This morning’s paper brought news of genetic similarities among Jews of Ashkenazi and Sephardi backgrounds. Citing studies published in the prestigious journal Nature, the New York Times reported that “Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, even though each community also carries genes from other sources — usually the country in which it lives.”

Pondering both the study and its results, I realized that I had several different responses to this story. On the one hand, I love the underlying vision of Jews as diverse on the outside but united on the inside. Such a study suggests that despite our differences when it comes to important issues such as whether to eat rice at Pessach, we may well share a common ancient origin. It undercuts claims of supremacy, often implied by power structures if not overtly claimed, in terms of being the true keepers of Torah.

But there is a darker set of questions that emerges from mixing Judaism and science in this way. The idea that one could trace Judaism in the body is not a new one. During the Inquisition in Spain, many Jews underwent forced conversions. Taken at face value, these conversions should have paved the way for the complete integration of these former Jews into Spanish society. Yet, in relating to these converts, Old Christians developed the system of Limpieza de sangre which defined people within society by the ancestral purity of their blood. Those with Jewish, or Muslim, blood were considered significantly inferior to those whose blood was pure and faced discrimination and retaliation as a result. One could leave the Jewish faith but not the Jewish body. In the 20th century, similar lines of reasoning were essential to Nazi eugenics. The body became the essential holder of Judaism. The destruction of Judaism meant the physical destruction of Jews and vice versa.

Even as we step away from this extreme precipice, there are lesser dangers raised by linking Judaism so closely with the body. Tying Judaism down to genetic markers raises the danger of essentializing Jewishness to the point of irrelevance. If Judaism can be measured by tags on DNA, what is the place of the learning of our sages, our historical and cultural experiences and our ritual behaviors in defining Judaism. As we continue to do battle with the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel about who is a Jew, the thought that one might be able to test for Jewishness, is truly frightening. The possibility of being able to identify “pure” of “real” Jews could be powerfully destructive. As Reform Jews, we are committed to the outreach and welcoming of all those who seek to join our community. We look not at the bodies but at the actions and faith of those who want to become Jews.  Jews and Judaism cannot be reduced to genetic components without seriously compromising the complexity and texture that is our inheritance.

The idea that we are one people is a beautiful and romantic notion. It speaks to a vision of unity that is a compelling and important element of Jewish tradition and interconnection. But mapping that vision of unity onto bodies is highly problematic.

photo from SNCC

Ahead of next week’s celebration of Martin Luther King and his legacy, guest blogger Julia Philips Berger pushes us to reconsider how we think about and teach the history of civil rights.   Julia has been working with the Jewish Women’s Archive to develop new approaches for teaching the history of civil rights. A graduate of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education, Julia is an education consultant residing in Orlando, FL.

Today, when most Reform synagogues have a social action committee and when legal segregation is a thing of the past, it may be hard for us to understand how some American Jews could not support and participate in the Civil Rights Movement. Over the last seven months, as I’ve worked on a high school curriculum about Jewish participation in the Civil Rights Movement for the Jewish Women’s Archive, I have been examining this issue and many others that highlight the complexities of Civil Rights history. Part of what I’ve learned is that only when we are fortunate enough to hold a position of power and privilege can we support the fights of others. While many Northern Jews felt safe enough and powerful enough to help African Americans in the South, many Southerners did not. Equally important is the fact that many Northern Jews felt differently when the Civil Rights Movement came to the North. In their own communities, Northern Jews did not always support bussing to integrate schools or Affirmative Action to help African Americans enter college and new business fields. These events were more immediate and more threatening to Northern Jews. The lives of American Jews in the 1950s and 1960s were complicated, so are our lives today. If we want our young people to feel connected to Judaism and continue our legacy of social justice, we need to share with them a more nuanced history that resonates with them, not a nostalgic picture of larger than life heroes who always do the right thing and make the right choices.

Carol Ruth Carol Ruth Silver, Civil Rights activist, in Birmingham, Alabama, May 2000. From the Jewish Women's Archive.

