Description
This essay discusses the search for a home for Jews in America, and how this search is linked to feminism and the liberal academy. Levitt discusses how the tradition of marriage as a home for Jewish women has led to questions about stability and belonging in America, and how this search has been complicated by the influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Levitt argues that while the search for a home is ambivalent, the embrace of America by Jewish feminists is not.
By interrogating America's promise of a home for Jews as citizens of the liberal state,
Jews and Feminism questions the very terms of this social "contract". Maintaining that Jews, women, and Jewish women are not necessarily secure within this construction of the state, Laura Levitt links this contractual construction of belonging and acceptance to legacies of marriage as a contractual home for Jewish women.
Exploring the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe for America, as well as their desire to make this country their permanent home, Levitt raises questions about the search for stability in specific Jewish religious and cultural traditions which is linked to the liberal academy as well as feminist study, thus offering an account of an ambivalent Jewish feminist embrace of America as home.
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