Gella Sänger (née Hirsch) was born on December 12, 1871, to Naphtali and Therese Esther Hirsch in Frankfurt am Main, where she grew up with her twin sister Rebecka. Gella’s family belonged to Frankfurt’s separatist, Neo-Orthodox community called the Israelitische Religions-Gesellschaft (IRG). Founded on the values of Torah im Derech Eretz (Hebrew, Torah with the Way of the Land), it understood itself as strictly observant of The legal corpus of Jewish laws and observances as prescribed in the Torah and interpreted by rabbinic authorities, beginning with those of the Mishnah and Talmud.halakhah. However, it also embraced various aspects of modernity and secular education, while at the same time rejecting more progressive developments within Jewish society, such as the Reform movement, and any cooperation with them.

In fact, it was Sänger’s grandfather, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who had founded the Neo-Orthodox community and its most important institutions, such as the community’s own co-educational primary school and girls’ and boys’ secondary schools. The “Freie Vereinigung für die Interessen des Orthodoxen Judentums” (The Free Union for the Interests of Orthodox Jewry), also established by Rabbi Hirsch, lobbied for the Neo-Orthodox cause in the intra-communal and political realm. Gella and Rebecka attended the community’s girls’ secondary school, studying Biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible, as well as sciences, French, and German. Little is known about their further education. 

Both Naphtali and his daughters seem to have been particularly close to Rabbi Hirsch and his Neo-Orthodox worldview. Naphtali Hirsch was Rabbi Hirsch’s seventh son and trained as a lawyer. He was involved in the leadership of the “Freie Vereinigung für die Interessen des Orthodoxen Judentums,” which successfully campaigned for a secession from the Großgemeinde, the cross-denominational wider Jewish community. Supporters of Rabbi Hirsch felt it unacceptable that the compulsory fees they had to pay to the Großgemeinde would contribute to financing prayer services and other communal activities conducted in a way that disregarded Jewish law and tradition. The “Freie Vereinigung” also advocated for Orthodox Jews in the wider society, for example in the workplace, and vis-à-vis more progressive parts of the Jewish community. 

Towards the end of his life, Naphtali Hirsch took on the task of collecting and editing the writings of Rabbi Hirsch that had previously been published in the monthly magazine Jeschurun (1854-1888). He was only able to complete the first volume, published in 1902, before he died, but his daughters continued his editorial work. Gella, Rebecka, and their husbands (in 1904, Gella married Simon Sänger; in 1907, Rebecka married Simon’s brother Joseph Sänger) published the remaining collected works by R. Samson Raphael Hirsch in six volumes, which appeared between 1902 and 1912.

Gella and Simon Sänger later moved to Fürth in Bavaria, where they were involved in the religious and communal activities of the Orthodox community, especially the Mannheimer-Schul. In 1919, Simon Sänger opened a bookshop in Fürth specializing in Hebrew books and Judaica, working closely with Joseph, who was also involved in book selling and publishing in Frankfurt am Main. Gella and Simon had no children.

In 1923, Gella, Simon, Rebecka, and Joseph Sänger published Naphtali Hirsch’s collected writings. These writings largely focus on the intersection of German secular and Jewish religious law and also include essays written on behalf of the “Freie Vereinigung.” 

In editing her father’s and grandfather’s work, Gella Sänger seems to have become attentive to the gap in Neo-Orthodox literature pertaining to women’s role within Jewish law. Rabbi Hirsch himself wrote extensively about women and Jewish tradition in his commentaries on the Torah and the Jewish prayer book, as well as in his book Horeb and his essay “Das jüdische Weib” (The Jewish Wife). Additionally, his daughter Sara Hirsch Oppenheim and his grandsons Isaac and Raphael Breuer wrote Neo-Orthodox fiction that explored women’s roles in traditional Judaism of the time. However, Neo-Orthodox literature lacked accessible writings detailing the The legal corpus of Jewish laws and observances as prescribed in the Torah and interpreted by rabbinic authorities, beginning with those of the Mishnah and Talmud.halakhic obligations of Jewish women, a gap Gella Sänger addressed in her book Einige Hinweise auf den Mizwaus-Kreis des täglichen Lebens für Frauen und Mädchen (Some Remarks on the A biblical or rabbinic commandment; also, a good deed.Mitzvot Circle of Daily Life Pertinent to Women and Girls).

