HIGHLIGHTS: PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTED BY THE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2001-2002

Mothers and Children: The Medieval Jewish Experience (Hebrew University, Princeton University, forthcoming) by Elisheva Baumgarten

Prof. Baumgarten's pioneering study eand provides a new appraisal of Jewish women's religious practices and their personal expressions of spirituality. Her work traces a variety of female devotional activities such as fasting, observance of ritual purity, the giving of charity and prayer customs.

Prof. Baumgarten also investigates the rites and child-rearing practices from birth through school age. Through her research on over-looked treatises, like Clalei Ha'mila, she presents the character and quality of religious sentiments of Jewish women in that period, information never researched previously.

A 2002 recipient of the Ephraim Urbach Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded by the Memorial Foundation to the most outstanding recipients of the Ph.D. degree in Jewish Studies around the world, Prof. Baumgarten completed her doctoral dissertation summa cum laude at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where the Memorial Foundation also supported her doctoral research on "The Spiritual Lives of Medieval Jewish Women." Dr. Baumgarten currently teaches Medieval History in the faculty of Jewish History and in the program for gender studies in Bar-Ilan University.

Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia (University Press of New England, 2002) by ChaeRan Freeze.

This volume by Professor ChaeRan Freeze, a young distinguished scholar of Korean background, is based on her doctoral dissertation at Brandeis University, "Making and Unmaking the Jewish Family: Marriage and Divorce of Jews in Imperial Russia, 1850-1917." It explores the impact of dramatic social and institutional changes on marriage and divorce among Jews in the late nineteen and early 20th centuries just prior to the Russian Revolution.

Prof. Freeze's research analyzes the often conflicting interests of Jewish husbands and wives, rabbinic authorities and the Russian state. Her work provides a fresh glimpse of Jewish family life in Tsarist Russia at the turn of the century, showing how individual life histories reflect the impact of modernization on gender relations, the emancipation of Jewish women and the incursion of the state into the lives of ordinary Jews.

Dr. Freeze, who received both doctoral scholarships and an Ephraim Urbach Post Doctoral Fellowship from the Memorial Foundation, is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis Unviersity. Her book received the Koret book publication award.

Religious Leadership in Eastern Europe During the Holocaust (Mosad Harav Kook, Jerusalem) by Ester Farbstein

In this volume dealing with the interface between halacha and the holocaust, Ester Farbstein does pioneering research regarding marriage and divorce in the ghettos and labor camps during World War II. The question faced by the rabbis in the ghettos and camps was whether to encourage or discourage marriage and conception during the war. Single women could more easily hide and survive as long as they were not married or pregnant. "Rescue Weddings", on the other hand, could spare female ghetto residents in some places from "Aktions" against single women. No less complex was the issue of allowing civil marriages when it was feared that unmarried persons would be deported first in the round-ups, and whether to require all men to give their wives retroactive bills of divorce to prevent agunot.

Mrs. Farbstein demonstrates that responses differed under varied circumstances (pre-ghetto, ghetto, labor and concentration camps, DP camps) and in different locations (Warsaw, Lodz, Kovno, the Netherlands). She attempts to correlate the relationship between the ghetto or camp reality and the nature of the rabbinic ruling.

Igrot HaGaon Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik (Morasha Foundation, Jerusalem) by Haym Soloveitchik

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth and the tenth anniversary of the death of the great Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik. Because Rabbi Soloveitchik published little in his life-time, many works have been written recently about his lectures on Jewish law and philosophy. This volume, prepared and published by his son, Prof. Haym Soloveitchik, with Foundation support, is one of the most important publications dealing with Rabbi Soloveitchik's work because it is based on his father's unpublished letters and manuscripts dealing with the Talmud and Jewish law.

According to scholars, the work establishes Rabbi Soloveitchik's reputation not only as one of the great Jewish Talmudists of our time, but of the whole modern era. After publication in Israel, this volume was completely sold out in several weeks.