In a day when the ministries of female church leaders and "women preachers" are still sometimes regarded as unusual or even unbiblical, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate that women's leadership in ministry has been part and parcel of Methodism from its earliest days. Renewed appreciation of this strand of our spiritual DNA is vital for the fullest expression of gifts for ministry in the Church today. Yes, women's stories have often been consigned to the footnotes of history, making it necessary to read them into the narrative based on scanty clues and tantalizing breadcrumbs that sometimes raise more questions than answers. Conversely, when there a written record does exist, it has often been suppressed and/or repackaged downplaying their contributions. While the past few decades have seen an increase in interest in women of early Methodism, much of their stories are still untold or forgotten.

"A Daughter of Many Mothers" is the story of Rena Quint, a Holocaust survivor who continues to give testimony in Israel, the United States, and South Africa. This book explores not only her personal Holocaust experience, but addresses the social and psychological effects on many of the remaining survivors of those horrific years.

Winner of the Women in Psychology Jewish Caucus Award for 2000! Jewish Mothers Tell Their Stories: Acts of Love and Courage contains touching and personal essays written by contemporary Jewish mothers from different parts of the globe. Their stories reveal the choices that Jewish mothers make in our post-Holocaust, non-Jewish world--the many ways of being Jewish, the acts of loving, of preserving and celebrating Jewish traditions and spirituality, and of transmitting them to their children and families. The firsthand stories in this compelling book raises questions and provides you with insight into a variety of topics, including: The 'Jewish mother’stereotype and its impact on real Jewish mothers ethnic/historical connections between mothers and daughters moving acts of love, courage, and sacrifice in response to illness, war, or conflicting ideologies motherhood as a catalyst for personal evolutions of Jewish identity and values Orthodox to secular expressions of spirituality The impact of the 'Jewish motherhood imperative’ positive experiences of conversion and interfaith families conveying Jewish history and tradition in a Christian world Jewish Mothers Tell Their Stories will draw you into an appreciation of the cultural, ethnic, and spiritual aspects of mothering. This remarkable collection explores the different meanings of today's concept of “Jewish mother” and “Jewish family.”

A prominent scholar of the Hebrew Bible offers a close reading of the women in Genesis to discover their roles in shaping ancient Israel.

Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson was born on 28 Tevet, 5640 (Monday, January 12, 1880) in Nikolayev, a city in western Russia, near Odessa. In addition to providing our generation with its preeminent, venerated leader, Rebbetzin Chana was in her own right a truly outstanding person, a "woman of valor" in the fullest sense. Righteous, humble, giving and wise, her life is a shining example for every Jewish woman and "mother in Israel." This compilation contains selections from her memoirs, a brief biography and other events and historical information surrounding her illustrious life.

In Wrapped in the Flag of Israel, Smadar Lavie analyzes the racial and gender justice protest movements in the State of Israel from the 2003 Single Mothers' March to the 2014 New Black Panthers and explores the relationships between these movements, violence in Gaza, and the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran. Lavie equates bureaucratic entanglements with pain--and, arguably, torture--in examining a state that engenders love and loyalty among its non-European Jewish women citizens while simultaneously inflicting pain on them. Weaving together memoir, auto-ethnography, political analysis, and cultural critique, Wrapped in the Flag of Israel presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology that is both lyrical and provocative. Lavie's focus on the often-minimized Mizraḥi population juxtaposed with the state's monolithic culture suggests that Israeli bureaucracy is based on a theological notion that inserts the categories of religion, gender, and race into the foundation of citizenship. In this revised and updated edition Lavie connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War, providing an extensive afterword that focuses on the developments in Mizraḥi feminist politics and culture between 2014 and 2016 and its relation to Palestinians.

This book is an ethnographically-informed interview study of the ways in which middle-class mothers from three Israeli social-cultural groups – immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Palestinian Israelis and Jewish native-born Israelis – share and differ in their understandings of a ‘proper’ education for their children and of their role in ensuring this. The book highlights the importance of education in contemporary society, and argues that mothers' modes of engagement in their children's education are formed at the junction of class, culture and social positioning. It examines how cultural models such as intensive mothering, parental anxiety, individualism, and ‘concerted cultivation’ play out in the lives of these mothers and their children, shaping different ways of participating in the middle class. The book will be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists studying mothering, education, parenting, gender, class and culture, to readers curious about daily life in Israel, and to professionals working with families in a multicultural context.

A critical look at the history and culture of women of the Yishuv and a call for a new national discourse

THIS EYE-OPENING LOOK AT THE RISING OPPRESSION OF ISRAELI WOMEN OFFERS A RALLYING CRY FOR HOW WOMEN EVERYWHERE CAN FIGHT BACK. ACROSS ISRAEL—one of the world's most democratic countries—women are being threatened and abused as ultra-Orthodox Jewish factions seek to suppress them. In this stunning exposé, award-winning author and leading Jewish women's activist Elana Sztokman reveals the struggles of Israeli women against this increasing oppression, from segregation on public buses—in a move Hillary Clinton called "reminiscent of Rosa Parks"—to being silenced in schools and erased from newspapers and ads. This alarming patriarchal backlash isn't limited to Israel either: its repercussions endanger the rights and freedoms of women from Afghanistan to America. But there's hope as well: courageous feminist activists within the Orthodox world are starting to demand systemic change on these fronts, and, with some support from non-Orthodox advocates, they're creating positive reforms that could help women everywhere. Blending interviews with original investigative research and historical context, Sztokman traces the evolution of this struggle against oppression and proposes solutions for creating a different, more egalitarian vision of religious culture and opportunity in Israeli society and around the world. Fearless and inspiring, The War on Women in Israel brings to light a major social and international issue and offers a rousing call to action to stop the repression of women in Israel and worldwide.

A novel approach to Israelite kinship, arguing that maternal kinship bonds played key social, economic, and political roles for a son who aspired to inherit his father’s household Upending traditional scholarship on patrilineal genealogy, Cynthia Chapman draws on twenty years of research to uncover an underappreciated yet socially significant kinship unit in the Bible: “the house of the mother.” In households where a man had two or more wives, siblings born to the same mother worked to promote and protect one another’s interests. Revealing the hierarchies of the maternal houses and political divisions within the national house of Israel, this book provides us with a nuanced understanding of domestic and political life in ancient Israel.