Please wait...
by Rachel Furst
Menstruants and Mystics
Absent Medieval Women
Why were there no female Jewish mystics in the Middle Ages? The striking absence of women visionaries in the historical record — rendered even more conspicuous by the prominence of female mystics in both medieval Christianity and medieval Islam — inspired Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Brandeis University Press, $35.00), by Sharon Faye Koren, a professor of medieval Jewish culture at Hebrew Union College in New York.