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Maimonides

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Torah Study

Although the obligation of Torah study is one of the most important Jewish commandments, women have long been exempted, or even excluded, from it. Over time, scholars mitigated women’s exclusion by rendering it inapplicable to all content, to all women, or both. Regardless of halakhic rulings, some women have studied Torah in all time periods.

Medieval Spain

Written histories of Jews in medieval Spain rarely include women, so one must seek alternate sources. Marital status was the frequent topic of rabbinic responsa. Some Jewish women made their own income as merchants and moneylenders. Inheritance laws were problematic for Jewish women – disputes were settled in both Jewish and non-Jewish courts.

Marriage in Halakhic Judaism

The stages of a Jewish marriage have various halakhic and legal implications. The beginning stage is shiddukhin, in which the man and women promise to marry. Then, kiddushin and nissu’in create the legal bond of marriage.

Maimonides

Maimonides, referred to by the acronym Rambam, was a medieval Sephardic Jewish sage who studied medicine and practiced as a physician throughout his lifetime. His legal and philosophical writings made him one of the greatest and most widely read medieval Jewish philosophers.

Wifebeating in Jewish Tradition

The most useful source to study wifebeating is responsa literature, which includes a variety of attitudes towards the phenomenon. While some sources declare wifebeating unlawful, others justify it under certain circumstances.

Poverty: Jewish Women in Medieval Egypt

The documents recovered from the Cairo Genizah give insight into the lives of Jewish women in poverty in medieval Egypt. Without husbands, women were often left without any means of earning a living, though the Jewish community assumed responsibility for providing for widows.

Nature of Women

Rabbinic literature is replete with implications concerning the differences in the respective natures of men and women. Often the portrayals are paradoxical, citing opinions that describe seemingly opposite traits. The broader reality, however, often balanced a narrow reading of the text.

Medieval Hebrew Literature: Portrayal of Women

Stereotypes of women, “good” and “bad,” are found throughout the medieval Hebrew canon. The love poetry cultivated during the Golden Age in Muslim Spain seems to glorify and idealize women, but the female “beloved” is subject to the power of the male “gaze” and male rhetoric.

Legal-Religious Status of the Suspected Adulteress (Sotah)

When a husband accused his wife of adultery, the Bible prescribes the ritual of Sotah (bitter waters) to verify his claim. Rabbinic literature explains and explores the ritual and the requirements for undergoing sotah.

Legal-Religious Status of the Jewish Female

Gendered language in the Torah resulted in centuries of debate about a woman’s role with regard to commandments. The sages’ construction of a woman and her values was very negative, probably relating more to their vision of the ideal, which was male oriented, and applying its opposite to females.

Learned Women in Traditional Jewish Society

The long-standing idea that women are either not fit to be educated or do not need to be educated has deep roots in Jewish history. Yet in spite of these very real disabilities, there seem always to have been a handful of women in traditional Jewish communities who became educated.

Killer Wife in Jewish Law and Lore

The Talmud states that if a woman is twice or thrice widowed, she is prohibited from remarrying because it is presumed that she is a killer wife and that her next husband will also die. This has been applied in post-Talmudic law, but also negated by some halakhic decisors.

Halakhic Decisions on Family Matters in Medieval Jewish Society

Across the medieval Jewish world, rabbis used takkanot (rabbinic decrees) to address urgent needs in family life among their Jewish communities. These takkanot are key historical sources for understanding the changing roles of women in the medieval Jewish world.

Contraception

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.

Ba'alei Ha-Nefesh

Ba’alei Ha-Nefesh is a halakhic work written by Rabbi Abraham ben David (Rabad) of Posquieres, a Provençal rabbi, in 1180. It focuses on the laws of behavior during niddah (menstruation), and lays out Rabad’s theology of self-control, sexuality, and the role of Jewish women.

Abortion: Halakhic Perspectives

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.

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