Jewish women

SIGNIFICANCE: In seeking an identity for themselves, many Jewish women have become involved in the women’s movement.

Between 1654 and 1920, five thousand Jewish people migrated from Spain, Portugal, and Brazil to North America and settled in New York, Newport, Savannah, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Richmond. By the 1870s, another fifty thousand Jewish immigrants had arrived from Ireland, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and Germany and settled into trade and commerce activities, moving up to banking and department stores. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a Jewish immigration of more than two million came from Russia, Galicia, Romania, and Hungary. Perhaps some of these Jewish people had migrated to Canada and, like other immigrants, quickly left for the United States. These Eastern European Jewish immigrants were lower middle class, and they and their descendants had a particularly significant impact on Jewish life in the United States. By 1971, two-fifths of the nearly 6 million Jewish people lived in and around New York City. Some had moved to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago.

History

Jewish immigrants brought with them traditions of family and family work groups. Consequently, women made up 43.4 percent of all Jewish people between 1899 and 1910. They were concentrated in the clothing, metalworking, woodworking, building, textile, and tobacco industries; the majority found work in the needle trades. By 1890, 60 percent of employed Jewish immigrants worked in the garment industry, and by 1939, the percentage was even higher.

Initially, working conditions were poor. Families labored in tiny shops, in factories, and in home sweatshops for long hours and low wages. Because there was no public assistance, every Jewish community helped the immigrants. In 1893, the National Council of Jewish Women was organized to serve as a bridge to a new life for the immigrants.

Many Jewish people became involved in the labor movement and, in 1900, helped to found the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). The union movement helped Jewish workers improve their labor conditions. With the availability of educational and business opportunities, Eastern European Jewish immigrants made economic and social advances quickly because they wanted to “Americanize” their children by having them learn the language and customs of the new country.

Change in Lifestyle

Second in importance to learning the English language was wearing fashionable clothing. Dress was seen as a major symbol of assimilation. Jewish women embraced American lifestyles and American clothing with a high level of enthusiasm. Their dominant role in the garment industry and needle trades gave them ample exposure to the latest clothing trends and a heightened fashion consciousness. Growing up in a religious culture that used clothing as symbolic wares to give meaning to their lives, Jewish women honored their religious holidays with new articles of dress. In America, this meant, among other things, replacing huge, out-of-style country boots with thin-soled, high-heeled American shoes. The acculturation process also included wearing a corset to emphasize a small waist and rounded hips.

Part of the Americanizing process resulted in the establishment of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in New York City to train Conservative rabbis. Conservatism provided a compromise between Reform Judaism and Jewish Orthodoxy because it preached American values while retaining most Orthodox traditions. Through their religious institutions, Jewish women began making strides. Historically, the Talmud, consisting of the Jewish laws, was studied only by men. Conservative and Reform Jewish people ordained male and female rabbis, but their Talmud study remained in the rabbinical schools. Orthodox Jewish people did not ordain women, but Talmud study for women became more available. For centuries, women were given little access to the Torah and the Jewish laws, but increased exposure excited the women and gave them greater respect for the development of Jewish laws. The Drisha Institute, a school of Jewish studies for women, was established in New York City.

This type of intellectual awakening was a reflection of women’s advances in secular education. In the 1970s, they began to investigate the role of women in Jewish history and society. Many Jewish women also played visible roles in second-wave feminism, contributing to feminist scholarship, activism, and organizational leadership while simultaneously reshaping Jewish religious and communal life. Holocaust survivors wrote with a feminist consciousness. Others wrote about spirituality, lesbianism, sociology, religious life, theology, history, and biblical scholarship; these subjects reflected the religious and feminist impulses of Jewish women.

Advances in secular education and in feminism reflected a revolution in the lifestyle of Jewish women. Before 1970, they were likely to obtain a college education first and marry slightly later than the general population. They had three or four children and remained home to raise them, returning to the labor market only after all their children were well into adolescence. This likely contributed to the higher educational attainment and resourcefulness of Jewish children, which has been attributed to the fact that many Jewish mothers devote comparatively more time to playing, reading, and talking to their children than do women in the general population.

A national Jewish population study in the early 1990s found that two-thirds of Jewish women aged twenty-five to forty-five had college degrees, as opposed to less than one-fifth of the general population. However, the 1990s also saw a change in the Jewish family. Marriage and family formation were postponed by more Jewish people until they were into their thirties and forties. The Jewish family consisted of one or two children. This shrinkage in family size was a result of family planning and the parents’ placing more emphasis on careers and social lives, among other factors. Subsequent studies in the 2000s and 2010s indicate that these trends toward delayed marriage, smaller families, and sustained labor-force participation among Jewish women have largely continued. Studies indicate that the majority of mothers with children under six years old worked outside the home for pay. Although the divorce rate among Jewish communities increased, it was lower than among families in general.

In the twenty-first century, Jewish families shifted as many families embraced intermarriage. Demographics changed depending on whether the family identified as Orthodox Jewish people. A Pew Research survey from 2020 found that intermarriage among surveyed Orthodox Jewish people was rare, with 98 percent of Orthodox Jewish respondents indicating they had a Jewish spouse. Among non-Orthodox Jewish respondents who had gotten married after 2010, 72 percent were intermarried. The shift in pattern spreads to other aspects of life and approaches to social standards, traditions, expectations, faith, and lifestyle.

The revolution in the lifestyle of Jewish women reflected that of middle-class American women of all stripes. They were getting married later, having children later, and working throughout their offspring’s preschool years. Because of the higher divorce rate, they encountered special problems, such as alcoholism and family violence, and had needs such as high-quality infant and toddler day care and after-school programs. The Jewish family became a microcosm of the general population. Its demands for communal support reflected the same calls throughout American society.

Bibliography

Antler, Joyce. Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement. NYU Press, 2018.

Fuchs, Ilan. Jewish Women's Torah Study: Orthodox Religious Education and Modernity. Routledge, 2014.

Hirsch, Luise. From the Shtetl to the Lecture Hall: Jewish Women and Cultural Exchange. UP of America, 2013.

“Jewish Americans in 2020.” Pew Research Center, 11 May 2021, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.

Kaplan, Marion A., and Deborah Dash Moore, editors. Gender and Jewish History. Indiana UP, 2011.

Klapper, Melissa R. Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890–1940. New York UP, 2013.