Einige Hinweise, published in 1927, is a short instructional guide on select aspects of Jewish law pertaining particularly to women and girls. It covers laws about getting up in the morning, prayer, SabbathShabbat, Jewish holidays, dietary laws, and charity. Notably, Sänger does not explicitly discuss the three commandments most commonly associated with Jewish women—Menstruation; the menstruant woman; ritual status of the menstruant woman.Niddah (female purity), Challah (separating the dough), and Hadlakat Nerot (lighting candles on Shabbat and holidays)—but provides instructions on her own selection of time-bound commandments and non-time-bound commandments. (Time-bound commandments are temporarily limited, such as the commandment to keep Shabbat, while non-time-bound commandments, like giving charity and separating meat and milk, apply at all times.) Their omission is in stark contrast to earlier guidebooks on Jewish law and practice written for women, which almost exclusively focus on these three commandments. Sänger, however, wanted to collate laws and customs whose details many women and girls might not readily recall when needed, such as intricate laws of prayer, details concerning Shabbat observance, and nuances of keeping a Term used for ritually untainted food according to the laws of Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws).kosher kitchen. 

Sänger’s writing is straightforward and pragmatic. She rarely goes beyond the mere halakhic details to discuss philosophical, theological, or spiritual concepts. The first law listed in Einige Hinweise, a detailed description of how to ritually wash hands in the morning to remove any impurity that the body may have attracted during the night, is instructive for her writing style: One is to take an unchipped vessel in one’s right hand, transfer it to one’s left hand, fill it with water, and then pour it three times over one’s hands, starting with the right hand, in an alternating manner.

Laws about marriage, menstruation, and childbirth are conspicuously absent from Sänger’s work, perhaps due to the fact that it was intended for women of all ages and marital statuses. Concerns of modesty and tact, key values of the German bourgeoisie and Neo-Orthodoxy, may also have played a role in the exclusion of themes related to women’s bodies and sexualities. Sänger does not speak about mothers, housewives, or spouses but writes for individuals who are obligated to keep Jewish law and whom she wants to advise in doing so. Her purely halakhic writing is in stark contrast to contemporaneous and earlier literature on Jewish law for women, which very much foregrounds women’s roles and responsibilities as mothers, housewives, and spouses.

Einige Hinweise appears to be the first known solely halakhic writing by a woman identifying as (Neo-)Orthodox. It is written in German, with key terms such as Shabbat or Tzedakah (charity) written in Hebrew letters that remain untranslated, implying that the intended readership would be able to read and understand Hebrew. Sänger’s book also has a Hebrew title, Ishah El Achotah, which can be translated as “From Sister to Sister,” or, more literally, “From a Woman to her Sister,” highlighting the fact that the book is written from a woman’s perspective.

Einige Hinweise appeared at a time of increasing interest in Jewish tradition and knowledge and a return to the foundational texts, concepts, and practices of Judaism among certain parts of German-Jewish society. Some assimilated Jews, in the turbulent wake of World War One and in light of growing antisemitism, found new meaning in Jewish thought and ritual, as well as inspiration in innovative Jewish thinkers such as Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Leo Baeck. Religious activities also grew among more traditional communities, whose numbers had grown due to an influx of Jews from Eastern Europe during and after World War One. Einige Hinweise responded and contributed to a flourishing Neo-Orthodox literature and can be seen as a new development in the genre of women’s guides on Jewish law and practice, with a woman writing for other women about Jewish law for the first time. The genre of women’s guides on Jewish law and practice goes back to the sixteenth century and saw a proliferation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with publications such as Rabbi Benjamin Aron Slonik’s Seder Mitzvot Nashim and Rabbi Isaac Dov Bamberger’s Amirah le-Beit Yaakov, but Sänger was one of the first, if not the first woman to write such a book.

Sänger’s book was the only book published through her husband’s bookshop. The actual printing took place in Frankfurt, where several established religious Jewish publishers were active. Since she had worked with publishers in Frankfurt before to bring her grandfather’s and father’s collected writings to the press, it is striking that she chose to effectively self-publish her book. While monetary and geographical factors may have contributed to this decision, she may also have feared or faced rejection due to the trailblazing character of her book.

Advertisements for Einige Hinweise appeared in Neo-Orthodox and local newspapers and the book received positive reviews in Germany and beyond. Three months after publication, it was reprinted with additional remarks by the author, specifying instructions and adding a number of laws in the appendix. It remains unclear, however, how widely read it was. Incidentally, just a few months before Sänger’s book appeared, Deborah M. Melamed, vice-president of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism (the women’s movement of Conservative Judaism in the United States), published The Three Pillars, also a guide to Jewish practice for women, though much longer and more vague in its halakhic treatment of Jewish traditions. This may be due to the different approaches to Jewish law in Neo-Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism respectively, with Conservative Judaism putting less focus on the punctilious observance of Jewish law and being more open to technological, societal, and religious innovation. Unlike Sänger’s book, which is addressed to women and girls regardless of marital status, Melamed’s is mainly written for Jewish mothers and housewives. 

