Laura Arnold Leibman
Jewish Women in Early America
Summary
Investigating the challenges and experiences faced by Jewish women during the colonial period, focusing on women who struggled with poverty after the death of their husbands, and how the laws and limited education available to women at that time exacerbated their financial struggles.
Laura Arnold Leibman
Laura Arnold Leibman is a professor of english and humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon (USA) and the author of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects (2020), which won three National Jewish Book Awards. Her work focuses on religion and the daily lives of women and children in early America and uses everyday objects to help bring their stories back to life. She has been a visiting fellow at Oxford University, a Fulbright scholar at the University of Utrecht and the University of Panama, and the Leon Levy Foundation Professor of Jewish Material Culture at Bard Graduate Centre. Her second book, Messianism, Secrecy, and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (2012), uses material culture to retell the history of early American Jews and won a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award. Her most recent book is Once We Were Slaves (2021).
In most cases in the colonies, Jewish identity is determined through the maternal line, just like everywhere else. There are instances, particularly in Suriname, where people were taking their Jewish identity through their father’s line.
I would say it’s more how did enslaved people become Jews? In some cases, it was conversion.