“Where were the Women? A History of Gendered Synagogue Space” – An illustrated lecture by Samuel D. Gruber

Traditionally men and women have been separated in Jewish worship spaces, though in fact, we know little with certainty about the role of women in Jewish religious life in antiquity and their physical place within religious buildings. There is evidence of women’s involvement in the building and administration of synagogues throughout the Roman Empire, but few details. Most scholarship of the last 150 years, however, has been predicated on later Jewish practice, which for more than a millennium emphatically separated the sexes, and with a few exceptions, discouraged regular female participation. That is still the case in most synagogues of the world and in Orthodox synagogues in the United States. 

Beginning in the 19th century, however, as new forms of Jewish worship developed first in Europe and even more so in 19th century America, the role of women increased in synagogue life. By the mid-19th century in many American Reform synagogues women and men could sit together. Women were still forbidden from publicly reading the Torah or officiating in regular religious services, but they were more visible in the synagogue, and overall, in Jewish public life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Jewish women have forged an identity of their own that draws on Jewish and American values and sensibilities.

Samuel D. Gruber (BA, Princeton University; Ph.D. Columbia University) has been a leader in the documentation, protection, and preservation of historic Jewish sites worldwide for 35 years. He was founding director of the Jewish Heritage Program of World Monuments Fund (1988-1996) and Research Director of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad (1998 through 2008). He presently directs Gruber Heritage Global, a cultural resource consulting firm and is president of the not-for-profit International Survey of Jewish Monuments. From 1994 until 2022 he taught courses in Art History and Jewish Studies at Syracuse University. He has also taught at Binghamton, Colgate, Cornell, and Temple Universities and Le Moyne College. Dr. Gruber has curated two on-line exhibitions for the College of Charleston: Life of the Synagogue and Synagogues of the South, and helped organize the project to document all synagogues of South Carolina.