
18Forty Podcast Elisheva Carlebach & Debra Kaplan: The Unknown History of Women in Jewish Life [American Yeshiva World 1/3]
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Feb 10, 2026 Elisheva Carlebach, a Columbia professor of early modern Jewish life and print culture, and Debra Kaplan, a Bar-Ilan social historian of Jewish women, dig into archival surprises about women’s roles. They discuss sources that reveal literacy, synagogue attendance, women’s officials and burial societies. The conversation highlights how communal structures shaped and recorded women’s public and religious lives.
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Records Reveal Women's Ubiquity
- Early modern communal records (pinkasim) reveal women everywhere once scholars look for them.
- The Kehillah's record-keeping and delegated state authority made women's roles unusually visible.
Kehillah: Institutional Power Shaped Roles
- The Kehillah governed nearly every aspect of Jewish life and could not be opted out of.
- That institutional control, plus print and rising literacy, changed women's communal agency.
A Peak In Women's Literacy And Agency
- The authors argue early modernity may have offered women the highest Jewish literacy and communal agency until modern times.
- This conclusion links print culture and communal structures to expanded female participation.






