The Martial Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850
Noa Shashar
Published in association with Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion, and Law
A long overdue study of agunot based on exhaustive research in rabbinic sources, memoirs, and communal records.
Noa Shashar sheds light on Jewish family life in the early modern era and on the activity of rabbis whose Jewish legal rulings determined the fate of agunot, literally “chained women,” who were often considered a marginal group. Who were these men and women? How did Jewish society deal with the danger of a woman’s becoming an agunah? What kind of reality was imposed on women who found themselves agunot, and what could they do to extricate themselves from their plight? How did rabbinic decisors discharge their task during this period, and what were the outcomes given the fact that the agunot were dependent on the male rabbinic establishment?
This study describes the lives of agunot, and by reexamining the halakhic activity concerning agunot in this period, proposes a new assessment of the attitude that decisors displayed toward the freeing of agunot.
Purchase from brandeis university press
About the Author
Noa Shashar is an independent scholar. She writes and teaches about the history of Jewish family life and is the author of several volumes including Not on Bread Alone: The Krell Murachovski Family Histories.