Revised assignment for paper on Jewish women

Jews in the Modern World
Revised Paper Assignment on Jewish Women

Paper is due on Wednesday, October 18, at midnight, on Sakai.

• Format
• 4 pages
• double-spaced
• 12 point type
• use 1 inch margins all around
• pages should be numbered
• use spell check
• after you have finished the paper, reread it for organization, writing style, spelling and grammar 
• points will be taken off for organizational, writing, spelling and grammatical mistakes
• use MLA or Chicago style to cite sources (in text or footnote style)

Readings

On Sakai:

1. Moshe Rosman, “Gender Roles in Ashkenaz.”
2. Pamela Dorn Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire.”
3. “Glückel of Hameln”
4. Frances Malino, “The Women Teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.”

In The Jews: A History

1. “Glickl of Hameln and her Zikhroynes,” p. 214.

In The Jew in the Modern World

1. “General Instructions for Teachers” (in Allliance schools), p. 463
2. “A ‘Feminist” Looks at the Women of Fez” (by N. Benchimol), pp. 472-473
3. “Responsum on Women’s Suffrage” (by Ben-Zion Uzziel), pp. 473-475

Questions

Write on ONE of these questions

Question 1. 
Compare the lives of Jewish women in the pre-modern, traditional Jewish world in three different culture areas – Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany. What common characteristics feature in women’s lives in these three culture areas, and how do they differ from each other?

For this question, you should use Moshe Rosman, “Gender Roles in Ashkenaz”; Pamela Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire,” pp. 216-224; and “Glückel of Hameln” (on Sakai) and “Glickl of Hameln and her Zikhroynes” (p. 214 in The Jews: A History). Glückel lived in Germany, and the two articles about her are the sources of information for Jewish women’s lives in Germany.

Question 2. 
Discuss the changes in women’s lives in the Ottoman Empire from the pre-modern to the modern periods. Your paper should focus on how the introduction of the schools of the Alliance Israélite Universelle into the Ottoman Empire changed the lives of the girls and women who studied and taught in these schools.

For this question, you should use the entire article by Pamela Sezgin, “Jewish Women in the Ottoman Empire”; Frances Malino, “The Women Teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle”; and the three primary sources in The Jew in the Modern World: “General Instructions for Teachers” (in Allliance schools), p. 463; “A ‘Feminist” Looks at the Women of Fez” (by N. Benchimol), pp. 472-473; and “Responsum on Women’s Suffrage” (by Ben-Zion Uzziel), pp. 473-475.

For more information about the Alliance, two additional articles in The Jew in the Modern World are useful: “Appeal to all Israelites” (p. 292-293) – this is the initial call by the founders of the Alliance to the Jewish community at large. “Our First Thirty-Five Years” (pp. 293-296) is a report on the first 35 years of the Alliance and focusing on the schools it set up in Arab countries. It also includes a section about the education of women.

I have also uploaded to Sakai my notes on Norman Stillman’s books, The Jews of the Arab Lands and The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times. You may find these notes useful for providing historical background as well as more information about the history of the Alliance.

The file titled “Chapter 1” has notes on Stillman’s discussion of the Damascus Affair in The Jews of Arab Lands (pages 1-2) and on chapter 1 of his second book. It covers the situation of the Jews in Arab lands in the 19th century and discusses the Alliance and its schools.

The file titled “Chapter 2” has notes on chapter 2 of his second book, which covers the process of emancipation in Algeria (page 1), the influence of the Alliance schools (pages 1-2), the active participation of Jews in the Arab world in their own modernization (page 2), changing religious observance (pages 2-3), and differences between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic attitudes towards religious reform (pages 3-4).