With the rise of Nazism, it became increasingly difficult for Simon and Gella Sänger to run their bookshop amid boycott campaigns, legislation prohibiting Jewish booksellers from remaining part of professional associations, and threats of forced closure of Jews’ businesses. After her husband’s death in 1936, Gella Sänger took over the business. As the Nazi persecution of Jews increased, she unsuccessfully sought ways to leave for Palestine to join her sister Rebecka, who had emigrated earlier. 

In September 1942, Sänger was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto alongside other, largely elderly Jews from her area. Her time in Theresienstadt overlapped with that of Regina Jonas, the first woman to be ordained a rabbi, but it is unknown whether they ever met. Gella Sänger died in November 1943, probably in connection with the cruel mass-counting of inmates in the Bauschowitzer Kessel on November 9 , 1943, when inmates of the overcrowded ghetto were forced to stand for many hours in the rain and cold in fields outside the ghetto to be counted by SS guards. They sought to clarify an irregularity in the statistical documentation of the ghetto, according to which 50 individuals were missing. It is believed that Gella Sänger died from exhaustion and cold caused by the mass-counting.

Ayala Hindel Grossman and Rivka Levinson, daughter and granddaughter of Gella Sänger’s sister Rebecka, submitted documents about Gella Sänger to Yad Vashem, adding her name to those of millions of others murdered in the Holocaust. Grossman later donated Rabbi Hirsch’s writings and correspondence, painstakingly organized by her parents and her aunt and uncle, to Bar Ilan University, where they are held in the Sänger Collection.

The Holocaust brutally ended Gella Sänger’s life, forcibly putting an end to her book’s reception and her editorial work for key Neo-Orthodox publications. Forced migration, persecution, and mass-murder decimated her natural readership and caused her contributions to be largely neglected by scholars of German-Jewish, especially Neo-Orthodox, history and by later authors writing about Jewish law for women.

The late 1970s and 1980s saw increasing interest in publications on Jewish law for women, linked to the increasing importance of Jewish law and textuality in Orthodox communities, which was accompanied by a proliferation of popular handbooks aimed at laypeople. Increasing opportunities for Jewish women and girls to engage in high-level Jewish education created both capable authors and an interested readership of such books by women. These developments, also linked to second-wave feminism, initiated discussions on the role, significance, and position of women in Jewish tradition. Rabbis and laypeople put forward suggestions in sermons, op-eds, speeches, and writings on how women’s roles should be advanced or how these roles can be situated within the framework of Jewish tradition. 

Women authors of handbooks and other educational literature on Jewish law and practice stepped into this discussion, writing about Jewish law and women from the novel perspective of Jewish women themselves. These books included How to Run a Jewish Household (Blu Greenberg, 1983), To Be a Jewish Women (Lisa Aiken, 1992), Hilkhot Nashim (ed. Rahel Berkovits, 2018-2022), and Uncovered (Nechama Goldman Barash, 2024). Female Torah scholars have also begun writing about Jewish law on online platforms such as Deracheha. However, contemporary women’s writing on Jewish law is disconnected from works by authors like Gella Sänger, Deborah Melamed, and others, who contributed to popular halakhic discourse decades earlier.

While Sänger’s book is a forebear in content, form, and purpose, more recent books on Jewish law for women by women engage more deeply in an analysis of women’s role in contemporary Jewish society and the critical study of traditional Jewish sources. They suggest that Jewish law and tradition have evolved (and perhaps must evolve) over time. Sänger’s book, on the other hand, presents Jewish law as timeless, almost ahistorical, akin to her grandfather’s presentation of halakhah as an eternal, never changing, central part of Judaism. This view obliges Jews to adapt their secular, non-Jewish environment to Jewish tradition in order to keep God’s laws as diligently as possible. Gella Sänger sought to delineate in her book how women and girls could strive to do so.

Hirsch, Naphtali. Justizrat Dr. Naphtali Hirsch. Ein Blick in seine Geisteswerkstätte. Edited by Gella Sänger, Joseph Sänger, Rebecka Sänger, and Simon Sänger. Frankfurt am Main: Sänger & Friedberg, 1923.

Hirsch, Samson Raphael. Gesammelte Schriften von Rabbiner Samson Raphael Hirsch. Edited by Naphtali Hirsch, Gella Sänger, Joseph Sänger, Rebecka Sänger, and Simon Sänger, vols. 2-6. Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann, 1904-1912.

Sänger, Gella. Ishah El Achotah: Einige Hinweise auf den Mizwaus-Kreis des täglichen Lebens speziell für Frauen und Mädchen. Fürth: Simon Sänger, 1927.