| This study examines five Jewish American women's organizations in the period 1945-1975 in order to examine how the nexus of ethnicity, gender, class, and geographic locale during that period influenced the manner in which Jewish women created and participated in the social, cultural, and political life of both the ethnic and the larger community.;The conclusion of the study is that, although Jewish women participated in the larger community through civic organizations such as the PTA, Community Chest, and League of Women Voters, their primary allegiance resided in service to the Jewish community. Through their Jewish organizations they promulgated a gendered ethnicity which had at its core social amelioration, Zionist welfare, domestic religiosity, and maintenance of ethnic boundaries. They can, in fact, be seen as the high priestesses of a Jewish form of civil religion. Through their voluntary work, they were able to lay claim to new public roles while rarely challenging the religio-ethnic power structure. In a large sense, Jewish women reinvented the Jewish community and enabled it to function as a bourgeois post World War Two ethnic entity. Finally, their increased responsibilities in the Jewish community gave them a transcendent sense of purpose, so that they did not suffer from domestic containment as Betty Friedan asserted. |
