Research Catalog

Title

Voices of the matriarchs : listening to the prayers of early modern Jewish women / Chava Weissler.

Author

Weissler, Chava.

Publication

Boston, Mass : Beacon Press, 1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxvi, 269 pages; 24 cm

Summary

• Most studies of Judaism focus on sources produced by and for learned men - the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, legal codes, and works of medieval philosophy, mysticism, and Hasidism. All these texts were written in Hebrew - a language seventeenth- through nineteenth-century Jewish women were not given the opportunity to learn.
• With Voices of the Matriarchs, Chava Weissler restores balance to our knowledge of Judaism by providing the first look at non-Hebrew Jewish source materials: the vernacular women's devotional prayers called tkhines. In Weissler's hands, these Yiddish prayers open a window into early modern Ashkenazic women's lives, beliefs, devotion, and relationships with God.
• In the last section of Voices of the Matriarchs Weissler looks at the changes the twentieth century wrought in the practice of writing and reciting tkhines.

Subjects

• Women in Judaism
• Jewish women > Religious life
• Jewish women > Prayers and devotions > History and criticism
• Tehinnot

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-258) and index.

Contents

Introduction: Jewish Spirituality in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries -- Pt. I. The Tkhines, Religious Literature in Yiddish, and the Construction of Gender in Ashkenazic Judaism. 1. The Tkhines: An Introduction. 2. Studying Women's Religion. 3. The Construction of Gender in Yiddish Devotional Literature. 4. Mitsvot Built into the Body: Tkhines for Niddah, Pregnancy, and Childbirth. 5. Women in Paradise -- Pt. II. The Tkhines and Mystical Spirituality. 6. Kabbalistic Candle Lighting. 7. Tears for the Shekhinah. 8. Candles for the Dead -- Pt. III. Bringing the Tkhines Home. 9. American Transformations of the Tkhines. 10. The Feminist Scholar and the Tkhines. Epilogue: The Sixth Relation.

ISBN

0807036161 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

98019905

OCLC

• 38948378
• ocm38948378

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries