Elisheva Carlebach & Debra Kaplan: The Unknown History of Women in Jewish Life [American Yeshiva World 1/3]

18Forty Podcast

18Forty

Judaism, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 705 Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2026

⏱️ 96 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This month of learning is sponsored by our dear friends Matt and Mollie Landes of Riverdale for the neshama of Dovid Yehonatan ben Yitzchak Yehuda.

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we speak with Professors Elisheva Carlebach and Debra Kaplan, scholars of early modern Jewish history, about women’s religious, social, and communal roles in early modern Jewish life.

In this episode we discuss:

How have women’s prayer and shul-going habits changed over time?
When did the women’s chevra kadisha become a Jewish institution?
How did Jewish emancipation alter the structure of Jewish life and its implications for women?

Tune in for a conversation about how women shaped—and were shaped by—the structures of the early modern kehillah.

Interview begins at 9:13.

Elisheva Carlebach is the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society at Columbia University and Director of its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. A specialist in Early Modern European Jewish history, her work explores Jewish–Christian relations, religious dissent, conversion, messianism, and communal life. She is the award-winning author of The Pursuit of Heresy, Divided Souls, and Palaces of Time, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and honors including Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award.

Debra Kaplan teaches early modern Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University. A social historian, she is the author of Beyond Expulsion (2011) and The Patrons and their Poor (University of Pennsylvania 2020; winner of the Rosl und Paul Arnsberg-Preis).

References:

“Notes Toward Finding the Right Question” by Cynthia Ozick

A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe by Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach

Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666 - 1816 by Ada Rapoport-Albert

Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe by Elisheva Baumgarten

Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture by Eve Krakowski

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This month of learning is sponsored by our dear friend, Matt and Molly Landies of Riverdale.
0:06.6	Le'Iloin Nishmas, David Jehounisan, Ben Yitzhak Yehuda.
0:10.6	Thank you so much for your friendship and support. Hi friends and welcome to the 1840 podcast where each month we explore different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new
0:38.6	approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I'm your host, David Bischepchen, and today we are exploring
0:44.6	the role of women. Very exciting. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy,
0:51.4	Jewish ideas, so be sure to check out 1840.org where you can also find
0:55.3	videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. A while back, an old friend of
1:01.2	mine, Malka Sve, sent me an article that was somewhat subversive, but also quite powerful.
1:07.8	And it was an article that was written by Cynthia Ozik, the famed writer,
1:13.3	who wrote an article in Lilith Magazine. I don't know if this magazine even still exists,
1:18.3	which was really for Jewish women, I believe. And she has a long article entitled
1:23.6	Notes Towards Finding the Right Question. Now, I hardly agree with everything that's written
1:30.1	in this article, but I still think about it to this day and find it especially powerful
1:35.2	the way she laments with a great deal of frustration at times, just her contemporary experience
1:41.3	of being a woman in the Jewish world. And on one of them, she has a list of
1:46.3	points. And in her fourth point, she talks about on not being a Jew in the synagogue. And this is what
1:53.5	she writes. She kind of like includes a piece of evidence. She says, item. In the world at large,
1:59.0	I call myself and I'm called a Jew. But when on the Sabbath
2:03.0	I sit among women in my traditional shul and the rabbi speaks the word Jew, I can be sure
2:08.9	he is not referring to me. For him, Jew means male Jew. When the rabbi speaks of women, he
2:16.7	uses the expression, a translation from a tender Yiddish phrase, Jew. When the rabbi speaks of women, he uses the expression, a translation, from a tender
2:20.2	Yiddish phrase, Jewish daughter, probably referring to Benos Yusroel. He means it tenderly. Jew
	...

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