Jews do not live in a vacuum, so the rise of feminism in the 20th century affected Jewish women, too. Rabbi Wein depicts women's lives in the shtetl in minute detail, from the hardships of doing laundry without indoor plumbing to the ingenuity required in cooking with a scarcity of ingredients. The technological developments that made housework easier were perhaps more liberating than any ideology. But changes in economics, education, and ideology did follow, taking us to the present moment in which women's issues are at the forefront of halachic debate.