Joseph Dov Soloveitchik shaped Jewish practice and public opinion through the era of second-wave feminism. Despite his sometimes progressive actions, Soloveitchik maintained that women and men had separate religious and familial roles. These positions from the leader of the Modern Orthodox community cemented resistance to Orthodox feminists’ demands to increase their participation in Jewish rituals.

Written histories of Jews in medieval Spain rarely include women, so one must seek alternate sources. Marital status was the frequent topic of rabbinic responsa. Some Jewish women made their own income as merchants and moneylenders. Inheritance laws were problematic for Jewish women – disputes were settled in both Jewish and non-Jewish courts.

Jewish women’s spirituality developed historically within the confines of a patriarchal tradition. Over time, feminists have developed rituals and created spaces that honor the unique experiences of women.

The Jewish summer camp movement shaped ethnic-American identity and Jewish childhood throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. A means to fight anti-Semitism by showcasing patriotism and developing the camper’s physical fitness, it was also a safe space to explore, question and craft religious traditions and rituals, novel ideas about girlhood, and the possibilities of womanhood.

Tkhines were collections of prayers published in Yiddish, often specifically for women, across Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The prayers addressed many themes of domestic and family life, although some also suggested women ought to be allowed into traditionally male spaces.

The Jewish population of Turkey navigated far-reaching changes in the political, social, and geopolitical spheres in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, as the Ottoman Empire pursued reform and collapsed and the Turkish Republic that took its place imposed a process of “Turkification” on its residents. During this period, Jewish women partook in traditional customs relating to religion, family, and the home, while also accessing new opportunities in the public sphere through education and political engagement.

Pauline Wengeroff was the author of an extraordinary two-volume work in German, Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century. First published in 1910, the memoir richly depicts traditional Jewish society in Russia, its unraveling during the nineteenth century, and the devastating impact this dissolution had on families and especially on women.

Women’s League for Conservative Judaism (WLCJ), founded in 1918, is the national organization of Conservative sisterhoods. Throughout its history WLCJ has foregrounded women’s education and engagement in order to enrich the spiritual and religious lives of Conservative/Masorti women and to empower them as leaders in their homes, synagogues, and communities.