The Legacy of Women in Torah: Celebrating History, Learning, and Leadership

How have women shaped the landscape of Torah learning throughout Jewish history? As Shavuos approaches, get ready to be inspired as we welcome Tzivi Greenbaum to share her historical insights on the profound impact women have had in Jewish learning and leadership.

Throughout our conversation, we journey through the lives of significant yet often overlooked female figures in Jewish history. We bring their stories to life with vivid anecdotes, underscoring the dedication and influence women have wielded within their communities. Join us as we celebrate the invaluable role women have played in sustaining and enriching Jewish life and learning, inspiring listeners to appreciate and continue their legacy. Don't miss this enriching conversation that celebrates the legacy and ongoing contributions of Jewish women throughout history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Good morning and welcome to Bodies and Souls.
Your host for today is RivkaBoyarsky.
So Shavuos is around the cornerand we are so excited because
we get to celebrate Hashem,giving B'nai Yisrael the Torah.
As women, what is our role inTorah learning?
Is it a newfangled, new ageconcept that women are learning
Torah?
What's our role in thecommunity at large, especially

(00:27):
when it comes to learning Tairaand leadership?
So today we have a very specialvisitor.
Zibi Greenbaum is going to talkto us about women in history,
how they've learned Taira, howthey've been involved in
community affairs and howthey've influenced Jewish
communities throughout the ages.
So this is a very pertinentconcept to Shavuos in regards to

(00:49):
how active of a role do we play, not just in our personal
Yiddishkeit, but also in ourfamily's Yiddishkeit and in the
role within the community atlarge?
So, without further ado, hereis Tzvi Tivi.

(01:10):
So, tivi, before we start, canyou tell us a little bit about
yourself and why we're talkingabout this topic specifically
now and why this topic speaks somuch to you?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Sure.
So when I saw you were lookingfor someone to talk about
women's tarot learning, I jumpedin and said, okay, it's not the
beaten track.
I have some very random thingsto say about women in the past
who learned tarot notnecessarily a standard
discussion, and it was alsohashgachar practices right
around shavuot time.
Besides for the obvious linkbetween learning tarot and the
giving the tarot shavuot, Ithink a lot of my journey about

(01:39):
learning about this is connectedto shavuot.
So a quick anecdote when I wasa teenager, I had a dilemma on
shavuos.
So a quick anecdote when I wasa teenager, I had a dilemma on
Shavuos night.
I'm from Australia if you canhear the accent, and there the
yom to start about five.
Your meal can be done by eightand if you have a Chabad house,
like me, you're entertainingpeople with some kind of Shavuos
night learning.
There's speeches, it's reallylovely.
That ends at 11.

(01:59):
Then you have some of like thestalwarts that are going to stay
with the rabbi and learn someother things.
They might leave one too, and Ijust didn't know.
Should I go home we at shul?
Should I go home with my motherand younger brothers because
why not?
Or should I stay up and learnwith my father and older
brothers, and I had to make thedecision because I wasn't

(02:19):
allowed to walk at home at nightin the middle.
Yeah, I had to make thedecision because I wasn't
allowed to walk at home in thedark.
And just thinking and ponderingabout it, the question was well
, why shouldn't I?
I don't have a reason that Ineed to be sleeping specifically
tonight.
If my brothers can stay up, whycan't I?
But then why should I?
Nobody in school introducedthis concept of Tikkun El

(02:39):
Shavuos and encouraged us likethe little boys are you're going
to stay up all night with Tatiand learn something nobody had
ever presented as something Ishould do, and my mother's going
home.
I probably was aware that mymother had young children and
needed to have her sleep, but Ijust didn't know what to do.
So then I remembered this old,tattered, tiny, thin booklet,
called from Sarah to Sarah, bySarah Feldbrand, from Sarah

(03:02):
Emanuel to Sarah Schneer, thatI'd found in my grandmother's
house and I'd flipped through itand it just like blown my mind.
It was full of women allthroughout history who had
learned Torah, who had writtensparem, who had even like a
woman, who was a sheikhah whichis discussion, led communities,
philanthropists and somewherethere.
I remember seeing that theBenesh Chai, a very famous rabbi
in Baghdad, rabi Yasser Chayim,in the 19th century.

(03:25):
He wrote that the women in hisfamily would stay up all Shavuot
night learning Zahar andMishnah and I kind of took that
as my precedent and I was like,okay, why not?
I see an example that someonedid this, so I decided to stay
up all night, happens to be.
Years later, when I actuallychecked the source again, I
found out that his questionerhad asked him they're women,

(03:47):
they really know Tanakh, they'rereally learned.
Should they be saying Tikkun ElChatzois which is what some
Kabbalistic people do, stayingup at midnight saying to heal
him of the destruction of theMekdash?
Should they be learningShavuot's night?
A few other questions and heanswered that story that I
remembered was what his grandmahad done on haishana raba night
and then, for kabbalisticreasons, he actually discouraged

(04:08):
women from learning to do thisnight like something to do with,
like the source of their soul,and that it should be the
masculine soul that's receivingthe tarah, like preparing,
because the tarah is compared tothe bride.
Then, uh, there are otherhalakhic opinions that said
there's really no problem.
A woman can stay up all nightif she'd want to.
So it was just his opinionbased on his view through
Kabbalah, and it was justintriguing, though, because I

(04:30):
did see that his grandmotherlearned 18 chapters of Mishnah a
day.
So that's my first story ofShavuos, and then, a few years
back, as I said, there's somespeeches for the people in my
Chabad house between the mealand then the late late night
night learning, which, by theway, goes till 5am in Australia,
because, again, winter, the sundoesn't rise very early.
It's a big commitment, and Iwas asked to give a speech to

(04:51):
fill time, so I said, sure, whattopic can I do in one foot?
And I chose Women LearningTorah.
So I wish I had my notes.
That would make this podcastmore into a speech than an
interview.
I don't have my notes anymore,but the fact that I was able to
get up there and do that forabout half an hour showed me wow
, this topic has untappedpotential and, just in general,

(05:16):
the idea of women's activitiesin Jewish history that are just
not well known is something sointeresting to introduce and to
hold as a mirror to ourselves.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
So let's talk a little bit about what our topic
is today.
I asked Sivi to talk to usspecifically about the historic
role of Jewish women because alot of times people think about
Jewish women today as, oh mygosh, they're so different than
women were in the past.
Because women in the pastdidn't have opportunities to
learn Torah, they didn't haveopportunities to be business
people, they didn't haveopportunities to grow

(05:44):
career-wise outside the home andwe kind of think as women as
one-dimensional in Jewishhistory.
And in reality, jewish womenwere always really, really
interesting and they were reallymultidimensional and I want to
explore this historically sothat we can come to a better
understanding of what our roleis today as Jewish women.
Now, for anyone listening, tiviis young.

