Marital Knot

Noa Shashar is a lecturer at the Sapir Academic College in Israel. She is the author of several books, including Vanished Men: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648–1850 (Hebrew), Not on Bread Alone: The Krell Murachovski Family Histories, and Mazkeret Rishonim: A History of the Levin and Miller Families from Mazkeret Batya & Rishon Lezion.

“[Shashar] bridges the gap between halakhic scholarship and social history. The result is both rigorous and humane: a history of law that reads as a history of feeling. Shashar . . . deepens our understanding of gender, law, and emotion in early modern Ashkenaz, and her archival method is both original and illuminating.”

• PrefaceIntroductionSection 1: Widows and Yevamot in the Ashkenazic World in the Early Modern AgeSection 1, Part 1: Widows in the Ashkenazic world, 1648–1850Section 1, Part 2: Yibum and halitzahSection 1, Part 3: The halitzah trapSection 2: Dead Men, Chained WomenSection 2, Part 1: “Bitterly she wails”: Agunot in times of persecution and warSection 2, Part 2: Two tales of murderSection 2, Part 3: Identifying the dead in the interest of freeing the agunah and taking revengeSection 2, Part 4: “Nothing of him was ever found save a shoe and belt”: Freeing an agunahwhen the corpse is missingSection 2, Part 5: The agunah wife of Lemli Wimpe of MetzSection 2, Part 6: Death of a merchant: Gutta and Avraham Heckscher of HamburgSection 3: Troubled MarriagesSection 3, Part 1: Scenes from marriages in conflictSection 3, Part 2: “Concerning the agunah whose husband left for distant parts”Section 4: The Riddle of the SourcesAfterword: The agunah, the decisor, and the sufferingGlossaryBibliography