By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

European Jewish history has largely focused on the lives, activities and religious practices of Jewish men. One reason for this emphasis is that men wrote the materials that have been passed down to us: information about the female population was often not considered important enough to include. However, as Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach note in their excellent “A Woman is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe” (Princeton University Press), that was not true of the early modern period of Europe (1500-1800). Rather, scholars have overlooked or ignored the community records and ledgers from this period of increased literacy among men and women. What becomes clear is that women were indispensable to the workings of the Jewish community, something that was probably also true of previous periods whose records of community activity contain less information.
The authors note three major factors behind the changes that occurred in the Modern Era: “First, during this period, Jewish communities flourished and developed, and the community as an organized entity had greater power than ever before. Second, along with the community’s development came an increase in communal recordkeeping, which created an archive of documents that preserved the rhythms of men’s and women’s daily lives. Third was the advent of print, the concomitant rise of female literacy, and its stimulating impact on women’s reading and writing.” Kaplan and Carlebach realize the limits to what can be learned from primary sources since it was not written to show a complete picture of communal and personal lives. It also assumed its readers had a basic understanding of what is not included; the writers would have assumed that community members were familiar with customs and behaviors that are not always obvious to outsiders.
Understanding the role of the Kehillah (which refers as the Jewish community as a whole, but also to those making the rules for its members) is extremely important to understanding Jewish life during this period. In most cities, the Jewish population was forced to live in one area, which gave the Kehillah a great deal of power. Families not only shared houses, but rooms. One of the most important things the Kehillah did – and perhaps one of the most difficult to understand in contemporary times – was decide who could be a member of their community. They preferred those who were self-supporting enough that they would not need financial help from the community. The Kehillah also collected and doled out funds for a communal hospice, relief for the poor and the care of the synagogue. The Kehillah decided who could marry by requiring them to have enough money to not need access to communal funds. These requirements made it more difficult for people to wed and the age of marriage increased as people needed years to save enough money. However, money was not the only reason the Kehillah might not approve of a marriage: other reasons ranged from pre-marital behavior (even if the woman was pregnant) or those seeking to marry not following other communal rules. The Kehillah even decided the part of a cemetery in which a person could be buried.
Kaplan and Carlebach show how Jewish households in this period revolved around women’s activities. These included not only women handling the daily needs of the family, but many of the religious and ritual ones. It was women who prepared for Shabbat and holidays, not only cooking the food, but making certain all the household was ready. The authors note that, due to economic circumstances, “Jewish men were often on the road the road for long periods, and even if they lived at home, they spent most of their days outside the house for religious services, economic transactions, and civic engagement.” Even those women who had servants to help would have spent a great deal of time making sure that everything was done correctly. Many of those servants were young Jewish women working to make enough money for a dowry in order to be able to marry. However, women were not only concerned with the household: records show that an increasing number of women worked with their husbands in a business, had their own businesses, or worked for the Kehillah. Included in this latter work was caring for the sick in the hospice and taking part in the burial society preparing those who died for burial. Since the sexes were strictly segregated during this time, only women would have been able to take care of ill women and cleanse the bodies of those women who died. Women were also midwives: they, rather than doctors or male healers, helped women give birth.
The printed word was also important to women during this period. So many women were now able to read that books begin to be printed specifically for them. This increased literacy helped women in business when they needed to keep track of transactions. Women also wrote or dictated wills as a way of ensuring their property went to the correct person. The authors discuss the journals of several women whose writings were published after their deaths; these works give a personal view of what life was like for these women. While their experiences can’t be extrapolated to all women of the time, they do offer general insights into the period.
This short review can’t do justice to the depth of material offered in “A Woman is Responsible for Everything.” This impressive work of scholarship is easy to read, although the writing is dry as befits a scholarly work. The amount of detail offered can almost feel overwhelming at times. However, the insights offered by Kaplan and Carlebach are eye-opening for those who think that Jewish women were not active participants in Jewish life. This work is highly recommended for anyone interested in Jewish history.