Journal 3 in 2003
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Moshe Shalvi
Publishing as Empowerment

The Project of a World Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

It is now widely agreed that women have been “written out of history,” that is, that their role in and contribution to society in all its aspects has not only not been acknowledged but, until the latter half of the 20th century, was not even recorded in the material taught and studied in schools and universities. Only with the significant development of social history after World War II did historians begin to relate adequately not only to events and (male) personalities on the national and international scene, but also to the wealth of material contained in humble, everyday documents, such as diaries, family correspondence and even shopping and laundry lists, as well as photographs and artifacts. All of these gave scholars, students and common readers a better picture of how ordinary people lived, what and how they contributed to society and how the world-shaking events of their time affected them on a personal level.

Feminist scholars have done much to reclaim the unknown or too-little-known role of women, beginning with the creation of feminist interpretation of Biblical texts, from which women and their voices are so often absent. They have provided a feminist perspective on numerous aspects of sociology, and economics, interpreting data and statistics in a way that provides a gender-differentiated picture of reality. On a more popular level, women’s magazines have added to their traditional contents on fashion, beauty and cookery, items which relate to women’s professional, political and societal rôles, which seek to educate their readers on matters such as women’s health or sexual harassment. In other words, what has been recognized is that the world contains both men and women, that the sexes frequently differ both in what they experience and how they respond to various phenomena, and that the female aspects and priorities are no less interesting and important than the male.

All of this has undoubtedly contributed to the empowerment of women, as has the change in the role and image of women in the mass electronic and non-print media, an arena from which women were virtually absent in the 1970s and early 1980s, but where they now play a major role not only as actresses and presenters, but as writers, producers, commentators and analysts.

Nevertheless, far too much remains unknown about far too many women – and this is where my own interests and experience as a publisher and a member of the editorial staff of two major encyclopedias comes in. I served as the production manager and illustrations editor of both the 16-volume Encyclopedia Judaica, published in 1972, and of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, published in Hebrew and English in 1990. Always an egalitarian in my private life, I became increasingly aware, through my wife Alice’s feminist activity, of the discrimination from which women suffered in virtually every aspect of life. On examination, I discovered that of the 15 million words in the Encyclopedia Judaica, only approximately 400,000 – 0.27% -- were devoted to women and women-related topics. Vol. 16 contains a “feature” article on “Woman” from Ancient Near Eastern Society to the Present, of approximately 4,400 words, with a bibliography of 8 lines. General references to women occupy one column of the 2,240 columns in the index volume! One egregious example of obtuseness relates to Nehama Leibowitz, the noted Bible scholar and teacher, whose entry is a two-sentence appendix to a two-column entry on her philosopher brother, Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Only in 1987, for the 7th Yearbook, did the editors commission my wife and the late Dafna Izraeli, a noted feminist sociologist, to contribute articles on women in Judaism and in Israel. And that was only as the result of considerable lobbying on my part and that of the two authors.

On the other hand, as I perused the monthly Women’s Review of Books, to which Alice has subscribed since it first appeared 20 years ago, I was overwhelmed by the amount of research being conducted by and about women. And at the same time there was a flourishing of Jewish Studies at virtually all the major universities, particularly in North America. Yet none or little of all this found expression or reflection in a major work of reference which contained comprehensive data on individuals, events and key topics in Jewish law and history from a gender-sensitive perspective.

Thus, in 1994, I began to plan a huge project, a World Encyclopedia of Women, which would cover all parts of the world throughout the ages – and would cost about $5 million to produce! Needless to say, I did not find a publisher willing or able to invest such a sum.

Shortly afterwards, while Alice was attending a conference on information technology at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., I came across a newly-published two-volume Encyclopedia of Black Women in America and at once my imagination was rekindled. I decided there was a need for a similar work on Jewish women, but not confined to America. Rather, what we needed was a female and feminist version of the Encyclopedia Judaica, one that would at last do justice to the role played by Jewish women past and present in every aspect of life, both Jewish and general, and one that would showcase Jewish feminist scholars by inviting them to be the editors of and contributors to the encyclopedia. As a result, I prepared a new – and more modest – proposal in 1996 for a work that would appear on CD-Rom, which would not only gather the fruits of past and present research but also stimulate further enquiry, study and publication – all contributing to ensuring Jewish women’s rightful place in the history of their people. In 2001 I even found a generous female feminist sponsor prepared to fund the entire project.

The Encyclopedia will contain biographical and analytical articles on individuals, ranging from Biblical personalities to our contemporaries; feature articles on various halakhic issues relating to women, their rôle and status in Jewish society and religion; entries on women in the Holocaust as well as in other critical periods in Jewish history; and Jewish women’s participation in and contribution to Jewish and world culture.

The Encyclopedia will also contain analytical articles about women in the Jewish societies of Arabia, Asian regions of the Ottoman Empire (Iraq, Syria and Turkey), Australia, China, Europe, India and Southeast Asia, Japan, Latin America, the Magreb, Middle East, North America, Palestine and Israel, Persia and Afghanistan, and South Africa.

It will encompass the periods: Ancient Israel, Greco-Roman, Middle Ages (Christian Northern Europe, Christian Spain, Muslim Lands), Early Modern, Modern and Contemporary.

The Encyclopedia is not dogmatic in its editorial policy but presents a variety of information, theories and scholarly points of view for the reader’s consideration.

“Knowledge is power” is one of Alice’s favourite sayings and it is most appropriate to the EJW. As one reads the entries one becomes increasingly aware of the large number of significant Jewish women who have lived and worked wherever Jews lived. But one also becomes aware of the sad fact that so many of them have sunk into an undeserved oblivion. One is also made aware of the enormous amount of research currently being conducted in every area related to Jewish women, most of it by women. And as one reads one is filled not only with admiration but also with an awareness of the injustice that has been done to so many of those forgotten women – to the collaborators whose male colleagues reaped the rewards, the fame and the prizes, to the women who were the founders and forerunners in institutions and even in entire professions, such as social work, which have since flourished, to the talented wives and sisters who lived in the shadow of their equally talented husbands and brothers.

All of them serve as rôle models and exemplars. Knowing that they existed, women can and should be filled with pride and a desire to emulate them – and also, I hope, with an equal desire to spread the word about them and their contribution to science, to the arts, to Judaism, to the world in which they lived.

Due out in December 2004, the EJW will make an ideal bat mitzvah gift to inspire young women but will make an equally appropriate gift or purchase for all those women – and men – who need to be informed on the extraordinary contribution made by Jewish women, to know and appreciate how remarkable and wonderful Jewish women were – and are.