(06:06):
Tivi was nervous about that andI told Tivi what I tell my kids
like when people really followtheir passion and they know
something, age is just a number.
So if you did the research intosomething and you happen to
know the information, we couldall learn from each other and
you know this is very, veryimportant.
So I know Tivi's young, butTavi has a breadth of knowledge

(06:27):
and I can't wait to explore thisvery very important topic.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Thanks, rivki.
It happens to be a lot of thepeople that I'll be discussing
were also quite young when theywere known for their
accomplishments, so it reallydoes reflect what you said is so
true, and that's really theinteresting thing about the role
of Jewish women in history.
It's really a whole genre ofitself.
There are books to read this iswhere I get my information from
but I feel like in justeveryday Jewish life and in the
current accepted wisdom just thethings that are known

(06:56):
colloquially there's not a lotof emphasis on famous Jewish
women, because the truth isthey're not so famous.
We have a few people mentionedin Tanakh and people zoom all
the way to the modern era, andit's very interesting to learn
about recent women like theRebetzins and Sarah Schneider,
but there's so many people inbetween, it just happens to be

(07:17):
that the information about themis really limited.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Okay, so let's Tavi.
Why don't we start at thebeginning and break it down?
So let's go all the way back,as far back as you feel
comfortable going, and let'stalk about women in the furthest
points of Jewish history.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Right.
So we really could start forChava, but with Jewish women.
We have Sar, emanuel, and Saris one of the Shevan Aviyah.
So we learned that we haveseven women who were receiving
messages from Hashem and able toreally communicate with Hashem
and truly understand.
That's an incredible level ofRuchnius spirituality, like

(07:54):
actually connecting to Hashem'smessage in such a clear way.
And something super fascinatingis that there is a Gemara that
says, based on Tzatzokim, thatthere were 1.2 million Nivim
over Jewish history in the timesof the first Basar M'idosh,
when Nivor was prevalent.
So even though we mainly hearabout 48 male Nivim and seven
female Nivis, these 1.2 millionwere the students of the Nivim

(08:17):
and they're referenced in Sefer,shmuel and Malachim.
There are times where it willshow how Elisha or Eliyahu or
Shum will have students.
They call the B'nai on Nivimand they're in these schools and
Rambam will describe how peoplecan prepare themselves to
receive Nivua.
They can work on themselves,they can refine themselves, and
then it's kind of like a hit andmiss, like it's a touch and go
if they're actually going to getthe Nivua, but they're in these

(08:38):
Nivim schools.
So we don't know how that lookslike for women.
But when it comes to the femaleNiveis.
The Midrash says prettyexplicitly in Shir Hashem Rabbah
that there were 600,000 Niveimand 600,000 Niveis and something
really fascinating that RabbiJonathan Sachs Al-Bashallon
commented on just the idea ofthe difference between a Qaihane

(09:01):
and a navi.
So we have roles in yiddish kaiand also in life, where it's a
very ceremonial, procedural role, where what you have to do is
kind of mandated.
It's not flexible, it's set inthe books and the people who
have these roles are often it'shereditary and they're really
doing it to make sure thatcertain passages are done,

(09:22):
certain rites are completed.
And he gives example.
For example, like, let's say,somebody does something wrong in
their driving so they get aticket, and then they could get
points in their license, also inamerica.
Right, I think so.
And then eventually, like bylaw, the points will come up
after five years.
You don't actually have to doanything, the five years will
just happen.
But that would be like the roleof the cohen, the police

(09:45):
officer, the judge, the personwho's set in the system.
The navi is actually outside ofthe system, it's actually an
inspirational figure and a lotmore spontaneous, and someone
who is an individual and choosesthe way of life, and so the
navi would represent someone whoyou know spared.
And then it's not just theyhave to wait five years, but
they actually have to transformthemselves and show that they've

(10:06):
rectified and fixed up theirmistakes and done something
which isn't something that'smeasurable.
So the reason that you couldhave 600,000 NVOs is because
NVOA is something that reallycould happen to anyone and it's
this idea that you're connectingto yourself to Hashem and
you're choosing this way of lifeand this intention and

(10:26):
preparing yourself and thosemessages could come.
It's not like a quahen, wherewe know it was only male and
even then it got really limitedwhen it came to even like the
way you dressed and looked andacted.
You really had to play a role.
It wasn't as much as about theindividual.
So the way that I see thisplaying out is that that Torah
studies actually compare toNivuot.

(10:47):
It says in the Gemara Samarasthat a wise man is preferable to
a Navi.
That learning Torah also issomething that we're immersing
ourselves in the wavelength ofHashem's way of seeing the world
.
So the same way that there were600,000 of in the first face I,
I could see that that could bean inspiration for women who

(11:08):
want to embrace tarot learningor any sort of way of connecting
to hashem in all throughouthistory so they weren't
necessarily learned women, butthey were women who were focused
on the spiritual aspect of life.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (11:22):
well, we have really no idea what the form of terror
learning looked like in thefirst space on big dush,
thinking about the fact thatthere was no church welfare
written down and like just somany things were developed
afterwards.
So surely, when we have devaraas the most famous navia that's
spoken about in like asbiographical details and we know
that she judged people so sheclearly had like knowledge of

(11:44):
the law.
And then there are the, evengoing back earlier than Tanakh,
early in the first phase ofMinkash.
We have the B'nai Slach whoalso are sharing their Torah
thoughts with Moshe, theiropinions on Halacha.
So I'm not really commenting onlike the actual lives of these
600,000 of years.
I'm just commenting more on theconcept of the idea that there

(12:06):
could be women who could chooseto dedicate their way of life or
just not even only choose butalso merit to receive the
Shekhinah and receive the Nebuahand the Rokh Kedesh.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
So you mentioned Devorah Hanavia quite briefly,
but I do want to go into herbecause she was unique in a lot
of ways.
Devorah Hanavia led B'naiIsrael.
She wasn't just a Neveah whosat maybe somewhere in a more
private space, but she was theleader of B'nai Israel for I
think it was 40 years, so not ashort amount of time.
She had a very, very centralpublic role in the community.

(12:40):
Can we talk a little bit abouther?
Was she that much of an outlierhistorically or was?
Were there other similar?
Obviously not devora had to bea level people, but people who
kind of sort of had that type ofrole in some sort of similarity
.
And let's clarify what was herrole?
What was her story?
How did she you know?

Speaker 2 (13:01):
it's really a deep dive into the Mifarshim.
When we spoke about thispodcast, I said Tanakh is less
historical to me and more youknow it's more about
understanding it.
There are times that Rashi andIbn Ezra can say different
historical facts in the sameepisode.
So it's not really about whatactually happened when we
learned Tanakh.
It is as well.
These are historical characters, but the way that we're going

(13:22):
to be learning about it isn't toreally determine like specific
facts and details.
So Davara is definitelyprominent.
She's definitely the leader ofthe Jews at the time.
Does that reflect like a lowpoint in the morale of the
Jewish nation?
Because they were going throughthis cycle of just really
degenerating and joining theforeign influences of the
Canaanites?
So you know, you could come inand say there was fact that

(13:44):
there was fact that there was noqualified man and we usually
have male leaders throughoutjewish history and it's not
halakhically really acceptableto have a woman in a position of
power over a like that.
She would be the dominantleader of the italian group and
that's why the khazal, usuallythe rabbis, usually associate
that davara was a co-leader withbarak, who was her army, who
was her general, and she wasmore of the inspirational

(14:06):
teaching figure and so leavingthe question of like, actual
power and leadership, likepractically politically aside,
dabara would be an outlier andso would all the other Jewish
women who had major politicalroles in the communities.
They would also be allies, butthey still exist and they're
still fascinating and there's'sa mission on progress that says

(14:28):
the mock-up in a place there areno men strive to be a man.
So these women often werefilling the roles, filling the
shoes of people that that wereleft open and it wasn't.
It's interesting to compareYiddishkeit with contemporary
like idolatrous cults thatactually did have the concept of

(14:50):
female priestesses and highpriestesses and everything.
So that would be a whole notherexploration why the values and
ethos of Yiddishkeit doesn'tactually promote that.
And I spoke a little about howthe Koyaan is different than the
, the navi, that her readyposition that you're kind of
forced in, and these women,these priestesses, actually had
to never marry and live in thetemple.

