17th century germany
19th century europe
20th century united states
21st century germany
A01=Bluma Goldstein
abandoned wives
Author_Bluma Goldstein
Category=NH
Category=QRJ
divorce
english
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
experiences of women
family
gender studies
german
intersectionality
jewish academic studies
jewish history
jewish wives
judaic history
judaism
life changes
literature
old yiddish
sociology
yiddish
Product details
- ISBN 9780520249684
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 21 Aug 2007
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This illuminating study explores a central but neglected aspect of modern Jewish history: the problem of abandoned Jewish wives, or agunes ('chained wives') - women who under Jewish law could not obtain a divorce -and of the men who deserted them. Looking at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany and then late nineteenth-century eastern Europe and twentieth-century United States, "Enforced Marginality" explores representations of abandoned wives while tracing the demographic movements of Jews in the West. Bluma Goldstein analyzes a range of texts (in Old Yiddish, German, Yiddish, and English) at the intersection of disciplines (history, literature, sociology, and gender studies) to describe the dynamics of power between men and women within traditional communities and to elucidate the full spectrum of experiences abandoned women faced.
Bluma Goldstein is Professor Emerita in the Department of German at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Reinscribing Moses: Heine, Kafka, Freud, and Schoenberg in the European Wilderness (1994).
