Gender Roles

Curated by Deborah Dash Moore and Noam Pianko

Gendered Ritual Roles

Jewish women had very clearly demarcated spaces in traditional Jewish rituals. All four of these visual sources illustrate examples of differentiated roles. Even while engaged in a shared ritual practice such as preparing bodies for burial, synagogue prayer, or a wedding ceremony, men and women occupied separate spaces. These images capture the gendered expectations, and efforts to preserve these customs, in a variety of ritual settings.

Painting depicting men in skullcaps and prayer shawls in foreground at podiums, one holding a Torah scroll, and women in background in hats and shawls.

Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur

The women’s prayer section depicted in this painting gives a rare glimpse into the ways that women have asserted their agency and voices even in gender-segregated spaces.

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Etching of ceremony under marriage canopy outside a building, surrounded by people and framed by decorative motif.

Huppah

This glimpse into an eighteenth-century German Jewish marriage ceremony offers an opportunity to consider how gender roles have changed for this vital ritual.

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Painting of men cutting cloth and women sewing.

Jewish Burial Society: The Washing of the Body

Women played key roles in preparing the deceased for burial. This painting shows women’s involvement in the ultimate act of generosity.

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Textile featuring paintings of various animals and a crown.

Torah Binder

This Torah binder, made for boys at birth and later brought by young men as a symbol of participation in the synagogue, illustrates the fixed nature of traditional gender expectations.

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Finding Women’s Voices

Changing gender norms in the early modern period created new venues for some Jewish women to begin to take on more influential roles as communal leaders. These sources point to the evolving position of women around the globe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What changes can you see in these examples of Jewish women playing new roles in religious, literary, and artistic spheres?

Decorated page framed with foliate design featuring two angels on left and right, Hebrew text in middle, and lions on bottom register.

Passover Haggadah with German Translation

One of Charlotte von Rothschild’s most outstanding works is the only known nineteenth-century Hebrew manuscript to have been illuminated by a woman.

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Print of half-length portrait of woman in hat and dress with lace border, and Polish text underneath.

Portrait of Eva Frank

Despite gender restrictions, Jewish women played central roles as religious leaders in the early modern period. Meet the female leader of one of the most controversial cults in Jewish history.

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