(15:11):
So that wasn't ever put inyiddish guy, it almost never
kind of mainstreamed into theleadership positions.
But there are other examplesfrom esther, I guess, was a
queen, and just in the middleages you have women that were
businesswomen, supporting theirlocal communities, interceding

(15:32):
with governors justparticipating, because a Jewish
community is made up of men,women and children.
Everyone does their role, evenif, on the main, the more
prominent outspoken public roleswere usually done.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
And that's, that's primarily because women were the
stabilizing force and women arethe stabilizing force within
Jewish community.
They're the space where thatgrounds the community, that
grounds the families and thatgrounds everyone into homes and
into families and into units andyou know, that keeps everything
going smoothly.
If we were all outside, youknow, outside outspoken
leadership, both the men and thewomen where would the grounding

(16:11):
be?
So I think that that's probablypart of it and part of what
plays into the roles.
But, like you said, you know,women have historically stepped
into roles that are nottypically female and that's
because when there's a need,torah does not preclude it
completely and there's space forsome sort of outward, more of

(16:33):
the male associated type ofroles.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwomen in the sphere of Torah
learning.
So, as we get closer to Shavuos, let's talk about how women
contributed to Torah learningwithin the community from a
historical perspective.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Okay, sure.
So after talking about the ideaof Nevoah, which is equivalent
to Torah learning in some sense,we could skip straight to the
Torah Shabbat pair, when thehalachas that were always so
orally were written down, themishnah.
There's one super prominentfemale tana female teacher of
these halachas, and that's aburia, the wife of rabbi meyer,

(17:11):
uh, the daughter of hanina bentrajan, who are both very
prominent figures in the mishnahas well, and there's stories
that abound with her wisdom andthe way that she interacted with
her husband and her studentsand really shows that she was a
woman of real character and justreally interesting how she's
quoted a few times in thetesefta, which is like the bonus

(17:33):
information for the mishnah,like things that didn't make the
cut, or rabbi hoda nasi wasreally trying to keep it as
concise as possible.
You know only 60 track dates.
So there's a few stories wherebrua gives an opinion and they
say, yeah, that's a, that's apreferred opinion, she speaks
well.
And there's one story where astudent asked his teacher to
teach him this very complicatedidea, this commentary on the

(17:55):
book of chronicles which is, andhe wanted to learn it in three
months.
So his teacher startedscreaming at him and he said you
think you could learn this inthree months.
Br Bruria, the wife of RabbiMeir, who learned 300 halachas
in one day from 300 hachamim.
She even couldn't finish thisbook in three years because it's
really difficult and you wantto learn in three months she was

(18:16):
held up on this pedestal and asthe signpost of a very learned
individual.
And there's a few other peoplein the Mishnah some by name,
some anonymous, asking questionsfrom the rabbis engaging.
And what's really interestingto note is that the institution
of the Bais Medrash in the timesof the Mishnah just to clarify
the Mishnah, when I talk aboutthe Tanakhic times I'm speaking

(18:36):
roughly around 300 BCE to like200 CE.
So the Bais Medrash wasn't justa place where people went and
learned the chavrusah.
The setup was a littledifferent back then and from the
anecdotes that we see in theTanakhic material the midrashim,
the gemara, the mishnah we seethat everyday regular people
were visiting the base medrashon Shabbos and the rabbis were

(18:59):
giving lectures, they weregiving drashas and even women
were coming.
They were giving drushes andeven women were coming.
So you have a story that'ssomewhat famous about a woman
who came late and her husbandwas not the most charitably
minded guy and he said why?
Where were you all day?
You were at Rabbi Meir'slecture.
Rabbi Meir, maria's husband,you can't come into the house
till you go spin his eye.
And she felt awful about that.
That's extremely disrespectful.

(19:20):
So Rabbi Meir found out aboutit, intuited and said he spread
the word that I need like a, myeye hurts and I need a certain
cure that will only work ifsomeone spits into my eye.
And she, her friend, said okay,perfect, your problem solved.
Go and volunteer to spit in therabbi's eye.
It's medicinal purposes.
And she did, and seven times.

(19:41):
And then, okay, go tell yourhusband, I didn't just do it
once, I did it seven times.
And it's showing us that shewas so enthusiastic about
attending these lectures, everyservice that she did.
Maybe she neglected herhousehold duties, maybe her
husband was just not the mosttolerant person.
But, looking at it as well, weeven have the idea of women

(20:03):
going to shul.
So one of the stories in theMedrash about how Torah learning
and involving mitzvahs grantsone a long life is about a woman
, a very elderly woman, who goesto Rabbi Yossi ben Chalapta a
Tana and says Rabbi, I'm so old,I'm done, I don't want to live
so long anymore.
What could I do to go and joinall my friends and relatives in

(20:26):
the next world sooner?
And he said well, what's themerit that's keeping you alive
for so long?
You must be doing somethingreally special.
And she said every single day,even if I feel like I have
better things to do with my timeand more enjoyable things, I
make sure to get up early and goto shore to to dove in the
shore.
So he said, okay, so don't gofor three days and you'll see
what happens.
And then she passed awaypeacefully.
So it's just fascinating howthe example of a person who's

(20:49):
you know taking their religiousdevotion to the next level and
just really investing in it isgranted an elderly woman who has
the time.
We don't know what she wasdoing her entire life, but it's
so special to see that the womanmaking these choices all the
way back then and that they'rereally just.
There was no criticism from theChachamim that they were
attending the lectures of whatdidn't seem to be unusual.

(21:09):
It seemed to be morerun-of-the-mill and people's own
personal participation werethere ever Batei Midrashim for
women?

Speaker 1 (21:18):
were there ever spaces that women you know,
published things historically?

Speaker 2 (21:23):
okay, that's an interesting one.
We could have actually startedwith miriam when we were going
through very early jewish women,so working a bit backwards,
there's an interesting pasuk inmika who's one of the trails are
one of the short naviem at the.
He lived at the time of thefirst place in mcdush and he has
a puzzle where he's talkingabout what moshe, aaron and

(21:46):
miriam did for the jewish people.
And then targum yonason, whichis from the time of the mishnah
and it's not just a translation,it's actually a commentary, and
he said what did moshe do?
Moshe gave us the torah.
What did aaron do aaron gave us?
He was the kind god, oh, hebrought us atonement.
And what did miriam do?
Miriam taught the women.
So just really interesting thathe has this setup that Miriam

(22:10):
is like educating the women.
We know that Miriam led them indancing and she was kind of
that role model and maybe youknow just leading them in spirit
, but to think that she wasactually leading them
intellectually as well and youknow, disseminating tarot to
them.
That's an interesting view thatthat Targum Yaisin is giving.
And then, as time progresses,do we see that Rory was

(22:31):
specifically teaching women?
We don't.
Do we see that there were BateMidrashim, where women were
lecturing Tamsa Mishnah notreally and almost certainly not.
But as time went further intothe Middle Ages, there were
times where you do seegravestones or in the memory
books of certain communities inGermany, that type of area where

(22:52):
we'll give a woman this title,that she was like a prayer
leader, that she led the womenin governing.
And at some point we're reallydoing this, this brief,
uncomprehensive historicaloverview, and jumping around the
places.
And there's so much more toexplore and if anyone's
interested, anything I'm sayingthere's worlds of information
out there and research, eventhough we don't know that much.

