Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books

Houses of Study is an eloquent memoir of a Jewish woman s life and her efforts to reconcile the traditions of her faith with her belief in women s equality and the pull of modern American living. Ilana M. Blumberg traces her path from a childhood immersed in Hebrew and classical Judaic texts alongside Anglo-American novels and biographies to a womanhood where the two literatures suddenly represent mutually exclusive possibilities for life. Set in houses of study, from a Jewish grammar school and high school to a Jerusalem yeshiva for women to a secular American university, her intimate and poignant memoir asks what happens when the traditional Jewish ideal of learning asserts itself in a woman directed by that same tradition toward a life of modesty, early marriage, and motherhood.

This Bison Books edition is updated with discussion questions.