Tabla de Contenidos:
  • Part 1. Context
  • 1. The bibliographic context
  • Handbooks of the law
  • Practical obstacles to reading in the age of manuscripts
  • A proposed handbook for the fifteenth century
  • Literacy and printing in the vernacular
  • 2. The shifting center of Ashkenazic Jewry
  • German Jewry on the move
  • Keeping in touch
  • Italian Jewry in crisis and the rise of Polish Jewry
  • Cultural exchanges
  • 3. Glimpses into the lives of the main audience
  • Men's views of women
  • Separate and unequal
  • Life at home
  • Religious responsibilities
  • Women at prayer
  • Piety and super-piety
  • In the community
  • Part 2. Content
  • 4. Popularizing the law
  • Creating a book people wanted to read
  • Motivating observance
  • Historical role models
  • The seder mizvot ha-nashim and earlier handbooks
  • Slonik, his teachers, and the shulhan 'aruk
  • Aftermath
  • Tables 1 and 2: comparison of passages from seder mizvot ha-nashim and shulhan 'aruk
  • Appendix. textual traditions of "women's commandment" books and Slonik's seder mizvot ha-nashim
  • Yiddish text and translation.