reviews - Jewish Book Council

Tobi Kahn for ritual and meditative space.
The exhibition, which was at MOBIA
until January 2010, included Kahn’s reinterpretation
of traditional ritual objects plus an
ensemble of abstract art panels lining the glass
walls of a congregation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
which “exalt the ritual function of the
space,” according to Ena Heller, an expert on
art and religion. Other contributors include a
professor of religion, a museum curator, and
Daniel Sperber, professor of Talmud at Bar-
Ilan whose essay, “Sanctity in Space,” addresses
Kahn’s obsession with sanctity in space and
gives a concise explanation of Kahn’s success
in creating an “ethereality of the dimension of
holiness,” always seeking “for representation
of the spiritual in the material.” Kahn’s
memorial for victims of the 1995 Oklahoma
bombing and the meditative space created for
the Health Care Chaplaincy in New York
City are also illustrative of this quest. Nessa
Rapoport’s poems (“songs”) introduce and
accompany a section of exquisite photographs
of works in the exhibition. This book gives
the exhibition the permanence it deserves. EN
WOMEN’S STUDIES
MITZVAH GIRLS:
BRINGING UP THE
NEXT GENERATION
OF HASIDIC JEWS
IN BROOKLYN
Ayala Fader
Princeton University Press, 2009. 280 pp. $22.95 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-691-13917-3 (pbk.)
This fascinating work by a modern liberal
Jewish anthropologist explores daily life in
the closed Hassidic community of Boro Park,
Brooklyn. Dr. Ayala Fader, associate professor
of anthropology at Fordham University, focuses
on young Hassidic women, for it is they who
will “bear and rear the next generation.”
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She surveyed an array of generally unfamiliar
subject matter, including the values of
Hasidic femininity; the intricacies of Hasidic
linguistics (e.g., two variation of Yiddish, one
that girls speak to friends to fit in and another
that they speak to older folks); the hierarchies
of pious modesty; defiance of Hasidic young
women; and how the standards of women’s
modesty are established by male religious
leadership.
The work maintains a scholarly character
and possesses the intellectual nature of a scientific
exploration, while remaining a pleasurable
casual read. This is because throughout
the volume, the author elaborated upon her
interactions and her warm personal experiences
with members of the community she
was investigating. 2009 National Jewish Book
Award Winner in Women’s Studies. ShA
STILL JEWISH:
A HISTORY OF
WOMEN AND
INTERMARRIAGE
IN AMERICA
Keren R. McGinity
New York University Press, 2009. 307 pp. $39.00
ISBN: 978-0-8147-5730-7
Once upon a time, women who married
“out” were considered lost to the Jewish
faith; it was assumed they would follow their
husbands into the Christian world, letting go
of the Jewish culture and heritage they had
been raised to honor, respect, and carry with
them into the next generation. McGinity, a
research fellow at the University of Michigan,
set out to examine these assumptions and see
whether they held up under the close scrutiny
of a historian. The result is a very readable
book, one which takes an academic topic and
treats it with care and presence and manages,
in a lively way, to unravel the tightly woven
tapestry of women and interfaith marriage and
expose the facts and feelings at its core.
Women’s Studies
REVIEWS
Through detailed research, McGinity
demonstrates, for example, that women who
intermarried in the last half of the 20 th century
were more likely than their counterparts in
the earlier years to raise Jewish children. She
documents how their Jewish identity followed
them into their mixed marriage and
provides a sharply defined historical perspective
on the relationships that drove them and
sustained them. The book is rich in history,
and for those who desire more, the extensive
notes at the back provide much additional
information that supports and elucidates the
text. Appendix, notes, selected index. LFB
WOMEN AND
JUDAISM
Rabbi Malka Drucker, ed.
Praeger, 2009. 300 pp. $65.00
ISBN: 978-0275991548
ight now I am the oldest and you are
“Rthe youngest Bat Mitzvah” [sic], said
Judith Kaplan Eisenstein to Rabbi Malka
Drucker’s daughter on the Shabbat of her bat
mitzvah. Drucker reflects on the significance of
that poignant moment in the introduction to
her book, Women and Judaism, many years after
that occasion: “A single moment held seventy
years of history as a gracious and wise woman
blessed a bright-eyed and promising daughter of
Israel.” The book is a collection of essays that
address topics that are both diverse and broad:
from the historical to the liturgical; from Biblical
women to ‘women of the Holocaust’; from
renewing ancient traditions to creating new ritual.
Its strength, therefore, is also its weakness: the
book tries to be too many things at once, bouncing
from topic to topic, never truly finding its
center. It is an ambitious book, a brave attempt
to cover so many aspects of what it means (and
has meant) to be a Jewish woman. JP
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Spring 5770/2010 Jewish Book World 61