As Reform Jews, we are proud of our legacy of social justice. The many Jews who participated in the pivotal events of the Civil Rights Movement are an example of this. In addition to the general Jewish participation and the work of individual Reform activists, there was official Reform involvement in this social movement. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who escaped Nazi Germany, gave a speech at the March on Washington. Members of the CCAR and NFTY participated in this March as well, under banners proclaiming their Jewish affiliation. These are the people and events that we generally point to at this time of year or in our religious school classes. But the history of Jewish participation during the Civil Rights Movement is much more complex. And that complexity has much to teach us.

Rabbi Joachim Prinz speaking on behalf of civil rights in Washington

While we are proud of the large percentage of white civil rights activists who were Jewish, the actual percentage of Jews who participated in the Civil Rights Movement is relatively small and the majority of these lived in the North. Many Southern Jews did not actively support the Civil Rights Movement. It was not that they didn’t believe that segregation was wrong, but that they knew that actively supporting desegregation could be dangerous. It could mean the loss of jobs or customers and clients that they could ill afford. It could mean having crosses burned on their front lawns or the bombing of their temples. Northern Jews would eventually leave the South. Southern Jews needed to live within the white Southern community, and they had done so for years by keeping a low profile. The Civil Rights Movement was not low profile, and the actions of Northern Jews reflected upon Southern Jews, exposing them to the wrath of Southern whites.

Tensions also developed between Southern Jews and some Jewish organizations. For example, in 1956, a congregation in Mississippi wrote to the President of the UAHC expressing its feelings that segregation was neither a religious issue nor a Jewish issue, and asked the UAHC not to make statements about segregation which might be understood by others as being the views of all Jews.

As I read these documents, I was reminded of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which explains that we need to fulfill our basic needs like food, housing, and safety before we can aspire to ideals such as tolerance. As Jews, we often think of our people, in more or less homogenous ways, despite our experience to the contrary. A number of years ago when I was a congregational educator, I learned about a child in my religious school who, upon  seeing the temple food chest full of soups, pastas, cereals, etc., wanted to know if she could bring home some of the food for her family. Her classmates and teacher were aghast and reminded her that this was where we brought food for those less fortunate than us. As her mother later told me, they were in want and truly needed the food. Sometimes, we forget that not all American Jews are middle or upper middle class.

This month, as we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, I hope we can have pride in the fact that our people could be found in the Civil Rights Movement. We should also feel gratitude that many of us today have the power and privilege to be able to help others, and the perception to remember that just as we don’t like it when non-Jews make simplistic statements that begin “all Jews…,” we too must remember that all Jews are not the same, and bring that varied tapestry into our teaching of the past.

[For more information about the JWA’s new Civil Rights Curriculum and their summer institute which will teach teachers how to use these materials, go to http://jwa.org/teach/profdev/institute10/ .]

Photo credits: http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/, http://www.joachimprinz.com/index.htm, <http://jwa.org/discover/infocus/civilrights/silver/index.html> (January 12, 2010).

Hevrutah is at the core of our ability to study and learn; to opportunity to engage with another in looking into the meanings of texts and Torah in our lives. This week we hear from Rabbi Jason Rosenberg about his experiences using technology to improve his ongoing learning. Jason who was ordained from HUC-JIR NY in 2001, now lives in Tampa, FL, in 2007. He lives there with his wife, Hillary and children Benjamin and Talia.

Several years ago, one of my closest friends from Rabbinical School and I decided that we missed studying together, so we set up a weekly phone-chevruta – a chance to study some text together, even if it was only via the phone. The truth is, it worked surprisingly well. I say “surprisingly,” because a big part of chevruta study isn’t just the exchange of information, of course, but the encounter with the other person. And, even though some of that sense of connection was possible on the phone, it certainly wasn’t the same as sitting across from someone while we studied together. The sages teach that, when two people sit and study, the shechina dwells among them. They never made it clear if the shechina has a long-distance plan, though!

A few months ago, he and I made a change in our study, which has led to a big improvement – we’ve stopped using the phone, and we’ve started using Skype. For those of you who don’t know, Skype is an Internet-based, free service which lets you call other Skype users, including conference calls, and even do 1-on-1 video calling – all for free. If you’ve got a webcam and an Internet connection, then you can easily connect to friends and family, even if they’re thousands of miles away. The sound quality is (usually) much better than the phone, but it’s the video which really makes a difference.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved talking to my friend every week. But, seeing him is much better. We all make gestures when we talk – now we can see them! Our facial expressions, our body language – all of it (well, most of it) is once again part of our interaction. And so, our study, and our conversations are more natural, and more powerful. There have been a few times when we’ve been unable to use Skype (one of its biggest limitations is that the technology is not quite as reliable as the phones), and we’ve always noticed that something is missing when we default back to the phones.

