The thesis titled "Jewish Women's Lives in London and Sydney, 1850-1900,"

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The thesis titled "Jewish Women's Lives in London and Sydney, 1850-1900," by L. Q. Roselya is
original research.
L. Q. Roselya
December 2007
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The thesis "Jewish Women's Lives in Colonial Sydney and London,
1850-1900," is original research conducted by Lancia Quay Roselya.
Lancia Quay Roselya
December 2007
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ABSTRACT:
A persistent focus on the activities and achievements of the
wealthiest and most Orthodox Jewish men, justified a rigorous re-
evaluation of overlooked historical source material in order to provide
a basis for our understanding the distinctive role of Jewish women
within the interconnected British cities of London and Sydney in the
second half of the nineteenth century. The chapters are divided into
subsections that focus on topics that were significant to Jewish
women and girls. The experiences and thoughts of the wealthiest and
most influential Jewish women, including women from the de
Rothschild and Montefiore families, are presented aside the poorest
and most disempowered Jewish females, such as girls, widows and
orphans in order to present the widest range of perspectives. The
dissertation begins by exploring Jewish women's involvement in the
politics related to Jewish emancipation and women's enfranchisement,
and the way that Jewish migration into London promoted changes to
their social and religious networks and sparked interest in Australia
as a destination for Jewish colonists. This provides a basis for
understanding the nuances of British-Jewish women's role within the
family and the way a preference for smaller families intersected with
religious reforms and altered women's attitude toward attending the
mikvah and following the laws of Niddah. The dissertation also
investigates the distinctive culinary traditions and holiday
observances of British-Jewish women, which varied somewhat from
American and European women's traditions, as did their role in the
synagogue. The educational achievement, employment opportunities,
and the contributions of Jewish women as they volunteered in Jewish
settings within Sydney and London are explored. These subjects
enhance our understanding of women's daily lives and their desire for
equality not only with Jewish men, but also •vi.th their non-Jewish
neighbors. This dissertation provides a basis for future scholars to
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include the experiences of English and Australian Jewish women in
trans-regional and cross-cultural histories and broadens our
knowledge of female migrants from a numerically small religious
group.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Title Page ............................................................................................................... l
Statement of Originality. ...................................... . .......................................2
Abstract. ............................................................................................................. 3
Table of Contents .................................................................................................. 5
Introdu.ction .. ............................... , ........................ " .. , ............ , , ... , ........................ 7
Notes for Introduction. .......................................................................................... 31
Chapter 1: Anglo-Jewish Women's Observations about Religious and Racial Toleta.."'"lce .
. ... . . ..... ' .. ' .. ''' .. '' '' ..... ' ........ '' .............. ' ......... ''''''.'' ...... ' ..... ' ..... ''''''.' .... ' .... ' ..... '' ... '.4 J
Notes for Chapter l .............................................................................................. 75
Chapter 2: Religious Considerations of Jewish Colonists Migrating from London to
Sydney. ............................................................................................................ , .. 87
Notes for Chapter 2 ............................................................................................. 110
Chapter 3: Anglo-Jewish Women's Influence in the Synagogue: 'Fashionable
Judaism.'. ................................................ ,................................ . ............ 124
Notes for Chapter 3 ............................................................................................. 148
Chapter 4: Anglo-Jewish Marriage Traditions and Rights for Women Under Jewish
Law. ............. , .................................................................................... , ............. 160
Notes for Chapter 4 ............................................................................................. 192
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 5: Anglo-Jewish Family Planning and Observing tbe Laws of Niddah. ....... .2 02
Notes for Chapter 5 ............................................................................................. 219
Chapter 6: Anglo-Jewish Women's Culinary Traditions and Holiday Observances:
Women as 'Priestess oftbe Home.'. ......................................................................... 224
Notes for Chapter 6 ............................................................................................. 256
Chapter 7: Education for Anglo-Jewish Women and Girls: More than a 'Mere Brainless
Doll.'. ................................ , ............................................................................... 266
Notes for Chapter 7 ............................................................................................. 297
Chapter 8: Anglo-Jewish \Vorkers and Occupational
Trends... . ...................................................................................... 309
Notes for Chapter 8 ............................................................................................ 341
Chapter 9: Community Work by Anglo-Jewish Women and Girls: 'Amazon's
Service.'.................................. ............................................. . ................ 366
Notes for Chapter 9 ........................................................................................... 385
Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 393
Notes for Conclusion,.,,, .............................. , ............. .............. ........................... 408
Bibliography. .................................................................................................... .409
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Introduction:
Nineteenth-century Jewish women in Britain and the colonies were
considered racial and religious minorities and they also experienced
fewer social privileges due to a gender bias against women. Jewish
women were consistently omitted as subjects of study across most
academic disciplines, including Judaic Studies and Women's Studies,
through claims that it was beyond the scope of research projects to
include them, due to the difficulty of locating relevant historic source-
materiaL Jewish women appear to have generated less personal
writing for historians to utilize, and preservation issues further
complicate efforts to understand their perspectives and the conditions
they experienced. Until recently, much of what was known of their
experience was not from their own perspective, but was recorded by
non-Jews or by Je1Arish men who may not have voiced Jewish women's
needs and views clearly.1 The lack of research on Jewish women also
results from prevailing assumptions that once the accomplishments
and views of men are documented and analyzed there is no need for
additional research into Jewish women's lives,2 in spite of the sharply
contrasting gender norms that exist between males and females within
Judaism. Prior to this research, newspapers and archival sources had
not been systematically reviewed for their content related to women
and girls within Sydney's Jewish community. Studies of gender and
minority groups contribute to our understanding of broader areas of
research, such as religious history and women's history even if the
focus on the majority group is subsumed in order to give full attention
to individuals that are usually excluded.
