Zinaida Poliakova (1863-1953) was the eldest daughter of Lazar Solomonovich Poliakov, one of the three brothers known as the Russian Rothschilds. They were moguls who dominated Russian finance and business and built almost a quarter of the railroad lines in Imperial Russia. For more than seventy-five years, Poliakova kept detailed diaries of her world, giving us a rare look into the exclusive world of Jewish elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These rare documents reveal how Jews successfully integrated into Russian aristocratic society through their intimate friendships and patronage of the arts and philanthropy. And they did it all without converting--in fact, while staunchly demonstrating their Jewishness. Poliakova's life was marked by her dual identity as a Russian and a Jew. She cultivated aristocratic sensibilities and lived an extraordinarily lifestyle, and yet she was limited by the confessional laws of the empire and religious laws that governed her household. She brought her Russian tastes, habits, and sociability to France following her marriage to Reuben Gubbay (the grandson of Sir Albert Abdullah Sassoon). And she had to face the loss of almost all her family members and friends during the Holocaust. Women's voices are often lost in the sweep of history, and so A Jewish Women of Distinction is an exceptional, much-needed collection. These newly discovered primary sources will change the way we understand the full breadth of the Russian Jewish experience.

Written with a conscious sense of racial pride, a black physician presents biographical sketches of accomplished black women.

Church, school, and club constitute the triumvirate of associations central to the lives of the women chronicled in Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction, compiled and edited by Hallie Quinn Brown.

This lavishly illustrated handbook was conceived to accompany an international exhibition organised by the city of Mechelen (Malines) in 2005. Both the exhibition and the catalogue highlight an important aspect of Burgundian culture: the impact of noble women on life at the court and in the city around 1500. Margaret of York (1446-1503), the English princess married to Duke Charles-the-Bold, and Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), the only daughter of Mary of Burgundy, both lived in Mechelen as well-to-do widows and are therefore the focal point of this publication. At the time, the city of Mechelen was the cosmopolitan and administrative centre of the Burgundian Netherlands. It forms the stage on which their lives as dowager duchess and as regent of the Netherlands unfold. Both women carried high responsibilities in matters of education, learning, devotion, government, diplomacy, patronage, public appearance and court etiquette. The book looks at the way in which court ladies were meant to behave within a given societal framework and also discusses how each individual interpreted her role by actively negotiating her position of authority. The sixteen essays which introduce the five distinct catalogue sections were written by leading scholars from different disciplines such as Wim Blockmans, Krista De Jonge, Dagmar Eichberger, Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, Anne-Marie Legare, Philippe Lorentz and Walter Prevenier. This book provides much more than a biographical account of two "women of distinction," but regards their lives as paradigmatic for upper-class women of that time. The study takes a fresh look at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period and offers the reader essential information as well as new insights into matters of gender and female concern.

The only book on the history of Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the nation's largest Native arts event.

Each of the 30 essays here delves into a topic that gives us much food for thought: the Bible as interpreted through ancient Near-Eastern creation myths, flood myths, and goddess myths; gender in the Bible; the feminist approach to Jewish law; comparative Jewish and Christian perspectives on the Hebrew Bible; biblical perspectives on ecology; creating a theology of healing; feminine God-talk. The volume concludes with the author's own original prayers in the form of poetic meditations on pregnancy and birthing. This book is unique, not only because it is the only volume in the JPS Scholar of Distinction series written by a woman, but also because Frymer-Kensky's personal and forthright voice resonates so clearly throughout each piece. Scholars and students of Bible, Jewish studies, and women's studies will surely find this to be a one-of-a kind collection.

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