(23:14):
There's still a lot to learn.
And the shawls, the women'sshawls became kind of separate
from the men's shawl, whether itwas by design, whether it just
evolved that way, and so,because they were so distinct, a
woman could actually lead thedavening and she wouldn't be
heard in the other room, likesometimes in the basement.
Sometimes it was next door andthey were like small little

(23:34):
alcoves that they could hear,but they were kind of doing
their own thing.
And so the women, like maybetranslating the tefillin to
yiddish and maybe composingtheir own tefillis, which is a
very common genre calledtefillin.
That happened all throughoutthe Middle Ages until basically
the 19th century and in generalyou start seeing the concept

(23:57):
that women could be using thesespaces as well to gather the
local Jewish women and lectureto them.
But I wanna also note that ingeneral, when women would work,
and especially at handicraftsand you see this in the memoirs
of Gluckhoff-Humlin, which is areally awesome resource to learn
about the life of a medievalJewish woman from Germany so she

(24:19):
has a diary just shows her asan exceptional like, so full of
wisdom and terror values thatshe wants to.
She wrote this diary to givethem over to her children and
she mentions, like differentconversations that the women are
having while they're sittingaround and weaving and the
children are darting in and outunderfoot.
So home life and work andbusiness and child rearing was a

(24:40):
lot less disconnected, a lotmore seamless than it is
nowadays and and they werediscussing the things they
learned.
So there was clearly some womenwho were more informed, more
interested in knowledge and theywould share this material,
these stories, these mashallahs,these midrashim with the other
women as part of theconversation.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
I also want to point out something that just popped
into my head that is importantto share Women didn't always
know how to read and write, butthat did not preclude the fact
that they had Torah knowledge.
So I know even my grandmothershe was illiterate, she did not
read a thing.
My great aunts also didn't read, but I have distinct memories

(25:24):
of them saying the entiretehillim, of them knowing
halakha's participating indiscussions.
They may not.
There there was not a directcorrelation of oh, you had to
read and write in order to beknowledgeable.
You had to read and write tolearn.
You had to read and write todaven.
You had to read and write toparticipate in the ruchnias
parts of ty life.
And you mentioned somethinglike there were women who maybe

(25:45):
struggled with the Hebrew, butthey wanted to understand what
they were davening for andtherefore they translated it
into the local language, whichwas Yiddish.
And so there's documentation ofwomen having really, really
active personal connections totheir Ruchnias, not just in
Torah learning but in all partsof their Jewish life, and I
think that that's very importantto note.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, I think also it does depend on the culture of
where you came from.
So, like you mentioned that,your grandmother was from Yemen,
which is probably just thegeneral society was more like
illiterate as a whole.
So there's, there's definitelythat.
But even in Eastern Europe, fora long time, most, many, many
women were illiterate, andwhat's interesting is that the

(26:29):
rabbis point that out in thediscussion of the halakhic
aspects of women should betaught Torah or not, which he
once had Hadassah Shemtov on todiscuss, the rabbis point out
that it's not necessarilynecessary to mandate that,
because they really do gain itby osmosis and they practice
these most complicated halachicdetails of kashers without
anyone needing to supervise, andeven they can be trustworthy to

(26:53):
share and report the way thatthey heard it being passed down
to.
Younger rabbis would sometimesbe asking their mothers or
sisters what their opinions wereon these matters.
And just to point out somethinginteresting, two fun facts so.
One is that in this, one of thesource books that I like to
consult a lot for the Jewishwomen's history, it's called

(27:15):
From Sarah to Sarah, so SarahIman or Sarah Shadera, by Sarah
Feldman, and I read it when Iwas really, really young, so it
really led me in this directionof realising that there were so
many role models out there thatI wouldn't have necessarily
heard about otherwise, and justbeing aware of them just really
shaped what I continued to learn.
And it mentions actually ascribe, a female scribe from

(27:36):
Yemen.
They found a manuscript whereshe had copied it.
She said please forgive anymistakes because I'm nursing so
it was a 13th century manuscript.
I think her name was Miriam,and so there were exceptions.
But not knowing how to readactually in a sense shows how
great people's memory was, andspecifically in Sephardic
countries, women had memorizedlike whole repertoires of songs

(27:58):
that were like extremelycomplicated, to do with life
cycle events, and they're likegenres of just women's music,
and they would kind of sing themfor all different occasions.
So that's really reallyinteresting to note.
And also interesting to note,though, is one of the Ashkenazi
rabbis, the Maharil, who comesout against the necessity of
instructing women deliberatelyin Torah matters.

(28:19):
So at that time there wasdiscussion maybe women should be
instructed in halakhahs theyneed to know in a more formal
way, and he said it's justreally not necessary.
We see how they're so confident, capable and keeping all
halakhahs they need to know in amore formal way and he said
it's just really not necessary.
We see how they're so confidentand capable in keeping all
halakhahs, as is he himself.
His wife was very learned andshe writes a Yiddish Shia Larson
Shuvah a response.
She answers a halakhic questionfrom another woman in Yiddish.
Maybe her husband passed awayby then.
She reports her husband'spractice and what his.

(28:42):
So just because he kind ofdidn't mandate it and that's
really what I've been trying tobring across just because Torah
learning hasn't been mandatedfor women doesn't mean that they
were disenfranchised fromJewish life.
And again, we're talking aboutvast amounts of times and wide
variety of geographic spaces, sothere could have been
communities and times and eraswhere what women were afforded

(29:05):
was not keeping up with whatthey needed.
But it's fascinating to seethat women who wanted to were
able and encouraged or taught bytheir fathers.
It even says that there was aRishon his name is Rishon Israel
that his daughter-in-law isreported to have had a tutor

(29:28):
that would teach her and like inpublic view in the dining room.
I think they were commenting onthe halakhic aspect like that
he was doing in public, so therewould be no concerns of Yechud,
but like we're just, by theside, learning that this girl,
who was already married, isgetting tutored in Torah,
probably because she wanted itand nobody was asking her to.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Probably because she wanted it and nobody was asking
her to.
It was very interesting how,when we listen and we hear about
all these amazing Jewish women,they're representative of other
people.
We have to remember thatthey're not.
Maybe they were.
Obviously they were substantialand they stood out in some way,
which is why they're mentioned,but that usually means that

(30:07):
they're not the only personwho's doing this.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
So I think that's very important also.
Yeah, both ways.
And often people will say, well, it was only the women who
they're always associated withtheir father, their husband,
their son.
So in response I would say twothings.
A, most Torah scholarsthemselves came from families of
learned people, like it justhappened dynastically, and so it

(30:41):
was just interesting that womenin a lot of these families were
also part of the culture andnot, you know, relegated to the
kitchen.
If they were wealthy enough tohave their sons learn, then they
were probably wealthy enough tohave their daughters learn as
well, to have their sons learn,and they're probably wealthy
enough to have their daughterslearn as well.
But then you, it's pretty muchunheard of a woman who's not
from a family that's known forscholarship to be learned.
But on the other hand, what'sinteresting is the fact that her
family continues to be learnedis often due to her influence.
So a woman who's beingassociated someone's mother or

(31:04):
grandmother it's who theirgrandchild or child became to be
is due to the passion for Torahlearning that she exhibited.
I can give you some beautifulexamples of that.
So the Maharal had agreat-granddaughter named Chava
Bachrach and her grandson, yairBachrach.
He called his Sefer after hisgrandma.
He called it Chavos, yair, soblending their two names

(31:26):
together so I'm often namedafter, like different words from
tanakh, so is the farms of yourear, set by yari ben minasha.
But he used that word to honorhis grandma who he said was just
extremely learned and inspiredhis own learning and at the end
of her life she tried to makealiyah to her to stroll but she
unfortunately passed away on herjourney and he was so proud of

(31:48):
her.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
So that's one example , and there are more so I want
to talk also about other rolesthat jewish women played
historically in jewishcommunities.
I know we're mostly focusing ontorah learning, but before we
do that, can we talk a littlebit about rabbits and frin
Frieda, who she was and her rolein Chabad Hasidus in specific?

