Beyond the gallery: The place of women in the development of American Judaism

This dissertation examines the transformation in the religious identity of women that accompanied the development of nineteenth-century American Judaism. The tendency to respond to modernization by emphasizing public devotion and devaluing traditional domestic Jewish life undermined the basis of religious identity for Jewish women. In the United States where a middle-class domestic ideal associated women with religion, Jewish communities and Jewish women required a new pattern for Jewish female religiosity.;This study traces the creation of a religious identity for Jewish women by examining their changing position within the synagogue. By their growing presence, women began to make demands upon the American version of the traditional synagogue which quickly adapted to accommodate them. With the emergence of Reform Judaism, the treatment of women within the synagogue became part of the agenda for change. Reformers sought equity for women in the synagogue through various reforms, the most significant of which was mixed seating. The Reform effort helped narrow religious expression to the space of public worship. Since women were excluded from religious and lay leadership within the synagogue, this narrowing effectively removed them from meaningful involvement in synagogue activity, other than passive attendance of worship services. Here the contrast with Christian female religiosity, which was defined in part by sustained involvement in church-related activity, is clearest.;The last decade of the nineteenth century brought expansion in synagogue activity and women's role within it, as the needs of Jewish immigrants and a desire to revivify Judaism granted Jewish women avenues through which to emulate Christian patterns of female activity. The nineteenth-century creation of woman as synagogue-goer worked as a viable American religious identity but was difficult to reconcile with traditional conceptions of Judaism which placed women in the home. Some voiced their ambivalence over the shape of American Judaism through criticism of American Jewish women's inability to recreate the traditional Jewish home.;This study concludes that a new model of Jewish womanhood emerged out of a complex amalgamation of expectations shaped by tradition, aspirations to identity as an acceptable and respected American religion, and models of female Christian religiosity.