So, what do our study sessions look like? Pretty simple, really. We always have a text that we’re working on – right now it’s Moshe Chaim Luzzato’s  Meshilat Yesharim [The text can be found online in Hebrew]. We usually start with a couple of minutes of checking in and schmoozing, and then just open up our books (we made sure we each had the same edition, so the page numbers line up), and take turns reading from where we left off last time. We never get very far – we always get caught up in some philosophical point, or some tangential discussion. But, eventually we’ll make it through. Do we ever get caught up in the chitchat, and forget to study at all? Of course! See – it really is just like it was in Rabbinical School!

So, with the standard disclaimer that I don’t work for Skype, nor do I get any payment or compensation for this, I heartily recommend that you go to www.skype.com and download the software. Find a friend or family member to do the same, and you’ll be amazed at how nice it can be to see someone whom you haven’t seen in a while. And, to even share a sacred moment of learning with them.

Editors’ note: Skype works well for phone calls with or without a video camera attached to the computer, however, if you want to video chat, you will need a video camera.

Jenny Mannheimer Received B.H.L. HUC 1892

Just a short post to provide a link to a wonderful resource. While it is always possible to go to the archives to find jewels of Jewish history, the blog On the Main Line has connected us to a series of  responsa from a 1922 CCAR discussion on the ordination of women. The issue of women’s place in Judaism long predates the advent of Reform Judaism but there is much to be learned from reading these sources carefully. Not only do they highlight a moment in the history of Reform Judaism and provide an excellent resource for deepening our own knowledge and teaching but the discussion from the early years of the last century continues to resonate today. While the debate about the place of women in the Reform rabbinate has long been settled (thank God!) it is still under consideration among our Orthodox brothers and sisters. It is notable that while the historical circumstances differ greatly, there is much that still resonates with attitudes towards women and the LGBT community in some quarters of the Jewish world.

Today the women who graduate HUC-JIR go one step further than Jenny Mannheimer when they receive a Masters in Hebrew Letters and the wives club of HUC includes people of all gender identities.

HUC's Wives Club 1952

Photo credits American Jewish Archives

The Battle of Valley Forge

Jews are particularly gifted in negotiating between the realms of historical fact and mythic narratives. We need only look at the vast chasm that separates the story of the Hannuka as told by the Macabees and that of rabbis of the Talmudic era to see our ability to hold both truths together. The former is a tale of power politics, armies and alliances, the latter one of divine intervention and miracles. Both play powerful roles in informing our understanding of the holiday.

Interestingly, there is modern Hannuka tale, about George Washington, that plays with not only the national and divine themes, but also with the boundary of history and midrash.

While I no longer remember where exactly I found it originally, the version of the tale was similar to that found in Isador Margolis and Sidney L. Markowitz’s collection Jewish Holidays and Festivals: A Young Person’s Guide to the Stories, Practices and Prayers of Jewish Festivals, originally published in 1962.

As told in this volume, there was one Jewish soldier among Washington’s troops at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777. One cold evening, General Washington out for a walk among the troops came across the young man lighting a menorah. Noting the man’s tears Washington engaged in a fatherly conversation, learning that the man had come to the new world in the hopes of living a life devoid of the anti-semitism and humiliation he had experienced in Poland. Lighting the menorah, he recalled not only his father who had given this treasure, but also the ancient battle for freedom and drew a parallel with Washington’s own fight. Washington commented that if the Jew, the descendant of the prophetic people, predicted that Revolutionary Army would win, so it would. Years later on Hannuka, the same Jew now living in New York placed the same menorah in his window at the start of the holiday. As it happened, President Washington passed by and noticing the candles knocked on the door. Recalling the night they had spent in Valley Forge, the Jew gave the President the menorah as a gift.

There is a lack of evidence to suggest that these events are founded in historical reality. So, if we were to stick to a vision of Judaism that relies on history alone, this story would be of questionable value.