The chapters in this dissertation focus on the questions related to
how Jewish women's lives in Sydney and London were distinctive due
to Jewish religious and cultural traditions, and how Jewish women's
equality with Jewish men and non-Jewish society was discussed
publicly. The research period for this dissertation begins in 1850, just
prior to the gold rush, as free-settlers were arriving in the Australian
colonies, and it concludes in 1900, just prior to Australian Federation,
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and to women's enfranchisement in Australia in 1902. An innovative
aspect of this research is that it situates historical accounts of
women's lives with halakah, or Jewish religious laws, as well as
drawing connections between British laws and local social norms that
were based on Protestantism and Catholicism. These two religious
groups had the greatest influence on Jewish women's choices and
levels of empowerment outside of Jewish society. Jewish people lived
in close proximity to each other, and shared variable aspects of a
Jewish heritage and identity, but the terms 'Jewish community' and
'Jewish society' are not intended to suggest that there was a
homogenous set of cultural, religious or political opinions within the
population, since this was not the case.
The dissertation is divided into nine chapters that correspond to
aspects of Jewish women's lives. Each chapter provides a basis for
understanding women's gender identity and how religious laws related
to women were embedded within Jewish cultural practices. The first
chapter investigates Jewish women's migration into London, and the
status of their civil rights in British society. It provides a revisionist
perspective on the politics of Jewish Emancipation by interjecting the
views of women into the existing narratives related to men's political
lives. Chapter two evaluates the conditions and resources that
attracted women to Sydney or anchored them in London. Chapter
three investigates women's role in Judaism in the synagogue in
London and Sydney as the Reform movement was becoming
influential, particularly at Sydney's Great Synagogue. Chapter four
demonstrates that Jewish women's married lives were guided by
differing religious principles than Christian and Catholic women and
that there were protections embedded in Jewish law that safeguarded
women's rights. Chapter five investigates women's use of the mikvah
after their menstrual cycles and questions if their desire to limit their
family size was the crucial component of their decision-making around
reforms to this aspect of religious tradition. Chapter six explores the
fusion between Jewish women's religious practices and their
fluctuating knowledge of how to prepare kosher food, which was
expected to be central to their domestic lives, in their role as
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'priestesses,' of their households. In chapter seven I question the view
that Jewish females were excluded by Jewish men from becoming
educated in secular matters and religious study. In chapter eight I
evaluate evidence of Jewish occupational trends in Sydney and
London. Chapter nine revises previous assessments of women's
contributions in the area of charity and philanthropic groups. Each
chapter provides evidence that Jewish women's experiences were
distinctive of Christian women and from Jewish men. This
dissertation provides a basis for understanding the way Jewish
women's religious identities were interconnected with their gender and
racial identities, as well as to their feeling of cultural belonging within
British settlements in the under-researched time-period after England
stopped transporting convicts to Australia and in the pre-Holocaust
period prior to Australian Federation.
Historical materials by and about Jewish women are brief and
often fragmentary, making it necessary to utilize an interdisciplinary
approach,3 in order to establish what women's cultural and religious
traditions were, and to analyze their distinctiveness and equality. This
dissertation crosses many disciplines, including history, anthropology,
literature, Subaltern studies, Women's studies, Black studies, family
studies, Judaic studies and law. Historical sources utilized for this
dissertation included previously undervalued family histories,
donation lists, circumcision registers, entries in minute-books,
headstones, cemetery records, attendance records, job
announcements, paintings, photographs and articles from the Jewish
Historical Societies in England and Australia, which began in 1893
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and 1939 respectively. The fragmentary pieces of information, related
to roughly five-thousand individual women who were known to be
Jewish and living in Sydney between the years of 1850 and 1900, were
compiled into a customized database using Endnote software to assist
in making broader generalizations about Jewish society. Biographical
portraits of individual women were stored in individual Endnote files
that could be sorted and searched.s This method made it possible to
provide relatively equal representation between individuals of varying
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