Jewish Women in Renaissance and Reformation Europe

by

Judith R. Baskin

• LAST REVIEWED: 27 November 2023
• LAST MODIFIED: 27 November 2023
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0527

Introduction

This bibliography focuses on primary documents, monographs, and articles highlighting Jewish women and their activities in Renaissance Italy and in German-speaking regions between approximately 1400 and 1750. The research gathered here affirms that while gender constituted the primary determinant in an individual’s life, social class was also of significant importance. The larger a family’s resources, the more likely a woman was to be educated and to have access to powerful kinship and community networks. In the bibliographical discussions that follow, Italy and German-speaking areas are addressed separately.

Reference Works

Skolnik and Berenbaum 2007 includes relevant articles on women’s lives and activities, as well as entries on individual women. It also contains discussions of representations of women and the feminine in various Jewish literatures and arts of the early modern era. The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women (2021), published under the auspices of the Jewish Women’s Archive of Boston, contains online biographies of Jewish women and articles by leading scholars about women’s activities during the Renaissance and Reformation periods. Baskin 2019 discusses a range of scholarly works on Jewish women. Teplitsky 2013 provides a comprehensive bibliographical overview of scholarship addressing Jews in the early modern era, with a specific section titled “Women, Gender, and Sexuality.”

• Baskin, Judith R. “Women and Gender Relations.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

  An annotated bibliography of scholarship addressing the history of Jewish women and women in Judaism from biblical times to the present.

• Sartori, Jennifer, ed. Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. New ed. Washington, DC: Jewish Women’s Archive, 2021.

  Provides biographies and in-depth articles by major scholars on Jewish women in the early modern era.

• Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2d ed. 22 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA with Keter, 2007.

  This revision of the 1972 first edition greatly expands the number of biographical and thematic articles dealing with women and women’s experiences and also incorporates addenda to older entries that address the topic at hand from perspectives provided by feminist scholarship.

• Teplitsky, Joshua. “Jews.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

  An annotated bibliography of scholarship on Jewish history, philosophy, spirituality, and mysticism during the Renaissance and Reformation eras; it includes a section titled “Women, Gender, and Sexuality.”