To consider this story as midrash raises other questions. After all, it does not follow the traditional methods for uncovering textual meaning. It also takes as its starting text a modern historical event that post-dates not only the biblical but also the era of the traditional rabbinic commentaries.

Additionally, this story melds together the nationalism of the historical Hannuka story with the divine intervention of the rabbinic Hannuka narrative further complicating our ability to easily identify this story with established categories of narrative traditionally associated with the holiday.

Yet, despite this, or perhaps because of this, the story has much to offer us when we acknowledge it for what it is and is not. It is an excellent example of modern midrash; an attempt to read Jews into the silences of American history. It speaks of the desire of Jews to see their own story as inseparable from that of the broader American narrative. But it also speaks to the flexibility of the American narrative that allows for such weaving of particularisms into communal fabric. Our understanding of America is built as much on myth as it is history and individual groups in the United States find, or do not find, their place not only in the events of the past but in the telling and remembering of those events.

Moreover, this story speaks to some of the truths about George Washington and provides some challenges to the alignments of nationalism with history and myth with Godly intervention as portrayed in the rabbinic/Maccabean tellings of Hannuka story. George Washington is well known for supporting religious groups of all types –his letter to the Jews of Newport being a shining example of such support. This support stemmed not from secularism, but from a deep belief in an omnipotent God. That deity belonged to no particular faith group but to the cause of goodness. Indeed, as Steve Waldman recounts in the Founding Faith, Washington often attributed success in battle to God’s direct intervention. And while there is no specific evidence of the recitation of prayers over Hannuka candles at Valley Forge, it seems likely that had they been said, Washington would have endorsed them.

Recently the tale has reentered the popular Jewish consciousness in the form of a children’s book by Stephen Krensky and illustrated by Greg Harlin. And it deserves a second look. The Valley Forge tale is a uniquely American Jewish blend, combining midrashic myth creation with historic events. It not only presents us with an opportunity to explore some of the major themes of the Hannuka story from a new perspective but also opens up the possibility for conversations about midrash and meaning making more broadly.

When I’m not working on Alumni Education, I write, teach and study Jewish food. I often get asked if there is such thing as Jewish food. After all, Jews are not the only ones to smoke meat, eat couscous or make fish into little balls. So when I was asked to put together a short description of Jewish food to sit on the tables at the upcoming HAZON conference I was excited to try and answer the question. The topic is a big one but here on one foot is a succinct overview.

Jewish Food

Brisket, barches, blintzes, burekas, kugel, jachnun and shalet. The list of Jewish foods is endless. Since biblical times food has been a central part of Jewish life playing a role in Jewish life, culture and tradition. It would, for example, be impossible to separate out food from the story and observance of Passover. But in many ways Jewish foods have counterparts in other cultures. What for example is the real difference between a kreplach and a wonton? What distinguishes challah from brioche? While it is difficult to define specific foods as Jewish, it is easy to pinpoint some of the forces that have shaped Jewish cuisine. The triumvirate of Jewish food law, food based rituals, and Jewish history have worked together to shape Jewish foodways.

Many Jewish rituals require foods. Bread is blessed on Friday night. Maztah is eaten on Passover. Feasts and gifts of food are mandated to make the carnival festival of Purim truly festive. To celebrate the New Year, the Rosh Hashana table is set with edible omens for the year to come. Jews evolved recipes, such as hamantaschen and honey cake, to meet these ritual needs and enhance the festive nature of celebrations.

Additionally, there are many religious Jewish laws that deal directly with or strongly impact cooking and eating. The dietary laws, kashrut, are perhaps the strongest force in shaping Jewish eating patterns. Based on biblical verses, the rabbinic laws of kashrut prohibit the mixing of milk and meat not only within a given dish but within the same meal. Meat, fish and fowl were further divided into permitted and forbidden. No shellfish, no birds of prey, no pork. Prohibition against cooking on the Sabbath, meant that slow cook dishes became essential elements of the Jewish culinary repertoire.

Working in these parameters, Jews throughout history adapted to the historic and geographic circumstances in which they found themselves. Jews worked with the foods and flavors of the regions in which they lived. Moroccan Jews roasted vegetables and meats with spices and fruits. Hungarian Jews made goulash –but without the cream. In places like Poland, poverty meant that potato dishes became a mainstay of the diet. Expulsions and migrations meant that Jews brought new foods and modes of preparations from one country to another. Artichokes for example arrived in Italy with Jews from Spain.

