Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination

Book excerpt: Most Jews will feel intimately familiar with and attached to the figure of the ‘Jewish mother’, yet few have questioned representations of mothers and motherhood in Jewish culture. This volume aims to fill this gap by bringing to the fore the vast network of symbols and images which Jews have associated with mothers from the Bible to the modern period. It demonstrates the complex ways in which the Jewish mother has been used to construct and frame Jewish religion and culture.