Friday, August 28, 2015

Effacing Women

Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll has recently called attention to the new extremes to which the aggressive erasure of women has gone in the Haredi World (and beyond). Frankly, I can't believe that this has gone as far as it has (again). Still, as Emerson put it, 'A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds,' and there appears to be no lack of little minds about. 

Some voices of reason do decry such extremes, such as my friend Rabbi Yitzhak Adlerstein. On the other hand, some vociferous defenses of this practice have emerged from within the ostensibly Modern Orthodox Community. I have addressed the issue directly in the past (here and here). At present, I would simply like to protest that the banishing of women and girls from publications is a direct affront and attack on the integrity and piety of our sainted ancestors, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic. They saw NO problem in representing women in books, including Sacred Texts that were used in the Synagogue during Prayer.

Consider the following:

 Rothschild Miscelllany

 Rothschild Miscelllany

Darmstadt Hagaddah

The Golden Hagaddah
MS JTSA 8892 Italy 1492

I rest my case.
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8 comments:

  1. dw10312:51 AM

    Well said Jeffrey. Please note however that MS JTSA 8892 Italy is actually from 1490 and not 1492. Please see my article "How to Date a Rothschild", Omnia in Eo: Studies on Jewish Books and Libraries in Honour of Adri Offenberg=Studia Rosenthaliana 38-39 [2005–2006] 163-168

    Also, see JTSA cataloging here:

    http://garfield.jtsa.edu:8881/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=320007&local_base=GEN01

    Best wishes,
    David Wachtel

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  2. dw1032:38 AM

    Point well made though only one of the five images shown here are by Jewish artists. (JTSA MS 8892, aka The Rothschild Mahzor). That having been said, there are however a great many other early modern Hebrew mss that were illustrated by Jews that make the same point.

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  3. Anonymous12:03 PM

    jeffrey, by your argument of precedent we should allow pictures of women which we would universally considers immodest, and borderline pornography.

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  4. Jeffrey R. Woolf9:55 PM

    I don't understand your point. There is nothing even remotely erotic about any of these illuminations (which were commissioned for community Mahzorim).

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  5. Anonymous4:54 PM

    jeffrey, i do not refer to these pictures here. i refer to the pictures on the frontispieces of jewish religious books which commonly portrayed the images of women in what we would call R-rated states of undress.

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  6. Jeffrey R. Woolf5:18 PM

    I have to admit that I can't imagine what you're referring to.

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  7. Anonymous5:12 AM

    See this and related posts:
    http://seforim.blogspot.com/2013/03/borders-breasts-and-bibliography.html?m=1

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  8. Placido Etzioni4:36 AM

    Especially important is the last picture, where the women are present for the receiving of the Torah . . .

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