The Marital Knot: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648-1850

A long overdue study of agunot based on exhaustive research in rabbinic sources, memoirs, and communal records.

Noa Shashar sheds light on Jewish family life in the early modern era and on the activity of rabbis whose Jewish legal rulings determined the fate of agunot, literally "chained women," who were often considered a marginal group. Who were these men and women? How did Jewish society deal with the danger of a woman's becoming an agunah? What kind of reality was imposed on women who ...