a a aa a ee earl Jewish Women Transition, Paula BE. Hyman ‘The stereotype of Jewish women in Eastern Europe at the the nineteenth century is one of hardy and harassed ho and mothers who struggled to provide for their large maintained the rigorous rules of traditional Judaism, ar largely untouched by the ideological currents that were ing the shietl (market town) as well as urban Jewish cot Jewish women of Eastern Europe have often been staunchly conservative forces within the family, lo ditional cultural forms, including the shaytl, the’ wig. Given that stereotype, the confrontation o Jews with modernity has been presented alm the perspective of elite men, primarily intelle activists, wh: at best mar, inal i 2 male heroes, When, jen feures in a na obstacles :Paula E. Hyman traditional in education ang "ii d pe Fema nineteenth century, an articulate: wut the the rabbinic elite and their allel sh pservance throug! b ; i i lar strategies to fashion Jewish life ang 4 i te Jay leadership compe’ st a. ed to the new socioeconom: Russian Jews soo they encountered by gn" ditions and cultura OP”stion that emphasized the ethnic peat in a process ae multiethnic Russian empire, like the g: = Jewish identity YY tro-Hungarian empire, provided stry larly oa a self-definition. Jews were not alone in basin, support eon such ethnic characteristics as shared langys® me oe history! ThO| modernizing sectors of Russian soi sere themselves secularized, and the ideologies that spoke to 4. ban youth who had abandoned traditional religion, whether Jey, or gentiles, were political. " Like their brothers and husbands, most Jewish women why gradually abandoned traditional religious practice did s0 because of their contact with urban life, and particularly the urban work. place. Almost half of Russian Jews in 1897 lived in areas the consus defined as urban; by 1910 available data indicate that the Jewish urban population had grown 38.5 pereent.® During the interwar years the Jews of newly independent Poland, which became the center of East European Jewry, continued to be highly urban; in 1921 Poland's 2.85 million Jews accounted for almost . In the central region lati ‘ , country’s Jewish popu- cals omren oa 3 ln compa Jers living in shietakh, however han gor Po Balaton. Ete d welfare ora; ‘owever, had access to modern schools, important on 2ti0ns.” For all Jewish women perhaps my fae in their lives were connected to pat $n Adolescent marriage nye tlity. The traditional patter ee fertility fel) en Zi otal disappeared by 1921, and © Soviet Union, here 4, . 08° curred even more qui and socio fee vere the stat imilation chapter doen restructuring a cea < os a be eles wth tM Story of the 2.8 slion Je Dost Wri the borders ofthe Soviee Uris orld War I peace treaties