Monday, August 26, 2019

A Glimpse at women's lives through the ages


Jewish Women Through the Ages







A Glimpse at women's lives through the ages- gathered from various sources  



BABATHA OF KARMA. PROPERTY OWNER 2nd century c.e. Time of Bar Kochba

Babatha, a woman of property, is known only through a cache of thirty-five papyrus documents found in 1961 in a cave in the Judean desert

 Probably an only child, Babatha inherited lands and possessions after her mother's death. The properties had originally been transferred from her father to her mother while both parents were still alive.

Babatha was married twice. Her first husband was Joshua, son of Joseph. After his death, Babatha was not named as one of her son's guardians. She later brought a legal action against the two legal guardians in an effort to increase the money used to provide for the care of her son, "orphan Joshua, son of Joshua.'" Babatha's second husband was Judah ben Eleazer Khtusion of Bin-Gedi. He died three years after the wedding, bequeathing to Babatha considerable property. In 131 CE. members of Judah's family, including a first wife, Miriam, contested the will.

Mibtahiah Of ELEPHANTINE, PROPERTY OWNER, (5th century Before zero)

Mibtahiah was a prosperous woman who lived on Elephantine, a small island in the Nile River with a thriving Jewish community. Born in 476 B.C.E. to a well-to-do family that owned property and slaves. .

Mibtahiah had two brothers, Gemariah and Jedaniah. Probably in order to bypass the biblical ruling that daughters cannot inherit if there are sons, her father, Mahseiah, gifted property to her at the time of her marriages.

Mibtahiah's first husband was Jezaniah, the Jew who owned the plot of land next to her father's house. The marriage, which took place in 460 or 459 ac.r. when she was approximately sixteen years old, was marked by two transfers of a deed for a building plot: one by Mahseiah to his daughter, granting her title to the property, and the second to Jezaniah giving him the income only. This was a typical dowry arrangement at that time. Jezaniah died shortly after the marriage, and there was no record of any children.

Eshor the Egyptian was Mibtahiah's second husband, whom she married in 449 B.C.E. For this marriage there is an existing contract called a "document of wifehood; stipulating that either party could initiate divorce, a right that was not common to Jewish women in later periods.Note: assumes monogamy.

MIBTAHIAH'S DOCUMENT OF WIFEHOOD

Mibtahiahl is my wife and I am her husband from this day and forever. I gave you as mohar for your daughter Mibtahiah  5 shekels . . . Your daughter Miptahiah brought in to me in her hand: silver money, 2 shekels; 1 new garment of wool. striped with dye; another garment of wool, finely woven; 1 mirror of bronze; 1 bowl of bronze; 2 cups of bronze; 1 jug of bronze. All the silver and the value of the goods: 6 karsh. 5 shekel, 20 hallurs(?) 1 bed of papyrus-reed ... 2 ladles; 1 new box of palm leaf; 5 handfuls of castor oil; 1 pair of sandals.

Tomorrow or the next day, should Eshor die not having a child, male or female, from Miptahiah his wife, it is Mibtahiah who has right to the house of Eshor and his goods and his property and all that he has on the face of the earth, all of it. Tomorrow or the next day, should Miptahiah die not having a child. male or female, from Eshor her husband, it is Eshor who  shall inherit from her her goods and her property.

Tomorrow or the next day, should Miptahiah stand up in an assembly and say: "I hated Eshor my husband", silver of hatred is on her head. She shall place upon the balance-scale and weigh out to Eshor silver ... and all that she brought in her hand she shall take out, from straw lo string, and go away wherever she desires, without suit or without process.

Tomorrow or the next day, should Eshor stand up in an assembly and say: "I hated my wife Miptahiah," her mohar will be lost and all that she brought in in her hand she shall take out, from strain, to string, on one day in one stroke, and go away wherever she desires, without suit or without process ... And I shall not be able to say: "I have another wife besides Miptahiah and other children besides the children whom Miptahiah shall bear to me...."

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Mibtahiah emerges as a woman who had considerable control over her own life. She was guaranteed status as an only wife, was free to divorce at will, and acted independently in business.



