Houses of Study

Book excerpt: 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.