Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (review)

THE JEWISHQUARTERLYREVIEW,XCII, Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001) 188-192 CHAVA WEISSLER. Voicesof theMatriarchs:Listeningto thePrayersof Early ModernJewish Women.Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. Pp. xxvi + 269. Voicesof theMatriarchs:Listeningto the Prayers of Early ModernJewish Womenis the title of Chava Weissler's book on tkhines, the Yiddish prayersfor private-primarily female-devotion that are first encountered in 16th-centuryprinted sources and flourishedin the following centuries. Weissler's well-known studies of the past 15 years on various aspects of this literatureare here synthesized and fashioned into a collective, definitive portraitof the subject. Tkhines,however, are not simply the subjectof this book, but a means to get at the ultimateelusive subjectsto which they seem to lead: the constructionof gender andJewish women'sreligiosity in early modernAshkenazicJewish society. Of the threesections of Weissler's book, the firstis devoted largely to the former,andthe second to the latter subject. The third section of Voices of the Matriarchs is an extremely refreshing,honest andoften confessional treatmentof the contemporarysituation ,from the state of tkhinesacross the Americandenominationalspectrumto the writer'sown complex relationshipto her subject. Weissler prefaces her study with an introductoryreview that traces the main currentsof Jewish spiritualityin the 17th and 18thcenturies.This review , meantto providethe basic frames of referencefor the non-specialist, explains the kabbalahof GershomScholem, Moshe Idel, and Elliot Wolfson on one foot, as it were. The presuppositionimplicit in this presentation is that the tkhinesand early modernJewish women'sreligiosity more generally must be understoodin relationto this body of knowledge. In fact, if I have any criticism of this exceptionally fine book, it is with this presupposition , a point to which I will return. Part One provides the reader with an introductionto the tkhines from their rise in the 16th century as a genre perfectly suited to the relatively new mediumof print.Jewish women, as readersof Yiddish paraphrasesor translationsof Hebrewguides to properreligious behavior,were amongthe new consumersof inexpensive publicationsthatconstitutedthe lower stratum of the "intellectual middle class." While Weissler distinguishes between WesternandEasternEuropeantkhines,the formerwrittenlargely by men for women, and lattermore frequentlywrittenby and for women, the complexities of authorshipand provenance are such that the distinction is of little consequence. Significantly,however, Weissler insists against earlier scholars that at least some of the tkhines were composed by women. This enables her to analyze a numberof them as autonomouscreations(al- WEISSLER, VOICES OFTHEMATRIARCHS-CHAJES 189 beit in constant, inevitable dialogue with the [male] "greattradition")and not merely as projectionsof male images of women'sreligiosity. In the chaptersthatfollow, Weissler begins her studyof the construction of gender in early modern Ashkenaz in earnest. She regardsthe issue of gender construction in early modern Ashkenaz largely as a matter of the sociology of religious knowledge, i.e., Torahstudy.The oft-repeatedphrase nashimve-'amei ha-arets("women and the ignorant")clearly places women beyond the pale of the educated religious elite, but what precisely is the location of this "place"?Do women practice "folk Judaism"?Is there any difference between "ignorantmen" and women in this cultural context ? If so, can we rightly speakin termsof a single popularreligion? How differentare texts that are addressedsolely to women and those addressed to both men and women? And what sort of Judaismwas presentedto unlearnedJews in the Yiddish literaturethey treasured?Weissler'sanswersto these questions arebased on readingsof a varietyof tkhinesas well as Yiddish mussar (ethical) literature. These readings include analysis of the transformationsof kabbalistic motifs from the Zohar and other sources, and comparisons of the mythic (and often censorious) treatmentof women in mussar text with the far more embodied, empowered,anddown-to-earthexpressions of the tkhines. Weissler, however, does not accountfor these differencesby assertingsimple misogyny on the partof male writers,but adopts a more nuancedview of the largerculturalcontext. One irony visible from this broaderperspective is that the men who wrote works for women, however much they implied (or expressed) inferiority vis-'a-vis men, were the very men who cared enough to cater to this readership.For their part,women writersand readers did not occupy an antagonistic counter-culturalspace, but navigated within the rules establishedby the male elite while subtly contouring it to their own aspirations. PartTwo of the book, "The TkhinesandMystical Spirituality"is primarily devoted to the explorationof the relationshipbetween women andkabbalah . Weissler begins with a reiteration of Gershom...