Gender Roles in the Abrahamic Faiths in the United States

Gender roles, like all other facets of society, have changed greatly since the Pilgrims landed in 1620. While Christians were the first to practice an Abrahamic religion in what is now the United States, Jews and Muslims quickly followed, and they had to situate themselves within a predominantly Christian societal framework.
In the early 1800s, many Jews called Charleston, South Carolina, home (Marcus 64), though nowadays large cities to have large Jewish communities. In 1806, Myer Moses addressed the Jewish Orphan Society, a group that helped poor women and their children make ends meet. He specifically addressed women in his speech, meaning that his audience was probably primarily women. He characterized women as sympathetic, persuasive, anxious, affectionate, virtuous, and dutiful (Marcus 65-66). Moses asked them to donate to help women and children, with the goal of tugging at the heartstrings of these wealthier women as wives and mothers. He claimed that feminine affection and persuasion are the best tools against distress, painting these less-fortunate women and children as distressed. Giving to these distressed people adds to the donors’ virtue, he says (66).
Roughly thirty years later, Isaac Leeser, a Philadelphia preacher, spoke to fellow Jews about educating women. He was a conservative young bachelor (Marcus 129), three qualities that no doubt influenced his views on education. Some people claimed at the time that women did not need the same amount of education as men do because they were to be more dependent than men are (Marcus 129). Leeser warned that fighting in wars and studying law or medicine would “unsex” women (129). He then quoted Deuteronomy from the Torah to underscore his point, because to hold the same j...

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...here are always dissenting opinions, even within a congregation. Jewish men traditionally saw women as inferior because the laws of the Torah and halakha were written to make men the providers and women the nurturers. While some women accepted this, others saw room for improvement, countering that God made men and women in His image. These women wanted more out of their lives than being housewives and behind-the-scenes participants in the synagogue. Men then argued that subtle power was enough for women of the past, and that the woman of the present should channel their gifts into being good wives and mothers, as their ancestors had done.

Works Cited

Marcus, Jacob Rader. The American Jewish Woman: A Documentary History. New York: KTAV, 1981. Print.
Nadell, Pamela S. Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889-1985. Boston: Beacon, 1998. Print.