With today's focus on jihadist, exclusivist Islam, it will surprise many readers unfamiliar with Middle Eastern history that Jewish women frequently turned to Islamic courts for favorable rulings on property disputes with their husbands and heirs. Ruth Lamdan's encyclopedic examination of the Jewish legal culture in 16th-century Palestine and the Mediterranean world gives us insight into why this was so.

The work focuses on the experience of Sephardic Jews (Sephardim) expelled from Spain in 1492 who found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. It is no longer widely known that in 1453, after conquering Constantinople, the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad the Conquerer (1451–81) invited Jews to settle in his domains. Even more famously, Bayezid II (1481–1512) invited those fleeing the Inquisition to settle in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, which were conquered in 1517. Tradition has it that he asked Ferdinand, the Spanish king who had expelled the Jews and Muslims from Andalusia, whether a ruler who improved his own country, thereby enriching another kingdom, could be considered wise. These invitations led to a Jewish revival in Safed in the Galilee and in Jerusalem, where the traumatized refugees from Spain began to rebuild their shattered lives.

Lamdan sets out to examine whether the Sephardim influenced the traditions of the Arabic-speaking Jews (Musta

rabim), North African Jews (Maghrebim), and Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim already living in Ottoman lands. She asks how this “meeting of different cultures” was reflected in decisions based on normative Jewish law (Halakhah) that evolved in the refugee communities of the Levant during this period. “Did it help mitigate the intractability of the sages, and if so, how was this expressed in practice? Finally, how far did the Halakic status of women correspond to their actual status, as reflected in society's attitude towards them in everyday life?” (p. 7). In answering these questions, Lamdan has produced a compendium of source material on the status of women in 16th-century Palestine, from Halakic responsa literature (she'elot v-teshovot; lit., questions and answers; a body of judicial opinion analogous to Islamic fatwa literature), the Cairo Geniza, homilies, local regulations, travelers' literature, Islamic court records, and even ballads. She sheds light on the superstitions and ignorance of those days by discussing texts relating to love spells, charms, witchcraft, and bizarre treatments for difficult childbirth (p. 87). Making excellent use of the scholarly works based on these genres, Lamdan meticulously traces the nuances of the many difficult issues facing these women: rabbinical prejudices regarding women generally and issues relating to childhood; marriage (including fascinating discussions of cases involving polygamy, marital disputes, divorce, levirate marriage, deserted wives); extended-family life; motherhood; social, economic, and religious life; and education. She homes in on well-chosen cases and brings the reader close to the jurisconsults and the atmosphere in which they made their rulings, and to the men and women involved in litigation.

The Babylonian Talmud described women as “a separate people,” and Lamdan sketches out their legal, social, and economic predicament in colorful and sometimes surprising detail. In so doing, she introduces the reader to normative Jewish law and its interpretation. She provides a helpful glossary and biographical sketches of the leading Jewish sages, jurisconsults, and “decisors,” enabling nonspecialists to follow her sources. The book is well indexed, with extensive footnotes. The peculiarity of the word “pressurize” instead of the word “persuade,” “coerce,” or “force” reflects Israeli usage and is the only noticeable translation issue in the book.

The author is not always consistent in her analysis. While she finds the rabbis inflexible, her cases show that the authorities did try to prevent greater harm by ameliorating the conditions facing women—but always to preserve the strength of the family through male control of property. Nevertheless, she bridges the gap between those who have studied Jewish law and those who have studied Islamic law; between legal scholars focusing on theory and historians focusing on political and socioeconomic developments; and between specialists and generalists. The work is therefore accessible to everyone interested in legal history, Jewish and Islamic history, Levantine history, and women's studies.

Lamdan, an Israeli Jew, writes poignantly in conclusion, “Such a work would be incomplete without reference to the sorry fact that over the past five centuries, little has been done to improve the status of women in rabbinical courts. In the 20th century, as in the 16th century, there are hundreds of ‘chained’ women in the State of Israel whose husbands refuse to grant them a get [bill of divorce], and who are at the court's mercy if they wish to start a new life. Today, too, the rabbinical courts (which rule on matters of Jewish personal law) are powerless to compel recalcitrant husbands to grant a divorce, and are unable to provide a solution for their wives…. This failure has alienated large sections of the community from the rabbinical courts…. The rabbinical decisors fear they will lose control of their well-ordered masculine world and the lives and property of their wives and daughters…. In practice, the rabbis are not concerned with the wishes, feelings, or motives of women” (p. 267).