ABSTRACT
During the fi rst meeting, SH “sisters” organized the havurah with a precise female self-consciousness. They employed women over ten years of age as assistants, servants, administrators, and representatives, and involved them in their weekly and monthly meetings.3 Over the years, the women of SH invested money in credits and properties, using collective profi ts in a number of activities. They provided sick care and burials, as well as donations of food, wood, and money “for all of the poor families of the ghetto”—amounting to at least 370 needy people out of a total Jewish population of 1,220 (6% of the Modenese population) in the mideighteenth century. The life conditions of Modenese Jewish society were aggravated after 1737, when the Estense Duchy entered into the bloody Franco-Spanish War, which would affl ict both Jews and Christians alike for decades.4
