To the Modern Girl: A Rebuke of Modernity

Reina ha-Kohen’s fiery essay “To the Modern Girl,” published in nineteenth-century Salonika, warns Jewish women that the “modern spirit” has upended the traditional gender and moral order. Addressing “modern girls,” she laments that women once possessed immense moral and emotional power but have become weak and vain, seduced by fashion, wealth, and men’s deceit. Ha-Kohen argues that in earlier times, women’s strength inspired passion and reverence, but modernity has reversed this balance—men now dominate through the very arts of manipulation once associated with women. She calls on Jewish women to reject materialism and superficial beauty, reclaim virtue and piety, and resist the corrupting influence of Western modernity that, in her view, has undermined both faith and femininity.