(32:10):
Like what was her role?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Okay, so off the cuff , I was actually not planning to
go into women in the timeperiod of Hasidus, because it
gets really fascinating.
It's overwhelming the amount ofinformation.
You know, the closer we are toour times, the more recorded
material we have.
Um, you know, the closer we areto our times, the more recorded
material.
The other day I actually read aletter from reverend freyda to
her brother, chum dog bear, andit was just blew my mind away,

(32:35):
like her usage of hasidus andthe messages that she was saying
.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
So she was extremely learned, equal to who she was
because I know, like my daughteronce you know, when they have
those little out based productprojects that they like come
home, aleph is for and in b'nosmenachem my daughter came on
with fey is for, freda likerabbits and freda and I was like
that's so cute.
But I think a lot of us like gothrough our lives and we hear
about, you know, the, the chabadrabbitsons who are married to

(33:01):
the rebeam, and we don't reallyhear so much about other notable
Chabad Rabbitsons, likeRabbitson Freyda.
So tell us who she was and thenjust a little bit about her.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
All right, well, give me my next research task to do
Rabbitson Freyda and I'll bemore confident on it.
But in general I think it'sinteresting that the reason we
don't talk a lot about them iswe don't know a ton about them
and they're not leading Hasidim.
They might have consulted withsome.
She might have, you know, hadmeetings with her brothers where

(33:35):
she shared her ideas the sameway we see in this letter, and
she definitely was known thatthe Alter Eber said Mamorim
specially for her to learn from.
So she was just raised in thisatmosphere of the altar ever the
author of the tanya, the leaderof khabar hasidus's home, and
she completely soaked it up andwas as much his hasid as any of

(33:56):
his greatest hasid.
And I don't know about herfamily afterwards, but I could
just say that when I learnedabout these women, even if it's
like a tiny anecdote, one letter, one line where they're
mentioned, just seeing theirnames and seeing them being so
familiar we have Shandell andFreda and Kayla and Bela I'm
like these are genuine womenfrom the past that reported to

(34:17):
have been learning and involvedin Tara scholarship.
It's so like cool that how wecan identify with that and just
feel like these are ourcontemporaries, these are our
friends, these are the names ofthe kids that your daughter goes
to school with, when they wereback then living lives super
differently technologically andsocially and politically.

(34:38):
But we have this common threadand this common theme that we
share with them, which is ourpassion for Torah and raising
Jewish families and living alife.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Let's talk a little bit about other ways that women
served in communities.
What about female philanthropy?

Speaker 2 (34:52):
So that's definitely a big one.
I read a statistic once that wehear a lot about the money
lenders of Europe at a time whenChristians were forbidden from
lending an interest, so it wenta lot to the Jews, which caused
all sorts of social problems.
But they did some statisticthat I'm totally going to make
it up, but that's okay.
Like 30 something percent ofthese money lenders we often

(35:13):
hear about were actually women.
So women, just like nowadays,were very involved in business
deals.
And also, again, if youreference Glickle of Hamlin's
Diary, she's trading withmerchandise et cetera.
Even if she doesn't necessarilygo on the business journeys
herself.
She sends messengers but she'sin charge of the book, she's the
leader behind the business, andwith the money that the women

(35:37):
amassed they also had theability to donate and they
really did that on a large scale.
Not all women were necessarilypersonally involved in learning
Torah.
Maybe they were never taught,but wealth is something that can
be built from the ground up.
You don't need to come from afamily of it.
And so there's some very famouswomen.
But just going back, even thetimes of the second base of

(35:59):
ignition, after there'sinscriptions on ancient shuls
that have been uncovered byarchaeologists, where we'll say
the donors, they'll write themin the mosaics you know the
old-fashioned donate, donationplaques, and it will.
It will say some female names.
And then you have, for example,the marasha, who's a very famous
rabbi from the 16th centurypoland, who his last name was

(36:21):
adels, and that was hismother-in-law's name, adel, and
he associated himself with herbecause she was a major
philanthropist.
She built up the yeshiva thathe was able to teach and learn
in.
So it was completely common andthat's why, actually, a lot of
Ashkenazi Jews, if you thinkabout it, have last names that
are derived from the mother ormother-in-law.
So they're matronomics.
Just think through it Chaykin,sorkin, rifkin, I could go on

(36:47):
and on.
So, yeah, ritesis, which is afamous Chabad figure and now
family, also named after themother-in-law.
And, yeah, even, just to thisday, my great-grandma.
When they were cleaning upgreat-great-grandmother, oliver
Shalom, from Yerushalayim, whenthey were cleaning up some of
her belongings, they foundchecks written out to tons of

(37:08):
different yeshivas small amounts, but there's just so much
continuity in how women wouldsupport the Torah institutions
and build them if necessarycoming across in this

(37:29):
conversation is how women werereally the cornerstone.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
And maybe not all women were in the community
leading, you know, tfilos, ororganizing, you know, yeshivas
or doing any of those type ofthings but women were always,
continuously throughout history,the cornerstone of the
community.
They were the grounding spacefor everyone and when women saw
a role that needed to happenwhether it was we need to build
a shul, we need to build ayeshiva, we need to encourage

(37:53):
the men to learn, we need allthose type of things.
We need to encourage women tobe active participants in their
tefillah, we need to all thesethings Women just stood up and
did what they needed to do, andI think that that's really
telling in all the examples thatyou're giving, that, even if
the household was a Torah-basedhousehold, where the men were in
leadership roles, the womenwere in parallel roles.

