A fascinating journey into the world of women in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Jerusalem toward the end of Ottoman rule.

Until now, the story of life in the Land of Israel in the waning days of Ottoman rule has been told exclusively as one of Torah study and prayer, religious observance, and fulfillment confined to the male world. Margalit Shilo sheds new light on female society of the time, a subject nearly untouched by historians. Through painstaking research, Shilo has unearthed a wealth of primary sources, including women’s memoirs, letters, and the Jewish press. The author weaves together the different threads that made up the world of ultra-Orthodox women in Jerusalem: the experience of immigration, marriage, the family unit, economic and philanthropic activities, and scholarship. She also takes a hard look at the adversities of women’s lives, including poverty and prostitution. Shilo paints a new and lively picture of Jewish society in Jerusalem around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Cross-listed in the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series

Margalit Shilo is a professor in the Land of Israel studies department, Bar-Ilan University. This book was first published in Hebrew by Haifa University Press and was awarded the 2000 Ya’acov Bahat Prize for outstanding academic book.

“In recent years a wealth of research had been written on the Holy City, but none has touched the gender aspect, until the appearance of this excellent book that has redeemed this subject. [Shilo’s] research is unique for its all-encompassing approach…There is no mine of evidence that she left untouched.”–Israeli Sociology