Medieval Jewish Women & Intersectionality

Why does studying medieval Jewish women matter? The framework of intersectionality, a term coined by the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, allows us to address how Jewish women’s lived experiences in the Middle Ages differed from those of either Jewish men or of Christian or Muslim women. Dr. Sarah Ifft Decker offers an overview of what we might learn—and how we might reevaluate our understanding of the medieval world—by centering the perspectives of Jewish women. Jewish women were marginalized both as women and as Jews, and these intersecting categories of identity shaped their lives in myriad ways. We can add nuance to our efforts to assess women’s work and women’s religious lives in the Middle Ages if we avoid taking Christian identity for granted and compare Christian women with their Jewish neighbors. Discussions of gender complicate narratives abo ...