The Myth of American Jewish Feminization

Abstract

Historians, sociologists, and contemporary critics have used the trope of the “feminization of the synagogue” to describe and critique gendered changes in American Judaism. Yet, given its many usages, the concept has proven too ambiguous and wide-ranging to function as a useful analytical description. This article begins by parsing the multiple uses of the term feminization: Who uses it, and what might they mean? Equipped with this map of the many meanings of the concept, the article then takes the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a case study. In this period, there is little historical evidence to support the idea that a single, identifiable phenomenon we should call feminization of the synagogue occurred. The persistence of the scholarly trope of feminization of the synagogue, despite the uneven evidence and slipperiness of the term, suggests the need for greater specifi city and clarity in scholarly use.