Kenneth Seeskin

Jewish Private Life: Gender, Marriage, and the Lives of Women

Until recent times, Jewish roles in both the private and public realms of life were significantly determined by gender. In the rabbinic vision of the ideal ordering of human society, which guided Jewish life for almost two millennia, special position and status-conferring obligations were reserved for eligible males, while females were seen as a separate and secondary category of human creation. Nevertheless, both females and males are essential for human continuity, and Judaism has traditionally understood marriage as the desirable state for all adults. Marriage has provided a means of Jewish continuity, a haven for personal intimacy, and a family setting in which children could be raised to adulthood and educated in traditional values and rituals. Moreover, in a system of theological imagery that envisions marriage as the closest approximation of the intimacy that can exist between human beings and God, the relationship between wives and husbands has assumed sacred significance. Wherever Jews have lived, wives have assumed domestic nurturing roles, providing for the daily needs of their husbands and children, and overseeing the early educations of their offspring. Women have also labored with their spouses in the economic support of their households. Prior to the modern period, vocational endeavors were understood as a domestic activity. Wives worked closely with their husbands in crafts and trades, and some undertook business activities that supplemented economic resources or wholly supported their families so that husbands could devote themselves to learning.

The Hebrew Bible and the Early History of Israel

The belief that the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) constitutes revealed scripture is a key feature of Judaism. This Bible has a long and complicated history. It was not written by a single author as a single book, the way modern books are, but reflects ancient Israelite or Jewish literature written over a one-thousand-year period by a small civilization that existed on the margins of the great ancient empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Greece. The people of ancient Israel lived mostly agrarian lives in small villages and struggled with the vagaries of climate and war; they did not live in a cultural vacuum but interacted with and were influenced by their neighbors. Along the way, they created the same kinds of cultural artifacts as the surrounding cultures: domestic goods, royal art and architecture, legends about the origins and the great deeds of their leaders, myths about the world around them, regulations for worship, rules to foster a cohesive social framework, and prayers to express their fears and hopes. Some of these bits and pieces evolved, and over time they were combined into what we know as the Bible. Recovering the early history of the Bible and the society that created it is very difficult since the process that produced the Bible cannot be recovered with certainty. Extant sources are not sufficient to permit reconstruction of the entire history of the people who produced the Bible and were influenced by it.

Jewish Worship and Liturgy

Worship marks the human experience almost from the beginning. According to the Bible, after Adam and Eve give birth to Cain and Abel, Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller of the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the soil; and Abel, for his part, brought the choicest of the firstlings of his flock. The Lord paid heed to Abel and his offering, but to Cain and his offering He paid no heed. Cain was much distressed … and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him. (Genesis 4:2b–8) The presumptions here are that God delights in human worship and that the choicest form for this worship is animal sacrifice. These presumptions shape formal Jewish worship of God throughout subsequent history, even when sacrificial worship is not possible. Throughout the centuries, Jews have endeavored not only to communicate their needs and desires to God, but also to worship God in ways that they believed would be pleasing on high. IN THE HEBREW BIBLE According to the biblical narrative, before the Israelites received the ground rules for corporate worship of God at Sinai, they worshiped through sacrifices. Indeed, in their world, one could hardly conceive of alternatives. Surrounding cultures all made physical offerings to their gods.