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Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture

Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/jmews/article-pdf/16/2/206/814045/206stephan.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 REVIEW Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture Eve Krakowski Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018 350 pages. ISBN 9780691174983 Reviewed by TARA STEPHAN Eve Krakowski’s Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt artfully uses sources from the Cairo Geniza to reconstruct the crucial moment of girls’and women’s first marriage, a period that she defines as “adolescence.” This study is a refreshing reexamination of some of the ideas and arguments about medieval Jewish society that S. D. Goitein (1967–93) initially pre- sented in his monumental Mediterranean Society. For instance, Krakowski reinterprets Goitein’s conclusion that medieval Jewish families were composed of “cohesive patriarchal clans whose members lived together in extended households” (3). Using the concept of female adolescence, she reveals the importance of kin support for women and corrects previously held narratives about marriage, including the idea that there were preferences for cousin marriage and marrying female virgins. As Krakowski states in her introduction, “This book considers how such ordinary Jewish women fit into the social order of the tenth- to thirteenth-century Islamic eastern Mediterranean, both as women and as Jews, and how two http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Middle East Women's Studies Duke University Press

Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies , Volume 16 (2) – Jul 1, 2020

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Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies
ISSN
1552-5864
eISSN
1558-9579
DOI
10.1215/15525864-8238216
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/jmews/article-pdf/16/2/206/814045/206stephan.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 REVIEW Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture Eve Krakowski Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018 350 pages. ISBN 9780691174983 Reviewed by TARA STEPHAN Eve Krakowski’s Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt artfully uses sources from the Cairo Geniza to reconstruct the crucial moment of girls’and women’s first marriage, a period that she defines as “adolescence.” This study is a refreshing reexamination of some of the ideas and arguments about medieval Jewish society that S. D. Goitein (1967–93) initially pre- sented in his monumental Mediterranean Society. For instance, Krakowski reinterprets Goitein’s conclusion that medieval Jewish families were composed of “cohesive patriarchal clans whose members lived together in extended households” (3). Using the concept of female adolescence, she reveals the importance of kin support for women and corrects previously held narratives about marriage, including the idea that there were preferences for cousin marriage and marrying female virgins. As Krakowski states in her introduction, “This book considers how such ordinary Jewish women fit into the social order of the tenth- to thirteenth-century Islamic eastern Mediterranean, both as women and as Jews, and how two

Journal

Journal of Middle East Women's StudiesDuke University Press

Published: Jul 1, 2020

References