rob her words and actions of all moral character. We see from this chapter that Jewish women, as well as those of other nations, were held in a condition of perpetual tutelage or minority under the authority of the father until married and then under the husband, hence vows if in their presence if disallowed were as nothing. That Jewish men appreciate the degradation of woman's position is seen in a part of their service in which each man says on every Sabbath day, "I thank Thee, oh Lord, that I was not born a woman!" ”

“ The great majority, however, were staunch adherents of the patriot cause and several Jewish women figure in Revolutionary history. Among the women of the South are the names of Mrs. Judy Minis and her daughter. The wife of a Revolutionary soldier, she was heart and soul in the cause. A strict observer of Jewish ritual, she prepared the meals for Jewish soldiers taken prisoners by the British, after the fall of Savannah. ”

“ Among these is the well-known story of Judith and Holofernes.
Many Jewish women have passed into literature and art. Rebekah at the wellside, Miriam watching by the reeds or singing the pæan of victory with timbrel, Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, Delilah the voluptuous, and Athaliah the monster, have exerted their influence both upon the makers of art and writers of drama, but probably no Hebrew woman before the birth of Jesus has made a deeper impress upon the imagination of men than Judith, the beautiful woman and patriot of Bethulia. ”

“ For thousands of years Jewish women have been taught the value of service; the dedication of the Self to an ideal. At the same time, they have been held firm to the realities of marriage by their worship. These two influences will, I believe, forever make it impossible for Jewish women in any numbers to accept the egoistic view of marriage and the duties of women that has been set up in England, as also in other European lands and in America, indeed wherever Self-assertion has been admitted as the ruling principle of life. ”

“ The Jewish woman leads a contracted, monotonous existence under the authority of the priest. The wives of many rich bankers have tried to do something to improve the condition of Hebrew women by founding aid societies, primary schools, and normal schools. ”

“ During the scene of the Jewish women dancing about the Golden Calf, all the doubts of his life came clear: Women were the source of the world's trouble and it was his mission to both punish them for this and to execute them. ”

“ It gives those who ordinarily spend their days in dingy unclean tenements an opportunity to leave the crowded quarters for seven hours a day, to breathe purer air, to learn the value of cleanliness, and to live in an atmosphere of cheerfulness and refinement. And this is far from being the only successful experiment by the Jewish women of America. ”

“ The earliest blossoms of Jewish poetry by women unfolded in the spring-like atmosphere of the Renaissance under the blue sky of Italy, the home of the immortal trio, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.124 The first Jewish women writers of Italian verse were Deborah Ascarelli and Sara Copia Sullam, who, arrayed in the full panoply of the culture of their day, and as thoroughly equipped with Jewish knowledge, devoted their talents and their zeal to the service of their nation. ”

“ Binswanger, of Philadelphia, of the Moises, and Miss Lopez, of Charleston, Mrs. Pricilla Joachimsen, of New York, the founder of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, Mrs. Simon Borg, and many others.
Within the past thirty years the Jewish women have done wonderful work in the various fields of charitable endeavor throughout the Union. The societies organized by them are far too great in number, even to be enumerated within the scope of this paper. Much less is it possible to give the names of the noble women who have labored so diligently in behalf of those institutions. ”

“ And not alone in dealing with conditions that are inseparable from the social system, but also in dealing with such as are removable, in educating and lifting up those of the community who are in need of fostering care and in furthering the spread of intelligence, have the Jewish women been unceasingly active in their charitable organizations. ”

“ After these Marrano poetesses, silence fell upon the women of Israel for a whole century—a century of oppression and political slavery, of isolation in noisome Ghettos, of Christian scorn and mockery.131 The Jews of Germany and Poland, completely crushed beneath the load of sorrow, hibernated until the gentle breath of a new time, levelling Ghetto walls and heralding a dawn when human rights would be recognized, awoke them to activity and achievement.
Mighty is the spirit of the times! ”

“ But from the earliest times, if we are to accept historical testimony, the Jews of the ancient world appear to have treated women in the majority as “Something worser than their dog, a little lower than their horse.” Save and except those rare cases where the Jewish woman suddenly found out her latent powers and employed them to advantage, the Jewish man made her fetch and carry for him like a veritable beast of burden. ”

“ In the early days, among the Hebrews, marriage by purchase from the father or brothers had been the custom; but in the time of which we are writing a dowry was given with the bride, and she also received a portion from the bridegroom.
The inferior position of Jewish women is frequently referred to in the rabbinical writings. A common prayer was: "O God, let not my offspring be a girl: for very wretched is the life of women." ”

“ I cannot follow this question, and can only say how entirely mistaken is the belief that the Jewish religion, with its barbaric view of the relationship between the sexes, was beneficial to the liberty of women. ”

“ In the realms of education some of the best private schools during the first half of the nineteenth century were conducted by Jewish women, like Miss Harby and Miss Moise. Since the establishment of the public school system, hundreds of Jewish women have won the admiration of the communities throughout the country for their work as teachers, while in this city the first female assistant superintendent appointed by the Board of Education is a Jewess well known to all, not only as an educator, but as a devoted worker in every department for the betterment of the Jewish community. ”

“ It is a matter of surprise to the leading Jewish men in Europe who are so actively interested in this matter to find that the Council of Jewish Women has stood alone for so long in this work, that the Council of Jewish Women was the only one of the organizations of Jews in the United States which thought the matter of sufficient importance to send a delegate to confer with those of Europe on the subject. ”

“ If we add to this the responsibility for having the food prepared according to the requirements of the Dietary Laws, we easily understand the reason why Jewish women are exempt from various religious duties incumbent on the other sex. ”

“ There were the usual number of Jewish women whose husbands had simply gone off saying they would have nothing more to do with them. And one or two Italian women, with small babies in their arms, whose husbands had got angry with them and put them out of the house or struck them. ”

“ As we ascend in the scale of education in the Ghetto we find women who derive their culture and ideas from a double source—from Socialism and from advanced Russian ideals of literature and life. They have lost faith completely in the orthodox religion, have substituted no other, know Russian better than Yiddish, read Tolstoi, Turgenef and Chekhov, and often put into practice the most radical theories of the "new woman," particularly those which say that woman should be economically independent of man. ”

“ That we may have a suitable background for our pen pictures of these Daughters in Israel, and also, by way of contrast, show what the Bible has done for womanhood, let us briefly take a glance into countries where the Bible has been a sealed book, for the position of women among the Hebrews has always afforded a pleasing contrast with that of their heathen sisters. The position of Jewish women is just what we would expect among a people who were indebted for their laws to the Creator. ”

“ During these occasional breaks in the darkness, women appeared whose erudition was so profound as to earn special mention. As was said above, the first names of women distinguished for beauty and intellect come down to us from the eleventh century, and even then only Italy, Provence, Andalusia, and the Orient, were favored, Jews in these countries living unmolested and in comparative freedom, and zealously devoting their leisure to the study of the Talmud and secular branches of learning. ”