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When Rabbis Abuse: Power, Gender, and Status in the Dynamics of Sexual Abuse in Jewish Culture

Elana Sztokman
This book excerpt is the introductory chapter of Elena Sztokman’s When Rabbis Abuse: Power, Gender, and Status in the Dynamics of Sexual Abuse in Jewish Culture (2022). The chapter features a prologue, along with discussions such as the background of the topic and how prevalent sexual abuse is in the Jewish community, what are the dynamics of sexual abuse in the Jewish community? and identifying rabbis who committed sexual abuse.

Jewish Victims of Child Sex Abuse: The Holocaust

Beverley Chalmers
Jewish children were sexually abused during the Nazi era, although acknowledging this is taboo. Nazi ideology, while advocating killing children, did not promote child sex abuse directly, but did so indirectly by destroying Jewish family life with its normal safeguards for child safety. As a result, children were left vulnerable and unprotected from sexual abuse in homes, villages, ghettos, camps, and hiding places, while those in authority turned a blind eye when Jewish children were sexually assaulted or murdered. Their sexual abuse was then hidden by perpetrators, the children, survivors, rescuers, and Holocaust scholars. Perpetrators were ordinary people who were also Nazis, members of the SS, Einsatzgruppen members, Wehrmacht soldiers, their allies in occupied countries, Russian soldiers at the end of the war, as well as rescuers of children who were hidden in Europe, and those who offered homes to children who were sent to “safety” in countries beyond Europe’s borders. The majority of abusers were Gentiles: a handful were Jewish. For most perpetrators, sexual assault was a crime of opportunity, authority, and violence, often coupled with antisemitic justification, and occasionally, religious vengeance.

A Murder in Ferrara

Moti Benmelech
The article, entitled “A Murder in Ferrara,” was originally published in Hebrew in the peer-reviewed journal Masakhet. It is the only scholarly study to date that deals directly with an honor killing within Jewish society, focusing on the murder of a Jewish woman by her brother in Ferrara in 1577 following a romantic relationship with a non-Jewish man. The article analyzes this case as an instance of extreme sexual and familial violence, examining the penetration of Mediterranean concepts of family honor into Jewish society and the attempt to translate these norms into internal Jewish legal and moral categories. It also discusses the sharp rabbinic criticism of such justifications and highlights the gendered dimensions of violence, honor, and communal boundaries in early modern Jewish life.

Writing the Torn Body: Ars Poetica, Violence, and Resistance in Hila Lahav “Till Morning”

Elisa Carandina
The artistic production of several contemporary Hebrew-language women poets manifests a privileged concern with the body and its expressive capacities. In this context, the work of Hila Lahav is particularly significant, as it develops a poetics in which the body becomes both the subject and the medium of artistic creation. Focusing on Hila Lahav’s collection ‘Ad Ha-boqer’ (Till Morning), this article examines how her writing articulates an Ars poetica rooted in the fragmented, wounded body as a site of resistance to violence and silence. Through the figure of the unnamed wife in Judges 19 and the recurrent imagery of skin, dismemberment, and metamorphosis, Hila Lahav’s poems reconfigure abjection, mourning, and vulnerability as the conditions of a speaking body rather than a mute corpse. By reading Till Morning alongside biblical exegesis and feminist criticism, the article traces how Lahav’s poetic voice “writes its own name” on and through the body, elaborating a corporeal practice of memory and testimony that refuses both erasure and voyeuristic representations of sexual violence.The article was originally published in Italian under the title “Io sono il corpo che è stato strappato al corpo”: ars poetica come pratica di resistenza nella produzione poetica di Hila Lahav, in the journal « Le forme e la storia », XV, 1-2, pp. 439-450, 2022. It is published here with the permission of the author and original publisher.

The Fictional Rabbi's Spouse

David J. Zucker
This article focuses primarily on 21st-century novels and short stories situated in America, although it also occasionally refers to life in Great Britain. It first explores male rabbis' spouses in fiction, examining how these characters navigate undefined roles and experience isolation within their communities. The literature suggests that male rabbis’ spouses face three options: to be highly involved in their husband’s congregation, to be the “Rebbetzin,” whether that term is used or not; to be minimally involved, to be simply the rabbi’s wife; or to find a middle path. The analysis then turns to the spouses of women rabbis in fiction, investigating whether they face similar challenges or encounter different expectations. Finally, the article compares these two experiences, revealing significant gender disparities in the expectations placed upon rabbinic spouses and the ways they negotiate their positions within religious communities.

Wilson, Lucas F. W. At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2025

Anna Marie Anderson

Gordon, Peter E. Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver. Yale University Press, 2026

Elaine Margolin

Lemann, Nicholas. Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries. Liveright Publishing Corporation, A Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2026

Elaine Margolin