The 2006 Early Modern Workshop on the topic of “Gender, Family, and Social Structures” addressed a spectrum of topics about the transformation of the concept and form of family in general, and of Jewish family in particular in the early modern period. The topic of family and social structure has been touched only minimally in studies of Jewish history in the early modern age. While studies of the Jewish women and family in the Middle Ages have been done (e.g. Kenneth Stow, Elisheva Baumgarten, Avraham Grossman, Ariel Toaff, Howard Adelman) and the nineteenth-century has also received treatment (e.g. Marion Kaplan, and essays on the Jewish family in The Jewish Family, ed. David Kraemer), little study exists for the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Despite the little research on this topic, there still exist many preconceptions concerning the size and makeup of pre-modern families, and their role in public life. The goals of this workshop are twofold: one, identifying different types of material that can be used in such studies and, two, interpreting the material and making it available to teachers and students. Therefore, the texts brought to the workshop would also address some evidently basic questions of family history, still not elucidated in our period, such as family structure, household structure, fertility, ageing etc. in various Jewish societies. But broader questions should also be considered: relationships between parents and children, intra and inter-family relationships, family and law. Comparisons with non-Jewish society will be of great importance.

The workshop took up questions of: marriage rituals, as represented by early modern (Elisheva Baumgarten) and Christians (Jacob Deutsch), and marriage contracts (Ruth Lamdan), responsibilities of the Jewish community to women and out-of-wedlock children (Elisheva Carlebach), challenges to marriage and marital propriety (Debra Kaplan on rabbinic responses to Jewish women’s encounters with Christian men; David Malkiel and Kenneth Stow on loss of virginity and young women’s honor, Adam Teller on marital problems of an eastern European Jewish man, and Lois Dubin on a Jewish woman seeking divorce on the eve of modernity), sexuality and Kabbalah (Lawrence Fine), marriage and economic networking (Claudia Ulbrich, Bernard Cooperman, Moshe Rosman), youth and juveniles (Roni Weinstein), and Jewish-Christian marriages (Magda Teter).

Sponsors

• Wesleyan University’s Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate programs, the Office of Academic Affairs and the Academic Deans, Center for Faculty Career Development; Information Technology Services Department
• University of Maryland’s Louis L. Kaplan Chair of Jewish History at the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies.
• Yeshiva University

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