A Late Nineteenth-Century Rabbinic Critique of the Status of Women in Judaism

ABSTRACT:This article aims to show that long before the famous debate over women’s suffrage (1918–25), women’s alienation from significant parts of Judaism was a fact that was obvious to those in the Orthodox community who were ready to admit it. To prove this, I discuss the late nineteenth-century essay Netiv Moshe: Maamar Mehkari ’al Mishpat haNashim baEmunah (A Scholarly Enquiry into the Case of Women in Religious Faith). This essay, written in Hungary by Mózes Salamon, the rabbi of a small provincial community, analyzes the gender problem in Judaism and reveals that the basic arguments of Jewish religious feminism had been expressed even before feminism as a movement came to terms with its objectives. This is the first scholarly analysis of this little known essay.