Women in Jewish life and law

SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY The first three volumes of The Cambridge History of Judaism cover the period between 537 bce to 70 ce and, aside from a chapter devoted to the limited topic of their roles in the ancient synagogue, women as a separate topic have not been discussed. Is one, therefore, to assume that only after 70 ce did Jewish women develop a separate historical existence from other Jews? Not necessarily. More likely, the awareness of women and gender as a separate, important, and neglected aspect of Jewish history is the result of the Zeitgeist that pervaded the last three decades of the twentieth century. Scholars studying this period have become acutely aware that what has passed for the history of the Jewish people is a history of its male members. In order to present the history of the entire people, a new approach is required, a different reading is necessary, and new questions must be raised. This premise informs the agenda of this chapter. The sources for pursuing new questions about Jewish women's lives between 70 and 235 ce are the same sources employed in the discussion of all Jews – rabbinic literature, as well as papyrological and epigraphic material. The general difficulties inherent in employing these sources when used as historical sources to write history also pertain to the writing of women's history. Inscriptions and papyri are short, sketchy, fragmentary, and plagued with meaningless formulas, and were never intended as tools for describing the past.