(38:14):
At the same time, they wereactively involved in what was
happening man in history.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
We also don't know the same name of every single
woman in history and there arealways the great men in history
and the big players and thepeople who get things done, but
really every person is importantto Hashem and every name counts
and we all just really need tofill our roles.
So women were doing that inhistory and men were doing that
in history.
It's interesting how we don'tknow women's names as frequently
as we do for men, and one couldbe because their role was less

(38:48):
public oftentimes.
But we learn in Yiddishkeitthat something that's within is
actually often a lot morevaluable than something that's
without.
It's called primius versusplutonius and an interesting
comment that I once saw in abook, a beautiful book called
there Once Was a World, wherethe author, yaffa Eliyach,
traces the history of her shtetl, aisha Shik, 700 years from the

(39:10):
beginning until it wasdestroyed, unfortunately, by the
Nazis, and she was a childHolocaust survivor and she goes
through every single institutionthat Shetl had.
It's a thick book, like fromthe Sheikha to the Mikvah, to
the Talmud Torah, to the Shul,to people, and she talks about
the process of modernization andshe has this analysis that she
might quote it from somewhereelse where she says that

(39:31):
actually the haskalah, theenlightenment, the movement that
encouraged jewish men toabandon devotion to particularly
to learning, and go out toother fields and engage in
culture and sciences and usetheir minds and talents for the
wider secular, non-jewishculture.
She said that actuallydisenfranchised the women even
more, because beforehand themales in the community had that

(39:55):
demonstrative, performative rolein shul.
And where would they go everynight?
To shul to learn.
And they were known that theywere the spiritual head of the
household.
But the woman was the practicalhead of the household.
She was at the marketplace, shewas with the children, she was
making things done and thechildren respected their mother.
They knew that the mother wassuper important in the function

(40:18):
of the household.
It was a teamwork.
And then, with the Haskalahtaking men out of the shul, they
were just at night at homegetting on their wives' nerves,
mixing into the women's affairs,getting too involved into the
practical details of thehousehold.
So it's an amusing like way oflooking at it and I would love
to analyze it further.
But just something that'sinternal, something that's not

(40:40):
spoken about.
Someone who didn't build a shulbut inspired her children to go
to shul is really just asworthy just because we don't
know her name.
But on the other hand, peoplewill often say why even talk
about these women?
They're not representative.
Most women weren't buildingshuls, weren't learning tarah in
depth to the point that otherrabbis were consulting them
about their opinions in thegemara, weren't this, weren't

(41:00):
that?
And I say well, just becausethey weren't everyone, that
doesn't mean they shouldn't becelebrated at all.
And the same way, each of ushas a unique role in life and if
we were to just see what's thestatus quo, what's the common
thing that people are doing,then we wouldn't really feel
motivated to try somethingdifferent.
So for me, learning about womenwho stayed up every night saying

(41:24):
to heal him and really this iseveryone's grandmother, to be
honest, I see you noddinglearning about women who learned
mishnah and who learned gemaraand who wrote books that wove
midrash and ethical lessons forwomen of their time period, it
really honestly, it not onlymotivates me, but it empowers me
and it demands of me, and youcan't really retreat behind the
excuse of saying this is not awoman's role and it demands of

(41:45):
me, and you can't really retreatbehind the excuse of saying
this is not a woman's role.
A woman doesn't have to beinvolved with the knowledge of
Torah, because if you have anaptitude for something, then A
you're supposed to pursue it.
And what gives us the right tonot continue the legacy that a
lot of women have set down?
Very interesting how a lot ofthese women that I've been

(42:05):
discussing their grandchildrenor whoever writes about them
will know how they themselvesare very interested in the
previous generation of Jewishwomen.
Jewish women have always beenkind of learning and seeking
inspiration from each other.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
So the example of women who wake up early and say
tell them, like you said, oh,that's everyone's grandmother.
I'm just nodding because I haveso many vivid memories of, you
know, my grandmother, my greataunts and even my mother-in-law,
my mother-in-law.
Her Hebrew is very, very slowbut she wakes up at 4 am and she
says a kapital to him for everyone of her children.

(42:40):
You get it three times ifyou're, you know, in specific
need and every one of her 60plus grandchildren.
And again you get it threetimes if you have specific needs
.
So she's waking up at four inthe morning.
She's sitting at her kitchentable until nine, saying to
Hillam like that makes animpression my kids, like they
woke up, you know, in there inmy in-laws house and they see
that.
And if you think it's only thewomen who are out there and it's

(43:01):
not all of the Jewish women,this is what I'm talking about
when we talk about thecentralizing role, this
grounding role that Jewish womenhave.
It's the Torah learning out ofthe house, it's the value system
in the house, and I think thatit's easy to think, oh, there
was limitations, or there arelimitations, but really there
aren't, and when there's a need,we do step into those roles and

(43:21):
, in reality, on a small scale,those roles are present and it's
not small.
When your kids see you steppinginto those roles day after day
after day, your davening isimportant, your learning is
important.
You're holding space for otherpeople's learning and other
people's davening other people'sgamil, fesadim and all those
things that we value as yidin,you are actually making the

(43:42):
biggest difference possible.
So now, as we come close toShavuos and we bring the
conversation back towards Torahlearning, what are some
practical ways that women,historically, have brought this
forth into their homes in wayslarge and in ways small?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Sure.
Thanks for the question,because while I was speaking in
a very generalized way, I'm likewhile I'm telling you these
examples in my mind, I'mthinking about specific women,
just like the names are notflowing off my tongue.
Plus, they wouldn't really berelevant to most of the audience
If you haven't heard of them.
You haven't heard of theirplace or their time.
So I'm going to try and giveyou some introduction to, like
sneak peeks into these womenthat we see and what they did,

(44:20):
even though I've mentioned some.
So one really cool place tolook is something, a real
treasure trove, called the CairoGeniza.
You've heard of it.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
No.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Okay, oh, the.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Cairo Geniza.
Yes, it's your accent.
I think that threw me off.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yes, so the Cairo Geniza was a little attic in a
shul called the Ben Ezra shul inCairo, egypt, where there had
been a big Jewish community formany, many centuries.
It was really the center of theEast and the West.
Questions and travelers thatpassed from Spain to the Middle

(44:52):
East, to Iraq would come throughCairo and they had many great
leaders like the Rambam, andthey just had this tradition
that they wouldn't only preservedocuments that we would
consider shameless, things thathave Hashem's name Sukkim,
sifrei, svarim of Tanakh andGemara but they would actually
preserve a lot of documents,maybe because on one side there
was Shem Esh-Vashem, maybebecause paper was so rare, maybe

(45:15):
they just wanted to preserveanything with Hebrew letters.
So we have marriage documentsand business transactions and
personal letters, and you evenfind halachic texts and poems
and prayers that just weren'tknown otherwise and you find
personal handwriting from theRambam.
Something really cool I justlearned recently is there's even
a letter from the Rambam'ssister.
I didn't even know he had asister, miriam.
She's asking the Rambam tocheck on her son who hasn't been

(45:37):
in touch with her.
She's a worried Jewish mom andshe said, can you just?
And she probably didn't live inthe neighborhood, in the area
and she's asking him if he knowsabout her son's whereabouts.
So back to what we learn aboutwomen's contribution to learning
in the Ghanisa you see a bunchof examples of women who are
actually teachers and who madesure that their own daughters
got an education I don't knowwhat the extent was, definitely

(45:58):
some, at least Tanakh.
The Rambam in his own writingsays that it's completely
permissible for women to betaught Tanakh.
One question that the Rambamgets that was found at Karag
Niza is there was a woman whohad a really broken marriage and
she ended up having to supporther family and she joined her
husband as like a co-teacher ofTanakh in his little Kheder and

(46:22):
then when her husband eventuallyreturned maybe he was on a long
business trip he argued theRambam that she should have to
quit.
He didn't approve herprofession and that's just like
a kind of sad twist.
But it's evidence of women whoare teaching.
And there's also another saddocument where a woman's writing
her guest's last will and she'sasking that they make sure that

(46:42):
they provide her daughter withan education.
So that just always excites meto see that glimpse of the past
we're talking about.
The documents of the Karaginizaspan about like 700 years, but
we're talking about mainlyaround the 10th to 14th
centuries and we don't know them.
We don't know what they taughtspecifically, but we know that
they were in the business ofeducation.

