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"A Predominant Cause of Distress": Gender, Benevolence, and the "Agunah" in Regional Perspective
Ist Teil von
American Jewish history, 2013-04, Vol.97 (2), p.159-182
Ort / Verlag
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2013
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Project MUSE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
According to traditional Jewish law, or halakhah, a married woman may not remarry unless she obtains a get-a rabbinically mediated and approved divorce-from her husband. Yet scholars have shown that episodes of wife desertion rise substantially during times of political turmoil, economic hardship, and mass migration.5 Certainly, such was the case with the immigration of more than 2 million Eastern European Jews to the United States from 1881 to 1914.6 Since it endangered the survival and acculturation of immigrant Jewish families in the New World, desertion soon became a "predominant cause of distress," in the words of one leader, a threat to communal Jewish acceptance and cultural continuity.7 Some social reformers noted that desertion appeared more prevalent among Jews than other immigrant groups, and acculturated Jewish citizens therefore took the lead in founding a network of institutions designed to track down errant husbands and compel them to support their families.8 Desertion signified Jewish men's refusal to observe the nation's masculine ideals, by which respectable men provided for their families' welfare and made it possible for their wives to remain, respectably, at home.