A Grass Widow in Odessa: Gender and Jewish Law on the Russian Frontier

Schainker talks about religious reforms in modern Jewish history. Religious liberalization was a product of imperialism and drew on internal reformist sources within Jewish culture, namely halakhic flexibility within traditionalism. Although Jewish religious reform in imperial Russia lacked the theological adumbration and rabbinic sponsorship that it had in Central Europe, there is a dynamic record of reforms at the ideological and practical level, by Jews and the state, which have yet to receive a comprehensive history. New forms of knowledge and authority created by mass media and transport catalyzed religious development and allowed people to articulate and experience faith in new ways. In addition, the social and economic upheavals of state-led industrialization in late-imperial Russia, together with new educational and professional opportunities and increased mobility, caused heightened sensitivity to the materiality of religious life.