Böcker av Elisheva Carlebach

A groundbreaking look at the integral role of women in premodern Jewish communal lifeIn small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily life of their communities, managing homes and professions, leading institutions and sororities, and crafting objects and texts of exquisite beauty. Hiding in Plain Sight marshals a dazzling array of previously untapped archival sources to tell the stories of these woman for the first time.Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach focus their lens on the kehillah, a lively and thriving form of communal life that sustained European Jews for three centuries. They paint vibrant portraits of Jewish women of all walks of life, from those who wielded their wealth and influence in and out of their communities to the poorest maidservants and vagrants, from single and married women to the widowed and divorced. We follow them into their homes and learn about the possessions they valued and used, the books they read, and the writings they composed. Speaking to us in their own voices, these women reveal tremendous economic initiative in the rural marketplace and the princely court, and they express their profound spirituality in the home as well as the synagogue.Beautifully illustrated, Hiding in Plain Sight lifts the veil of silence that has obscured the lives of these women for too long, contributing a new chapter to the history of Jewish women and a new understanding of the Jewish past.

The recipient of the Salo Baron Dissertation Prize in Jewish Studies, this text focuses on the campaigns against heresy of Rabbi Moses Hagiz, one of the most prominent and influential Jewish leaders of 17th-century Europe. Each episode illuminates a struggle for control of the Jewish community.

Palaces of Time resurrects the seemingly banal calendar as a means to understand early modern Jewish life. Elisheva Carlebach has unearthed a trove of beautifully illustrated calendars, to show how Jewish men and women both adapted to the Christian world and also forged their own meanings through time.