We are delighted to share that A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2025), co-authored by IIJS Co-Director and Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society Elisheva Carlebach and Prof. Debra Kaplan (Bar-Ilan University), received two National Jewish Book Awards! The book was awarded the Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship and the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women’s Studies.
In A Woman Is Responsible for Everything, Carlebach and Kaplan draw on meticulous research and extensive archival and material sources to reveal Jewish women’s lives across three centuries, revealing how women were central to the economic, religious, and communal life of their communities. Richly documented with archival images, the work illuminates the lives of women whom scholars have long overlooked, contributing a new chapter to the history of Jewish women and a broader understanding of the Jewish past.
To learn more about the award, please visit the Jewish Book Council’s announcement page. Additional information about the book is available through Princeton University Press.