RUFINA OF SMYRNA, READ OF A SYNAGOGUE, (2nd century c.e.)

Rufina was an established and respected citizen of Smyrna (Turkey) who owned property and slaves. She is known only by an inscription on a tombstone that she had built for her freed slaves. This inscription specifically identifies her as a Jew and head of a synagogue (archisynagogissa). Hers is one of nineteen Greek and Latin inscriptions referring to Jewish women in the Mediterranean area over several centuries." Many of them were listed as "head of synagogue."There is no mention of a husband and no evidence that her title was derived from a husband or other male relative."




THE. INSCRIPTION

CONCERNING
RUFINA
Retina, a Jewess, head of the synagogue, built this tomb for her freed slaves raised in her house. No one else has the right to bury anyone there]. If someone should dare to do so. he or she will pay 198 dinars to the sacred treasury and 1000 dinars to the Jewish people. A copy of this inscription has been placed in the [public) archives.'"



Women in the Cairo Genizah

A Look at Women’s Lives in Cairo Geniza Society

Renée Levine Melammed

Women’s lives in medieval Mediterranean society as based on Cairo Geniza

documents were first deemed significant by S.D. Goitein. The insightful chapter,

which he entitled “The World of Women”, provided a first glimpse into the

rich and varied lives of these women.



It is surprising to discover how many letters were sent by and to women, and

how many extant court documents actually involved them….the women’s world in Geniza society was not isolated one; women with professions or with economic standing were not sitting at home or hiding behind their veils



 Wuhsha al-Dallala, thesuccessful agent in Fustat at the close of the eleventh century….

 This maverick daughter of a banker from Alexandria was a woman who dealt in serious amounts

money, some of which were loans. She clearly had a steady income, which enabled her to contribute to charity, especially as manifested by the figures listed in her will.



. She seems to chose to be a single mother, living with the father of her son. . .. not interested in marrying him. . . the father of her child was not to receive a penny from her estate; she had already provided him with a generous loan, which had never been repaid. . .. this woman was not going to allow her lover to inherit her fortune . Her will reflected the fact that she intended to keep her finances under tight control both while alive and after her demise.



The president of the Iraqi synagogue . . .chose to humiliate her on the holiest day of the year, on the Day of Atonement, and evicted her from the synagogue. However, this did not result in a bona fide excommunication or a shunning of any sort…

Commercial dealings with a number   also she friends with prominent synagogue positions including

the cantor.

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A letter in which a mother writes to her son(s) on behalf of her daughter-in-law. The first three lines of this letter in Arabic. The script, presumably that of a scribe, switches from Arabic to Judeo-Arabic, . . .not intended for public consumption, for one could never be certain who might read one’s mail. Since the mother was about to offer a description of suffering on the part of the Jewish community that might well offend the authorities, it must have seemed safer to record this in a language legible only to Jewish eyes.

This woman contended that life in Fustat had become insecure and dangerous; no Jews were entering or leaving the city. According to her report, slave soldiers (mamluks) were the instigators of this havoc; they were running amok throughout the city. The mamluks appear to have entirely destroyed one of the

quarters, having attacked homes, mills and oil presses. The damage was tremendous and the suffering great. The devastation of a house overlooking the Nile that belonged to a family they knew is described.

___________________________________________________________

3)This woman was anxious to be granted a divorce from her miserly and miserable husband.

This petition began with an appropriate blessing.

By the fourth line, the woman petitioner had already gotten down to business At this point, she informed the Nagid ( Leader) Masliah that his “maidservant”  has been with him (her husband) for fifteen years. In all this time, not once has she received anything from him. In her opinion, the most extreme example of his miserliness was the fact that he wouldn’t even give her the silver coin required for payment to enter the bathhouse. This was unthinkable . . .. A husband was required to provide his wife with the entrance fee, as the bathhouse was essential to her health, ritually, physically and psychologically.

Cairo was actually famous for its bathhouses. . . . The bathhouse  was private, and once the women passed through its portals, it might have been one of the only places where they were not subject to male supervision, criticism or limitations. Essentially, preventing one’s wife from entering these

premises verged on outright cruelty.

