by Rachel Furst
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.