Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination

National Jewish Book Awards Finalistfor the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women’s Studies, 2017. The ‘Jewish mother’ figure is a hallmark of Jewish culture, one which appears in the works of rabbis, artists, poets, and activists across time and place. While depictions of mothers and motherhood abound in Jewish writings, they vary significantly according to social context. These representations therefore offer important insights into the Jewish cultural imagination, and the ways in which writers resor