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- Title
"A Predominant Cause of Distress": Gender, Benevolence, and the Agunah in Regional Perspective.
- Authors
LIGHT, CAROLINE
- Abstract
The article discusses the Jewish religious laws and customs associated with abandoned wives, referred to as agunah, focusing on the period between 1881 and 1914 in the Southern States, a period which saw over two million Eastern European Jews migrate to the U.S. It considers gender expectations and roles in the region during the period of Jim Crow laws. Jewish abandoned families relied on donations from local Jewish benevolent associations created to reinforce ideals that American Jewish communities protected and provided for their own members. Other topics include acculturation, perceptions of working women, and the 1911 creation of the National Desertion Bureau formed to help locate estranged husbands.
- Subjects
UNITED States; AMERICAN Jewish history; MARRIED women (Jewish law); ABANDONED wives; ASSIMILATION (Sociology); EAST Europeans; HISTORY of gender role; GENDER role -- Religious aspects; SOUTHERN United States history, 1865-1951; JUDAISM
- Publication
American Jewish History, 2013, Vol 97, Issue 2, p159
- ISSN
0164-0178
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/ajh.2013.0002