In America, most of what is known as Jewish food is the Americanized version of Eastern European Jewish cuisine. Some historically Jewish American foods such as bagels and “deli” have crossed over into the mainstream while others such as chopped liver have fallen out of favor. As we sit here today, eating together and talking food seriously in a Jewish context, we are playing a part in a long and evolving conversation about what it means to be Jewish.

Questions for reflection:

Is a blueberry bagel Jewish? why or why not? what about a bacon bagel?

What is more Jewish? kosher sushi or ham and cheese on matzah?

Is the fact that a food is made by or eaten by Jews enough to make it Jewish?

This post was cross posted at http://jcarrot.org/

Martin Kace

Martin Kace recently spoke on “The Jewish World Wide Web from Antiquity to Today,” and proposed the idea that the Jews originated the concept of the World Wide Web; I was intrigued. Kace’s background is in psychology and visual arts and his company Empax is a non-profit that advises non-profits about branding and web use. He has worked with politicians like Al Gore and Shimon Peres as they developed their virtual presence to further their agendas as well as with organizations such as Matan to create logos and brands.

His thesis, derived from the work of Gidi Grinstein, the founder of Reut, posits that the Jews are the original world wide network. According to Kace, the ancient dispersions of the Jews created a web of connections and interconnection across communities and replicated practice across regions. In Jewish communities across the world, similar practises and beliefs, calendars and modalities could be found and one could move from region to region with some familiarity. Moreover, the shift from Temple worship to Yavneh and kallot meant a shift in power from a top down model location specific model to a knowledge based system independent of location or status. People still came together to share knowledge, inevitable given the technological limitations, but the currency of power had shifted from a few limited individuals to a more diverse and spread out group.

Jews in the Russain Pale of Settlement circa 1800

By the 1800s, Jews are living in all parts of the inhabitable world (his words not mine and here I would quibble). Living in many distinct types of communities they share visual motifs and models of worship. According to Kace, Jews made synagogues their centers because they became assimilated, once again adopting the non-Jewish model of place being the key element in organizing community.

He pushed us to consider branding of synagogues which overwhelmingly rely on what he called clichéd images or at best images that speak to the “in group” but do not broadcast the vision of the organization to the world at large. Moreover, he suggested that a survey of synagogue websites shows a tendency towards web 1.0. In other words, the presentation is one way; the temple puts up content and congregants read and receive the wisdom but cannot create thier own content. While he did not make the link directly with the first half of his presentation, one could make a connection to the vision of power in the Temple whereby the power/knowledge is unidirectional and located in one place. In other words, the synagogues he surveyed use the web to disseminate information out and not really to facilitate conversation or community.

He challenged us to consider how to move towards web 2.0 online community building as part of synagogue life. He did not tell us how to do that, or address what that community would look like but he did suggest that the role of the rabbi would become that of moderator rather than source of knowledge.

He also discussed that the web could be a wonderful way to short circuit many of the time sinks of the clergy such as financial planning, setting agendas, and basic communication that do not really need the face time of the rabbi. In fact, he suggested that most of the time initiatives that seem very promising at the start of a process lose most of their momentum by the third meeting. By doing the initial organizing on the web and allowing people to own the process and engage others laterally, there will be a higher retention rate as seen with Al Gore or Barak Obama. Online organizing allows people to define their own parameters of participation and needs. According to Kace, people will be more likely to speak their truth online than in person and the written record of the web will drive accountability. Asked about the tendency of the impersonal nature of the web to allow people to feel removed from the words they write, which sometimes leads to a lack of derekh eretz, Kace suggested that it is when discussion deteriorates that the role and authority of the religious leader becomes particularly important.

Kace distinguished between what he called face to face time and eye to eye time. Face to face time means that you see the rabbi/cantor/educator but don’t have a strong direct connection with the person. Eye to eye time is the very personal and intimate attention that our community members can only get from us. Saving on face to face time will allow Jewish professionals to spend more time on what he sees as eye to eye interactions. Emotion, he explained, can really only be conveyed eye to eye.

