REBECCA GRATZ AND THE DOMESTICATION OF AMERICAN JUDAISM (ETHNICITY, WOMEN)

"Rebecca Gratz and the Domestication of American Judaism" is the first critical study of Gratz's life (1781-1869) and her impact on American Jewish life. Because she was the most influential Jewish woman of the nineteenth century, this is an important piece of the puzzle that is American Judaism.;Gratz saw that evangelists posed only one threat to Jewish domestic life. Poverty and intermarriage were others. The experience of her own and other Jewish families showed that the values of companionate marriage, individualism, and romance, coupled with the small size of the American Jewish population, made intermarriage between Christians and Jews a real threat to Jewish domesticity. If Judaism in America was to rely on domestic religion, and if American Jews were adopting the values of companionate marriage, then Jews had to educate Jewish women in leading domestic Judaism. Gratz's founded organizations to do so. The Female Hebrew Benevolent Society (1819) and the Jewish Foster Home (1855) gave material aid and basic care to the poorest Jewish families while requiring them to conform to some traditional standards of Jewish domesticity. Her Hebrew Sunday School (1838) created the largest pool of Jewish marriage partners in Philadelphia, educating them in the principles of an American conceptualization of Judaism and training women to teach Judaism at home and in schools.;The nineteenth century is acknowledged to have been the era that saw a feminization of American religion and Judaism here was subject to the same stresses and influences from popular culture as was Protestantism. The charismatic Christianity of the Second Great Awakening underscored the romanticism of Victorian religion in America and gave women and domesticity leading roles in religious life. Domestic Judaism traditionally had been under the direction of men, but as Americans, Jewish women were drawn into the debates and discussions about religion that had become central to women's sphere. Women evangelists commonly approached Jewish women and children.