Representations of Gender In Jewish Tombstones

Funerals and tombstones are made for the living – the dead are dead, and they don’t care what it says on their grave. What’s written on a tombstone doesn’t necessarily reflect how the deceased lived, rather it shows how their loved ones choose to remember them. Therefore, by looking at the change in inscriptions and symbols used on Jewish tombstones in Poland, it is possible to trace how the perceptions of gender, as well as its importance in Jewish society, changed as a result of the Holocaust.