One of the listeners in the room asked whether consensus could be built using the web. Kace suggested that the goal of moving forward need not be consensus but rather decision making. Vote taking, he noted, is easy on the web and can be done repeatedly and often within a process to gauge feeling and progress towards a goal.

Another participant noted that synagogues are largely about building communities and communities are about boundaries. Web 2.0,  by contrast, is about openness and lack of boundaries. Can the two really coexist? For Kace the answer is simple, if you love someone let them go. Web 2.0 is a useful tool in furthering our quest for meaning and should be seen as an essential portal into Judaism.

He also described a process called crowdsourcing; the process by which the public is invited to actively participate in the creation of online conversation and content. The term was new to me but he explained that contests are one way to draw people in and looking on the web I learned more about this new process.  I began to imagine free synagogue membership being awarded to those who present the most compelling ideas for innovation.

One example of crowdsourcing

I think his thesis about Jews as a world wide web is fascinating. It resonates with what I know about the ways in which Jews were engaged in building networks of trade and commerce in the early modern world. And while, much to the chagrin of some of my professors in graduate school, I love grand metaphors and theories in history, I am also wary of simplifying too much. I would be excited to see this line of thinking developed more thoroughly.

Much of what he presented about the internet was exciting and challenged me to think about how we can use the web more effectively. But it also left me with some bigger questions not only about how we might use the web to engage but also what the implications of such decentralization of knowledge and power in terms of its effect on synagogues and the ways in which we structure contemporary Jewish life.

The presentation was part of a recent meeting of ACRE, Alliance for Continuing Rabbinic Education. The other discussion and many conversations were also interesting and I hope to report on them in the near future.

photo credits: Empax, friends-partners.org, and Wikipedia

Golda

Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia is a welcome addition to the landscape of great Jewish resources. Hosted by the Jewish Women’s Archive and launched recently on March 1^st in honor of Women’s History Month, this encyclopedia represents a rich and critical resource for those interested in all matters Jewish. Publishers Alice and Moshe Shalvi together with editors Paula Hyman and Dalia Ofer, have gathered critical information about Jewish women in an extensive collection of topical and biographical essays.

Abzug at Feminist Seder

At their best encyclopedias take the world of scholarship and distill forth the key ideas providing lay and scholarly readers alike with the ability to easily access information and to move easily from topic to topic. In the era of the internet, on some level, this seems superfluous, after all if you want to explore a topic one need only enter a few words into a search engine and “entries” immediately appear. Indeed, fewer and fewer people these days are willing to wade into the library, find the right encyclopedia, look up the topic under consideration and follow cross references across articles or volumes. Yet in “googling” we often fall prey to the most popular rather than the most authoritative information and miss out on the organizational and editorial benefit of the traditional encyclopedia. The Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia works well to focus and direct our looking, creating a rich and enriching resource for Jewish learning.

By placing this work, which has been available previously as a CD-ROM, on the web, the Jewish Women’s Archive has made a critical contribution to our study of Jewish history. The search features make it easy to find material specific in any number of ways; one can look for Mary Antin or scroll through the list of writers to find her among other great and lesser known women of the pen. Browse features ensure that the serendipitous pleasures of the print format are preserved. A global search allows for one to look for the appearance of a term or name in any entry. Borrowing from the best practice of collaborative knowledge, readers are encouraged to add comments, insights or more information.

Jewish Girls at Summer Camp

In addition to providing a good place to check facts, such as those about midrashic representations of Batsheva, it is also the perfect source for inspiration for sermons or charges to the board. It is a great resource for our own learning; with references to rabbinic texts cited and bibliographies. The quality of the writing is high but accessible. B’nai mitzvah students would feel quite comfortable in these pages.

For the sake of full disclosure, I contributed to one of the entries. But my interest in this resource is far from personal. One of the great joys of this encyclopedia is the journey that it provides far beyond our own areas of knowledge and understanding. Looking around on the day it first appeared on the web, I learned about Lane Bryant Malsin the Jewish pioneer of maternity wear and niche marketing, gaining new insights and appreciation for this hard working innovative immigrant; I deepened my understanding of wife beating in Jewish tradition thanks to the scholarship of Naomi Graetz and I got some sense of the breadth and depth of those who might be called Jewish writers. The online Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia has the potential to take us all far beyond the obvious with ease.

Pioneer Women