Imagining and living gender: Rabbis and Jewish women in fin de siecle Vienna, 1867-1914

Abstract

This dissertation examines the lives of Jewish women living a traditional Jewish life within a culture that was exploring very non-traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. Fin de siecle Vienna was a place of remarkable transformation, in which new political movements and unprecedented cultural and intellectual explorations destabilized age-old norms and categories and questioned many long-standing assumptions about gender, women's roles, and sexuality. Unlike the image of fin de siecle Jewish Vienna most often invoked by scholars that centers on assimilated Jewish men who made significant contributions to avant-garde Viennese culture, this work presents an alternative picture of Jewish life in turn of the century Vienna: one of persisting traditional values and a deep attachment to the time-honored notions of female domesticity and separate spheres. Jewish women as well, through their involvement in women's benevolence, utilized these traditional ideas to blur the imagined boundary between public and private, expand their sphere of influence, and position themselves in the heart of Jewish communal politics. This work investigates the lives of fin de siecle Viennese Jewish women from two different angles. On the one hand, using rabbinic responsa, sermons, and educational curricula, it details the construction of gender among the rabbinic leadership and the institutions of the Jewish community as a means of uncovering the gender norms and sexual ideology of the Jewish community in which these women lived. On the other hand, it explores the actual lives of Jewish women, through examining their own writings and activities, which reveal the nature of their experiences and self-conceptions as Jews and as fin de siecle Viennese women.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2008.School code: 0175