This is the first collection of essays devoted to the study of Jewish women's experiences in eastern Europe. It attempts to go beyond mere description of what women experienced and to explore how gender constructed distinct experiences and identities, seeking thereby to recover lost voices and place them into a broader analytical framework. It is an important first step in the rethinking of east European Jewish history with the aid of new insights gleaned from the research on gender.

This volume of Polin, based on scholarship that has emerged since the fall of communism, is a wide-ranging contribution to the complex history of the Jews in Lithuania. Focusing on the specific character of Lithuanian Jewry, the volume opens by examining how their relationship with the surrounding society developed after 1772, both under tsarist rule and then in independent Lithuania. Moving to more recent times, the devastating impact on the Jewish community of the Soviet and Nazi occupations during the Second World War is discussed, as are the further negative consequences on Jewish life of...