(47:03):
But to turn to a few women whotaught things that are like
innovative things that theyadded to the corpus of Torah
knowledge, I'll pick out two.
So one I also discovered prettyrecently and unfortunately all
I have is her name and no otherbiographical details.
Her name is Kayla spell kuf.
You would love it.
Hey, maybe it's keelah cola.

(47:25):
Yiddish names kind of evolvedover time in their pronunciation
, just like a lot of things, andshe is quoted in a book that is
a commentary on Chumash, butmainly the commentary on Rashi.
It's by Rabbi Dosa Ben MosheHayovani.
He lived in modern day Bulgariaand he was part of that
Byzantine Empire.
That's why he's called Yovani,which means Greek.

(47:45):
He's not actually Greek, theyjust spoke the Greek language
and he had Ashkenazi teachersbased on just persecutions that
were happening in Hungary thatpeople had to move to more
southern, to the Balkans, whichare usually associated with
being Spartic nowadays and helearned about Rashi and he was
really enthused and in hiscommentary he quotes
contemporaries and one of thepeople he quotes three times is
Morris Kala, without any sort oflike introduction or just

(48:09):
matter of fact, quoting heropinions on Rashi, and I read a
few of them and it's just reallyinteresting.
She's analyzing rashi.
What's rashi's question?
Why does russia use this answer?
Just like any homeless teacherwould do nowadays, but she's
innovating it herself.
She's adding her own voice todiscussion.
So far I've really been speakingabout women who learned tara
and every so often are quoted bytheir uncle, cousin, brother,

(48:30):
husband, brother husband for ahalakhic opinion.
Here we're talking about that,a woman.
We don't know anything elseabout her besides that she's
living around the 15th century,but and maybe in his area of the
world.
But you could imagine thatthere are more.
And what's her context?
How did he hear from her?
She's coming up with ideas.
She's sharing, sharing, she'sdeveloping the study of rashi.

(48:53):
She's part of the conversationof tyra.
So that's kayla or keela.
And the other woman that I gotreally excited about and wrote a
whole article for your magazineis rifka of tickton, and she's
known to be the first woman whopublished her own safer that she
authored.
It was a yiddish sefer, becauseshe was actually her audience

(49:15):
was female and she called it me,nekos rifka, and it's there's
you could read up online moreinformation.
But she really wanted to bringall her knowledge.
She quotes midrashim anddifferent ethical works that
were like chavis and things thatwere popularly learned and

(49:37):
midrashim, and weaves togetherher instructions of how women
should really act in her socialand spiritual and moral life.
And then women also contributeda lot to tarot learning through
the publishing industry andit's pretty much a really good
job for a young girl to checkfor typos and to put together

(49:59):
the printing plates.
And one thing that alwaysfascinated me was the little
mementos from this youngprinter's daughter.
Her name is Ella or Elle.
I love it.
Hey, her father was actually aGare from Amsterdam, which is
interesting.
His name is Moshe, but that'slove with.
Hey, her father was actually aGer from Amsterdam, which is
interesting.
His name is Moshe, but AvramAvino, that's how we know he's a
Ger.
And she writes like at the endof one of the sperm that she

(50:19):
types it with her brother.
They kind of acknowledge theircontribution and she says I'm
only nine years old, this is inthe late 1690s.
And then she does it again whenshe's 12 and like they add the
year that they did it.
And the way people used to dothe year in those days is they
wouldn't just say what year itwas, they would do a plus up.
That's the gematria of thatyear.
It's also showing maybe herbrother put it together, but
showing a little bit ofscholarship and she's definitely

(50:42):
educated to be able to help inthe printing industry.
And then there were women likethere's a famous printing press
called the Rome printing pressand then after Devorah, rome's
husband died young and hisbrothers who were his partners
weren't really fully matured yetto really take over the
business.
She really ran it for a timeperiod and that was they printed

(51:02):
the chasse, the Gemara, in thelayout that we have it today.
So that's actually.
You know she can't be fullycredited with all of that
project, but whenever you open aGemara and the layout of the
pages has been copied ever sincethat shas was printed, it's
called the Vilna shas.
That's owing to that a womanpersevered to make sure that

(51:23):
this project finished.
She was a businesswoman but shereally did that.
That was in the 1800s.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
I love that.
I think we got so many snippetsof time and so many snippets in
the lives and influence ofJewish women throughout the ages
and I think, I'm sure we couldall day jumping in.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
We missed out the whole Italy, which has always
been one of my favorite Jewishcommunities to look at.
And if you think about Italy,like Renaissance and women doing
their art and their theater andtheir dance, and like you have,
like renaissance and womendoing their art and their
theater and their dance, andlike you have women who also
went and excelled in their tarotlearning and just as written by
their contemporaries, and theyalso wrote a lot of poetry.
A lot of spartic women workpoetry and even sometimes hebrew

(52:04):
, sometimes in ladino, sometimesin english, when they moved to
england.
And I just wanted to point outthat the first Jewish school for
girls was made in Italy.
So we know about Sarah Schneerand a whole discussion.
I said I wasn't really going toget into the modern era so much
.
Her schools were started in the1920s and then you had some
schools in Lithuania a littlebit before that and schools in

(52:26):
Germany for girls started bylike students who are in the
mid-1800s, but in Rome theypredated them by a century and
they had a time of terrificgirls in 1745.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
I Did not know that.
Actually, I think that'sfascinating.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Yeah, so very cultured in Italy.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, well ahead of their time.
But women women always learnedthe halakhahs that were relevant
to them and even if therewasn't an organized manner, that
was something that was alwaysnot all women that's why some
women who did learn?

Speaker 2 (52:55):
it were, trying to make sure that their
contemporaries learning as welllike the same as nowadays.
There are people gaps ineducation, yeah, but it was
always an ideal that womenshould know the halakhahs are
relevant to them, and men aswell, and all halakhahs are
relevant to it right, buthistorically women did consult
with other women about, likenida on a basic level, mikvah on
a basic level, like obviouslythere was always rabbanim right

(53:16):
and kitchen and you know thosetype of halakhas were were were
primarily a woman's domain andand men would trust the women.
Nobody came and like nitpickedthat's in communities with a
strong, with a strong leadership, like there were communities
that abandoned whole types,parts of al-aqa at the times.
But you know, that's anotherlittle dark angle to history.

(53:38):
Like it's just interesting, ingamara you have rav, who's like
one of the important amirai andhe's starting the first school
in surah, like quoted multipletimes in the gamara, and he
moves to surah from eric tostoney.
Here's a woman saying saying toher neighbor like what are you
cooking for dinner?
And she says, like I think themilk will go really well with
the meat.
I don't remember the storyexactly.
It's like oh no, I need to makea shiva here.

(54:00):
So there's, there's been timesthat unfortunately this has it
hasn't been as up to standard,but your point is still taken.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Right, so as a whole, that was definitely the case.
Okay, so do you have any lastparting thoughts for the women
listening to this wonderful andamazing historical perspective?

