Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe

A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe

Carlebach, Elisheva
Kaplan, Debra

Hardcover

JudaismGeneral Gender StudiesGeneral World History

ISBN10: 0691268614
ISBN13: 9780691268613
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Oct 14 2025
Pages: 488
Weight: 1.98
Height: 1.57 Width: 6.22 Depth: 9.29
Language: English

A groundbreaking look at the integral role of women in early modern Jewish communal life

In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily life of their communities, managing homes and professions, leading institutions and sororities, and crafting objects and texts of exquisite beauty. A Woman Is Responsible for Everything marshals a dazzling array of previously untapped archival sources to tell the stories of these women for the first time.

Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach focus their lens on the kehillah, a lively and thriving form of communal life that sustained European Jews for three centuries. They paint vibrant portraits of Jewish women of all walks of life, from those who wielded their wealth and influence in and out of their communities to the poorest maidservants and vagrants, from single and married women to the widowed and divorced. We follow them into their homes and learn about the possessions they valued and used, the books they read, and the writings they composed. Speaking to us in their own voices, these women reveal tremendous economic initiative in the rural marketplace and the princely court, and they express their profound spirituality in the home as well as the synagogue.

Beautifully illustrated, A Woman Is Responsible for Everything lifts the veil of silence that has obscured the lives of these women for too long, contributing a new chapter to the history of Jewish women and a new understanding of the Jewish past.

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