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Jewish Family
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
Jonathan Magonet |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 In this excerpt from Cambridge Illustrated History of Religions, Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet from Leo Baeck College Centre for Jewish Education in London looks at the transformation of Jewish family values. The biblical and patriarchal world is compared to that of modern Western society, where the rights of women in marriage and divorce have been transformed. He shows how this has had an enormous consequence for the structure of 'typical' Jewish families. |
 he traditions and practices of the Jewish family have evolved across time, affected by Jewish law and also by the norms of the society in which Jews lived. The biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were permitted to have several wives and concubines, building a large extended family. While the trend within the Bible was towards monogamy, bigamy and polygamy were allowed well into the talmudic era, although the sages advised that a man should have no more than four wives, otherwise he could not satisfy them equally. It was only in the twelfth century within Christian Europe that a ban on polygamy came into force, at least for the Ashkenazi if not the eastern Jewish communities. |
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| An Orthodox Jewish family in San Francisco, at the Seder table. Seder (order) governs the home ceremony used at the festival of Pesach (Passover). Non-Israeli Jews usually celebrate over two nights. The ritual includes prayers, recitations, readings, songs, special foods, and wine. | |
The biblical world was patriarchal, with family authority vested in the 'father of the household'. This structure defined the relative roles of men and women, with men having major responsibilities as breadwinners but also in matters of religious study and public ritual practices, and women having major responsibilities within the domestic sphere, childrearing, and education, as well as in domestic religious rituals. This division of labour, both material and spiritual, provided a stable structure for family life throughout the centuries of exile, reinforced by the relative separation of Jews from outside society and the common need to survive as a small beleaguered community. Divorce rarely occurred and the extended family was an important unit. |
This situation changed radically with the Jewish entry into modern, Western society. The changing status of women, who could enjoy greater independence, also had an impact on the internal dynamics of family life, highlighting the difficulties that were inherent in the traditional model. The classical example is in the matter of a religious divorce, which could only be granted by the husband. This had the effect of forcing women to stay within unsatisfactory marriages and could on occasion lead to blackmail, with the husband refusing to commence divorce proceedings without appropriate financial remuneration. Powers related to divorce exist within rabbinic courts, but Orthodox rabbis have often proved reluctant to use them. Increasingly, with the rise of the women's movement, this and other issues--such as the right of Jewish women to study traditional texts and take a leading role in public ritual life (reading from the Torah in the synagogue service, functioning as rabbis)--have been challenged, with the Liberal, Reform, and Conservative religious movements taking a leading role in the debates. These changes, which parallel those in the wider society, have been accompanied by a greater rate of marital breakdown and divorce, putting the now standard nuclear Jewish family under considerable strain. |
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