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Sure.
So first of all we did jump allover the place.
We didn't go in order, but Ithink that's part of the beauty
of it Just feeling out andhearing names and places and
I've definitely been inspired bypodcasts that I listened to
that led me to actually go andfollow up.
So just fun example about womenI heard a podcast speak about
this beautiful shul, an italianshul, in yerushalayim, that they

(54:44):
kind of transported the shulwith the orange, everything, all
the decoration to yerushalayimand he encouraged us to go visit
it and he mentioned they have aspecial misha berach in their
davening for the women whodonated to the shuls and
beautified them.
So we didn't mention like womencontributing even if they
didn't have the money to andeven if they didn't have the
knowledge to, but contributingin the small handicrafts and the
art and the sewing and thedonating in the, in the small

(55:06):
ways.
So totally, I'll change itthere again.
But on the, on the topic ofpodcast, want to give this
disclaimer, which is it's superinteresting that we're having a
podcast and I spoke about how wespoke about how so many women
learned orally and they it was amimetic tradition they picked
up how to observe the Torah bybeing part of it, just by being

(55:28):
surrounded by women who wereobserving from when they were
young, and that's how they knewhow to do it to very, very high
standards.
So obviously books have anadvantage and that's why going
on this podcast was challengingfor me, because I know that not
everything I just necessarilysaid today did I get the dates
completely accurate and thenames and the exact story

(55:51):
details.
But while a book has theadvantage of its set and you
have time to edit it and readand proofread it and to engage
with it in that fixed, formalway, the spoken is is living,
it's alive, and that's reallycool that women are connected to
dib or women are connected tospeech and we speak a lot.

(56:11):
So even if what we're saying isnot like we're reading it in
the text and we might be gettingthe details, we might be
amending them so we could givethe lesson that we're intending
to give over.
The point is to use our capacityfor speech for Tara and for the
lessons and for the amazing,rich treasure chest of Torah

(56:38):
that we have, and whether that'sMidrashim or whether that's
more recent stories of Tzaddikimor whether that's Tanakh,
there's so much there and Ithink that it's pretty
incredible that there arepodcasts to learn from, but to
maybe step back and to look atmore earlier sources of Torah
and to connect to what ourancestors were connecting to,

(56:59):
because as we go through time,there's just more and more
information.
So if we want to learn whatthey learned, we've got to step
back a little bit.
And also, because we're fillingour days with so much
conversation and so much talking, we should really try to use
that capacity for speech forTyra, and I really think there
could be even more storybooksand lessons out there with

(57:24):
Jewish female role models,because there are the equivalent
in the secular world.
And this is definitelydifferent our time period than
the women I was speaking about.
As much as I was trying tocreate an equivalency or trying
to show there's nothing newunder the sun, our time period
has so much expansion in women'sleadership and education in the

(57:45):
secular fields that the reasonthat the Rebbe personally
encouraged a greater intensityof women's learning in more
depth was because of that reasonthat we have more free time, we
have more education, we havemore leisure and we have this
capacity and potential that weneed to use in the correct way.

(58:06):
And then also the rebbe said itin a positive, encouraging note
that what we add to the tablewhen a woman learns Torah is
like I said, about those womenwho added their own chidushim,
their own innovation.
It's something that hasn't beensaid before and the alter ebbe
says that when you have aaffinity to a part of Torah
because there's so many aspectsmine happens to be the history

(58:28):
of it, but others could likehalacha or I'm not even going to
go through examples, there's somany that's something that
Yaron HaShama actually is in theworld to fix the history of it,
but others could like halachaor I'm not even going to go
through examples of so many.
That's something that youranishina actually is in the
world to fix.
The same way that your anishinais here to do things, you're
also here to redeem parts oftarot that you have questions on
.
So we need to take the exampleof these women and push
ourselves a little bit more andanswer the questions, if you

(58:49):
already have them, and try tosee how you could develop and
grow, and doing it personally isso much more meaningful than
hearing everything fromsecondhand.
Even the Rebbe actuallyencouraged girls after Frieda
Kreber's passing to write essayson the Frieda Kreber's life and
what they could learn from him,saying that something that you
do on your own you connect to alot more.

(59:10):
And for those who are wonderingif these women were completely
unrelatable, like how did theyhave time to learn and to run
mega multimillionaire businessesor be involved in community
politics?
Like didn't have their familiesto raise?
So we should acknowledge that alot of these girls I said at
the beginning, were young eitherwhen they had these roles or

(59:30):
honestly forced to out ofdesperation when it came to the
leading of printing houses andpublishing, and there are some
women who can multitask to anexceptional rate.
But some of them were alsoolder and they started learning
later in life.
And some people have told meabout their own grandmothers who
attend multiple shiuram a week.
Now that they have that time.
And just to share a very amusinganecdote from a woman that I

(59:53):
would love to learn more aboutI've just been reading about and
very intrigued she was.
Her name was dina siegel, she'sfrom the mid-18th century, her
father was a rabbi in amsterdam,her husband was a rabbi in the
hag and she had her owninnovative tarot thought, which
is it says that the names of thefive daughters of talofchad,
who maybe, maybe we could callour first out the explicit

(01:00:15):
female Torah scholars in Tanakh,because they come to Moshe with
a halachic question and shesays she points out how Rashi
says the first time their namesare mentioned it's in the order
of wisdom and the second timetheir names are mentioned it's
in the order of age.
That's explaining why theirnames are in different orders
both times that they'rementioned in the Torah.
So Dina said well, that'sbecause the first time they were

(01:00:36):
mentioned it was an order ofwisdom, because they weren't
married.
That was part of the wholeproblem.
They didn't want to get marrieduntil they'd sorted out their
whole inheritance problem.
Their father had died, therewas no son, and if they would be
married they were afraid thatwhat would happen to the land
Once they're married?
Now it's going in order of agebecause their wisdom has now
equalized.
They're not learning anymore.

(01:00:57):
So that's how the tyrant knowsthem.
So that's on a amusing note.
So the women that were learningwere definitely self-aware
about the balancing of theirroles and, as I said, there is
nothing new under the sun.
These questions have beenraised before and just in
general, I think hearing aboutthis woman.
I hope it inspires everyone thatif there's someone out there

(01:01:20):
who has the time, it doesn'thave to be up early this morning
uh, catering a whole lunch fora family and is interested to
stay up a little bit later atnight.
You might stay up late fortotally other reasons.
Why not stay up late a littlebit later at night?
You might stay up late fortotally other reasons.
Why not stay up late a littlebit and learn some Torah?
And, in general, we should allbe able to receive the Torah
with Simchat B'Penemius and withour contribution to bringing

(01:01:41):
the light of the Torah to allJews, men, women and children,
the affiliated, unaffiliated.
We start by bringing it toourselves and it should spread
further and bring in the Torahof Moshiach.
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Thank you, Tivi.
That was very beautiful and Iwant to wish everyone a happy
and wonderful Shavuos.
I want to wish everyone aninternalizing of the power that
we have as Jewish women,historically and, of course, in
today's day and age.
In today's day and age.

(01:02:19):
Thank you for joining me onthis past hour.
I'm so glad that you found ourpodcast and that we got to spend
the time together.
If you would like to nominateyourself or someone you know for
a topic that they areinterested, feel passionate
about, or you feel passionateabout, reach out to us at info
at bodysoulscom Remember that'stwo S's.
If you have any feedback aboutthe work we're doing, or if you
would like to connect, you canuse the same email.

(01:02:39):
I hope you have a wonderful,uplifting and amazing day.