12th Century Renaissance: Part 4 - Jewish Women

[Maggie Anton]

So now I’m going to talk about Jewish women’s high position in the 11th-12th centuries. For all practical purposes, this means Ashkenazi women [living under the Christians], since Sephardic women [living under the Muslims] don’t seem to have improved their status like their Western European sisters did. As I researched the religious lives of medieval Jewish women, in order to determine the truth of legends about Rashi’s daughters being learned and wearing tefillin, I found plenty of evidence that they were learned. I also discovered that some women in his community did wear tefillin, and that some women wore tzitzit, blew the shofar, dwelt in the sukkah, and performed circumcisions – all ritual obligations from which women are exempt [and rabbis in Sepharad would say forbidden]. Jewish women attended synagogue as often as men, and there were indications that Ashkenazi women were permitted aliyah to the Torah.

Torah education was not forbidden to these women, and apparently was common enough that an anonymous student of Peter Abelard in 12th century Paris was quoted as saying, “If the Christians educate their sons, they do so not for God, but for gain, in order that one brother, if he be a cleric, may help his father and mother and his other brothers … But the Jews, out of zeal for God and love of the law, put as many sons as they have to letters, that each may understand God’s law … and not only his sons, but his daughters.”

Jewish sources at this time give us two quotes about learned women:
1. “He [the father] must teach her Torah, for if she does not know the laws of Shabbat, how can she keep them? And the same goes for all the commandments, in order that she be careful in their performance.”
2. Regarding a father teaching a daughter more advanced texts; “Women whose hearts have drawn them to approach the Holy One - surely they may ascend the mountain of the Eternal. Scholars should treat them with honor and encourage them in their venture.”

I posted previously on Christian women at Judy Chicago’s Dinner Table, and ended by mentioning a Hebrew woman, Rachel. Sure enough, when I found the page that described Rachel in more detail, her bio read, “Rachel was one of the daughters of Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac, a preeminent biblical and Talmudic scholar. One text quotes Rashi as saying that, because of his infirmities, Rachel acted as his secretary, taking dictation from him. This would have required her to possess knowledge of Hebrew, which would have been unusual for a woman of that time. It suggests that she must have been trained by her father, as that would have been the only way for her to have acquired such an education.”

www.rashisdaughters.com