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Life Inside the Jewish Home
“To me the greatest dignity a Jewish Woman can attain is to be the presiding genius in a traditional Jewish home. Every other vocation is “vochedig" (mundane) compared to that. The woman is not a mere housekeeper but the priestess of a “mikdash me’at,” a miniature sanctuary, when she conducts a truly Jewish home.”
Sarah Cohen Berman, manuscript, about 1943. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
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“My parents got tired of eating potatoes, and prairie dogs weren’t kosher.”
Isadore Pitts, oral history, 1974. Courtesy of the South Dakota Oral History Project, University of South Dakota.
Depending on her circumstances, the traditionally-oriented Jewish woman in the Upper Midwest might be cognizant of her exalted role, as Minneapolitan Sarah Cohen Berman was, or worn down by the drudgery of South Dakota homestead life, as was Isadore Pitts’ mother. Whatever the case, the Jewish woman’s domestic life centered on raising children who were mindful of their obligations to family and community as well as keeping a kosher home — one that could be compared to a “miniature sanctuary.”
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