Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870

Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870
Author: Benjamin Maria Baader
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2006-06-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253347343

Baader examines changes in practices of prayer and synagogue worship, rabbinic writings that encouraged men to cultivate a Judaism shaped by feminine values, the transformation of exclusively male philanthropic organizations into modern voluntary organizations in which men and women participated, and the new roles assumed by women as educators, activists, and religious writers. By documenting the expansion of women's spaces and women's roles in bourgeoisie Judaism and tracing the feminization of Jewish men's religious practices, Baader provides fresh insights into the gender organization of traditional Jewish culture and modern German middle-class society."--BOOK JACKET.

Report

Report
Author: Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland
Publisher:
Total Pages: 474
Release: 1945
Genre: German Americans
ISBN:

Hours of Devotion

Hours of Devotion
Author: Dinah Berland
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2008-11-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307486052

Written in the nineteenth century, rediscovered in the twenty-first, timeless in its wisdom and beauty, Hours of Devotion by Fanny Neuda, (the daughter of a Moravian rabbi), was the first full-length book of Jewish prayers written by a woman for women. In her moving introduction to this volume--the first edition of Neuda’s prayer book to appear in English for more than a century--editor Dinah Berland describes her serendipitous discovery of Hours of Devotion in a Los Angeles used bookstore. She had been estranged from her son for eleven years, and the prayers she found in the book provided immediate comfort, giving her the feeling that someone understood both her pain and her hope. Eventually, these prayers would also lead her back to Jewish study and toward a deeper practice of her Judaism. Originally published in German, Fanny Neuda’s popular prayer book was reprinted more than two dozen times in German and appeared in Yiddish and English editions between 1855 and 1918. Working with a translator, Berland has carefully brought the prayers into modern English and set them into verse to fully realize their poetry. Many of these eighty-eight prayers, as well as Neuda’s own preface and afterword, appear here in English for the first time, opening a window to a Jewish woman’s life in Central Europe during the Enlightenment. Reading “A Daughter’s Prayer for Her Parents,” “On the Approach of Childbirth,” “For a Mother Whose Child Is Abroad,” and the other prayers for both daily and momentous occasions, one cannot help but feel connected to the women who’ve come before. For Berland, Hours of Devotion served as a guide and a testament to the mystery and power of prayer. Fanny Neuda’s remarkable spirit and faith in God, displayed throughout these heartfelt prayers, now offer the same hope of guidance to others.