Dr. Ruth Lamdan

Role: Researcher

Scope of Research:

Jewish society in the Ottoman Empire; Jewish family life and the status of women; Jews in Palestine (Eretz Israel) in 16th-18th centuries; Jews in Italy in the 15th-18th centuries.

Academic Background:

B.A. and M.A. degrees at Tel Aviv University (Summa cum Laude). M.A. Thesis: “Rabbi Moshe Basola - His Life and Work” (1983). Ph.D. Thesis: “The Status of Jewish Women in the Communities of Egypt, Syria and Palestine in the 16th Century” (1992)

Selected Publications

'Female Slaves in the Jewish Society of Palestine, Syria and Egypt in the 16th Century', The Days of the Crescent, ed. M. Rozen (The Diaspora Research Institute, Tel-Aviv University: Tel Aviv 1996), pp. 355-371 (in Hebrew).
'Jewish Polygamy in Palestine and Egypt in the Generations following the Expulsion from Spain', Daniel Carpi Jubilee Volume, eds. D. Porat, M. Rozen and A. Shapira (Tel Aviv University: Tel-Aviv 1996), pp. 73-89 (in Hebrew).
Am Bifnei Atzman - Jewish Women in Palestine Syria and Egypt in the 16th Century, Tel Aviv University: Tel-Aviv 1996 (in Hebrew).
A Separate People - Jewish Women in Palestine, Syria and Egypt in the Sixteenth Century, Leiden-Boston-Köln 2000.
Sefer Tikkun Soferim of Rabbi Itzhak Tzabah Copied in Jerusalem in the Year 1635, The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center: Tel Aviv, 2009 (in Hebrew).
‘Jewish Women as Providers in the Generations following the Expulsion from Spain’, Nashim, A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues, 13 (2007), pp. 49-67.
'Old Women, Widows and Respectable Ladies in Jewish Society in the Ottoman Empire’, Proceedings of the 15th World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 2009 (http://www.jewish-studies.org/2010) (in Hebrew).
‘Mothers and Children as seen by Sixteenth Century Rabbis in the Ottoman Empire’, in: Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora, ed. Julia R. Lieberman (Waltham, Mass. 2011), pp. 70-98.
‘The Jewish Community of Jerusalem according to 17th Century Hebrew Legal Documents’, Jewish Law Association Studies XXIII: The Fordham Conference Volume, 2012, pp. 138-146.
‘Jewish Encounters in Muslim Courts: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries’, in Jewish Law and its Interaction with Other Legal Systems, eds. Christine Hayes and Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer (Liverpool: Deborah Charles Publications, 2014; Jewish Law Association Studies XXV), pp. 105-119.
‘Mothers and Children in Ottoman Jewish Society as reflected in Hebrew Sources of the 16th to 18th Centuries’, in: Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, eds. Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek, and Simon J. Bronner (Liverpool, UK: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization with Liverpool University Press, 2017), pp. 77-101.

‘Children’s Education in Ottoman Jewish Society (16th to 18th Centuries)’, in: Children and childhood in the Ottoman Empire, eds. Gülay Yilmaz and Fruma Zachs (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), pp. 336-362.