Gender Roles
Engage with the gendered dimensions of Jewish life and discover lost voices of Jewish women.
Curated by Deborah Dash Moore and Noam Pianko
Gendered Ritual Roles
Jewish women had very clearly demarcated spaces in traditional Jewish rituals. All four of these visual sources illustrate examples of differentiated roles. Even while engaged in a shared ritual practice such as preparing bodies for burial, synagogue prayer, or a wedding ceremony, men and women occupied separate spaces. These images capture the gendered expectations, and efforts to preserve these customs, in a variety of ritual settings.
Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur
Huppah
Jewish Burial Society: Sewing the Shrouds and The Washing of the Body
Torah Binder
Finding Women’s Voices
Changing gender norms in the early modern period created new venues for some Jewish women to begin to take on more influential roles as communal leaders. These sources point to the evolving position of women around the globe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What changes can you see in these examples of Jewish women playing new roles in religious, literary, and artistic spheres?
Miriam HaNeviah
Passover Haggadah with German Translation
Portrait of Eva Frank
Other Curated Collections
Jewish Resistance and the Holocaust
From armed confrontation to religious defiance, Jews fought back against the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Jewish Gauchos in South America’s Pampas
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the help of philanthropic organizations, many Jews escaping persecution in Russia made new lives for themselves in the South American pampas.
Jewish Perspectives on Reproductive Rights
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June of 2022, abortion’s political, religious, and social impact has been at the forefront of political debate in the United States.