Halakhic practice for Niddah, or female purity,is based on a harmonistic reading of Leviticus 12,15, 18, and 20. The laws of female purity have been historically used to determine the status of women in a patriarchal society.
Beyond the articles within this Encyclopedia that pertain to specific women in the Babylonian Talmud, six others are also mentioned repeatedly in the text. Some are described as respected and wise, while others are used as cautionary tales against female autonomy. Ultimately, the women’s stories are used to supplement the narratives about the men around them.
Jewish women have been recorded in entrepreneurial roles as early as the fifth century BCE, and many women held vital roles in their communities’ economies. Around the world, Jewish women took part in moneylending, trading, and property ownership, both with their husbands and independently.
S. Deborah Ebin was a national community and Zionist leader who devoted her life to the advancement of Jewish education and Zionist ideals. A dynamic orator, fund-raiser, and world traveler, she was a formidable figure in American Jewish life.
Drisha was founded in 1979 to provide women with the opportunity to study Talmud and other Jewish texts. It has since expanded to serve students of all genders. Drisha is officially nondenominational but has served as a cornerstone of the Orthodox feminist movement. It has been joined by a number of liberal observant New York institutions that promote intense engagement with Jewish text and observance for women and men.
Many scholars claim that Jewish marriage is a matter of contract between two willing parties and as a result they, not the state, can decide to get divorced, in the same way that they decided to marry. However, more critically inclined scholars, and especially feminist scholars, take issue with those who complacently remark on the “progressive, and contractual” ease with which Jewish divorce takes place.
One of the major Jewish sources dealing with contraception is Tosefta Niddah. As with the issue of abortion, the more public the debate about contraception became over time, the more some rabbinic authorities attempted to usurp women’s control over their bodies.
The story of the concubine at Gibeah, who is murdered when her husband sends her out to a crowd of Benjamites, is one of the most shocking narratives in the Bible. The rabbis do not blame the unnamed woman for her fate and the ensuing crisis, instead placing the blame at the feet of the Levite and the leaders of Israel.
Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai are the two major schools of exposition of the Oral Law that existed from the first century BCE to the second century CE. Contrary to the common interpretations, Bet Shammai is more lenient than Bet Hillel in its rulings surrounding matrimonial law. Generally, Bet Hillel is more concerned with the familial complexity or unexpected events, and that less specific view leads to oppression of women’s autonomy in legal matters.
Beruryah is the only woman in rabbinic literature who studies Torah. Identified as the daughter of Rabbi Hananiah b. Teradyon and the wife of Rabbi Meir, she delivers halakhic and homiletical statements and is described as a prodigious learner.
Rayna Batya Berlin was a Lithuanian woman committed to religious study who argued that women should be able to study the Torah and the Talmud. The only source of her life was written by her nephew, who describes her frustration with her subjugated status in her community and how she generally suffered in silence.
A rabbinic text about the ritual laws relating to menstruation, Baraita de-Niddah has a mysterious origin and an unknown impact on the interpretation of Jewish law about menstruation.
Rabbi Akiva was an important interpreter and teacher of Jewish laws of the Tannaitic period (ca. first-third century C.E.). He was particularly groundbreaking in his teachings regarding women’s standing and sexual and marital relations, recognizing women as deserving of human dignity.
While halakhic discussions about abortion largely excluded the arguments and perspectives of women, in general poskim (decisors) determined that a woman’s life takes priority over the life of the fetus. Halakhic perspectives have explored the point at which the fetus is considered a human and taken the mother’s physical and psychological health into account in determining her right to abort.
Last week’s New York Times article “So the Torah Is a Parenting Guide?” discusses the prolific use of the book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children written by a Los Angeles clinical psychologist named Wendy Mogel.
