To Our Readers

TO OUR READERS Even more than its predecessors, this issue of Nashim has had a long gestation. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that what has emerged is a rather large baby, and if I admire each feature as the mother who has nurtured rather than created it, I leave it to readers to determine the Apgar score. The good news for readers who have borne with us through the tribulations of the founding of a new publication is that, following organizational changes, we are hopeful of finally getting Nashim onto a twiceyearly schedule. Three new issues are currently in the works: no. 5, on Gender, Food, and Survival, under the guest editorship of Norma Baumel Joseph; no. 6, on Women, War, and Peace, under the guest editorship of Alice Shalvi; and no. 7, on Autobiography and Memoir, under the guest editorship of Gershon Bacon (see the Calls for Papers on pp. 285-287). Furthermore, Renée Levine Melammed of the Schechter Institute, whose award-winning book on the cryptc-Jewish women of Castile is reviewed in this issue, has consented to take on the overall scholarly supervision of Nashim as its Academic Editor, starting with issue no. 6. Under her expert guidance, the high academic standards for which we have aimed seem assured. In the past year, as the current issue took shape, violence has beset the land in which I sit writing these lines. Nashim is an academic journal, and we have no intention of making it a forum for political debate - yet we cannot ignore the painful events happening around us. Acting on the proposal of Editorial Board member Shulamit Reinharz, co-director of the Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women, we have decided to devote issue no. 6 ofNashim to the subject of Women, War and Peace in Jewish and Middle East Contexts. Following the publication of Issue no. 1, on Women and the Land of Israel, we were criticized by MaIu Halasa in the Jewish Quarterly for taking the perspective of "a land without people for a people without a land." While this critique was unfair to the writers who participated in that issue, many of whom expressly discussed relations between Jews and Arabs, in general, and Arab women in particular, there was a grain of validity to it. When the Land of Israel is imagined as a Jewish space, the "women" in the title are imagined as Jewish women, though many women in the physical space attached to the Deborah Greniman concept are not Jewish. In an attempt to respond to that critique, we invite Palestinian as well as Jewish scholars and writers to participate in issue no. 6, and I ask our readers' help in bringing this invitation to their attention. In this issue we introduce what we hope will become a regular feature, the "resident artist" column by our Art Editor, Judith Margolis, who has also designed all the covers for Nashim. In her current column, those who remember the beautiful illustration that graced the cover of issue no. 2 will learn the story ofthe personal journey that lies behind it. The cover illustration for the present issue was suggested by Steven Fine, an expert on the aesthetic world of ancient Judaism. When Steven heard of the issue's theme, he immediately recommended the figure of Pharaoh's daughter from Dura Europos as the perfect visual counterpoint to the texts from the same period and culture that are discussed in the first four articles. Judith's proposed design, based on this illustration, was graciously implemented by graphic artist Pnina Shalvi. Esther Zeitlin appeared like an angel to do the last-minute proofreading of the issue and give some warm and needed encouragement to the harried and eternally grateful Managing Editor. Without her help and the forbearance of my spouse and children, the issue could not have gotten to press even now. If I have likened myself to the mother of this issue, it had two keen-eyed scholarly aunts, Judith Hauptman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Renée Levine Melammed, who perused, evaluated (with the help of our kind anonymous referees), and approved all the academic submissions, at...