Ruth
Schreiber

My Personal Bookcase - Progress at last

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This work relates to the exponential growth in Jewish women’s scholarship in recent decades. Throughout the last 2 millennia Jewish women have not been notably learned- this area was overwhelmingly dominated by men. However, we are witnessing a real change with women achieving great prominence and knowledge: writing, teaching, leading higher education institutes for other women, and women rabbis in all denominations of Judaism. This is nothing short of a revolution, social and intellectual.

I chose to address this new excellence by creating a mini-bookcase (referencing the traditional ‘Jewish Bookcase’). I created 5 shelves, each covering 500 years from the beginning of the first millennium of the Common Era (AD). Each scholar has her name on the spine of a tiny hand-made book (full of blank pages), each 6.6 x 5.5 x 1.8cm. 

The earlier shelves are either empty or sparsely filled, whereas the shelf from 2000 CE is overflowing with books, depicting the recent phenomenal multiplication of outstanding women now in the field of traditional Jewish learning.  

 

 

I have produced this work in conjunction with Daniel Krausz, carpenter, who created the bookcase to my specification, and Wanja Schaub who helped me bind the books. Several scholars directed my research.