Transformations and Emergent Themes in American Jewish Women’s History

This essay studies emergent themes in American Jewish women’s history and integrates them within the broader, often sustained, themes in the field of American Jewish women’s history. Beginning with a brief historiography of the field of American Jewish women’s history as it emerged in the late 1970s, this examination traces its transformation over the following decades and its evolution to today. In addition to presenting the field’s persistent themes, including work and domesticity (women’s roles in both the public and private spheres), politics and social activism, religiosity, and feminism, looking at key texts from both feminist scholars as well as recent works in the field of modern Jewish history, this essay highlights the emergence of new lines of scholarly inquiry spanning contemporary social, cultural, political, economic, and broad intersectional discourse. Moreover, this essay advances and emphasizes two clear patterns of emergent literature based on this assessment. First, that they reflect and have developed out of extant themes in Jewish American women’s history, and second, they are shaped by and entangled with nascent themes across diverse academic disciplines. Finally, this paper comments on the current positioning of the field and recommends future directions for research in the field of American Jewish women’s history.