The husband under discussion was apparently extremely cruel to his wife.her husband never provided her with a headpiece, part of the basics for a woman’s wardrobe. He not only abused her, but beat her; if she complained about the fact that he was harming her, his response was equally cruel and cavalier: she could simply extricate herself from the marriage. All she had to do was to “ransom herself;” his intention was that she should give up her rights to her marriage contract. He would not object to giving her a divorce as long as it would not incur any expenses for him. Her outcry is heard loud and

clear in her letter as she called out to God to punish this man for his actions.









HAMELN, GLĂœCKEL OF (GlĂ¼ckel von Hameln):

German diarist; born about 1646 in Hamburg; died 1724 at Metz. . .GlĂ¼ckel frequented the "ḥeder" and was made acquainted with the Holy Scriptures as well as with the German-Jewish literature of the time. When barely fourteen she was married to Ḥayyim Hameln, and settled in the small town of Hameln. After a year the young couple moved to Hamburg

GlĂ¼ckel had six sons and as many daughters, whom she brought up very carefully and married to members of the best Jewish families in Germany.

In 1689 Ḥayyim Hameln died, and GlĂ¼ckel was left with eight young children, the four others being already married. Besides their education she had to direct the large business left by her husband, which she managed with great success. at the age of fifty-four she married the wealthy banker Cerf Levy of Metz (1700). Unfortunately, one year after the marriage Levy lost both his own fortune and that of his wife, and GlĂ¼ckel, hitherto accustomed to opulence, became dependent upon her husband's children. After the death of Levy (1712) she settled in the home of her daughter Esther, wife of Moses Krumbach-Schwab of Metz. Here she passed the last years of her life, occupied with the writing of her memoirs.

GlĂ¼ckel left an autobiography consisting of seven books written in Judæo-German  . She often adds homiletic and moral stories of some length, taken partly from Midrash and Talmud, partly from Judæo-German books, which evidence wide reading.

 Excerpt from Diary: 



IN MY great grief and for my heart's ease I begin this book the year of Creation 5451 [1690-91] —God soon rejoice us and send us His redeemer!

I began writing it, dear children, upon the death of your good father, in the hope of distracting my soul from the burdens laid upon it, and the bitter thought that we have lost our faithful shepherd.

...The kernel of the Torah is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' But in our days we seldom find it so, and few are they who love their fellow-men with all their heart—on the contrary, if a man can contrive to ruin his neighbour, nothing pleases him more.

The best thing for you, my children, is to serve God from your heart, without falsehood or sham, not giving out to people that you are one thing while, God forbid, in your heart you are another. . .

Moreover, put aside a fixed time for the study of the Torah, as best you know how .3 Then diligently go about your business, for providing your wife and children a decent livelihood is likewise a mitzvah—the command of God and the duty of man. We should, I say, put ourselves to great pains for our children, for on this the world is built, yet we must understand that if children did as much for their parents, the children would quickly tire of it.

A bird once set out to cross a windy sea with its three fledglings. The sea was so wide and the wind so strong, the father bird was forced to carry his young, one by one, in his strong claws. When he was half-way across with the first fledgling the wind turned to a gale, and he said, «My child, look how I am struggling and risking my life in your behalf. When you are grown up, will you do as much for me and provide for my old age?» The fledgling replied, «Only bring me to safety, and when you are old I shall do everything you ask of me.» Whereat the father bird dropped his child into the sea, and it drowned, and he said, «So shall it be done to such a liar as you.>> Then the father bird returned to shore, set forth with his second fledgling, asked the same question, and receiving the same answer, drowned the second child with the cry, «You, too, are a liar!» Finally he set out with the third fledgling, and when he asked the same question, the third and last fledgling replied, «My dear father, it is true you are struggling mightily and risking your life in my behalf, and I shall be wrong not to repay you when you are old, but I cannot bind myself. This though I can promise: when I am grown up and have children of my own, I shall do as much for them as you have done for me.>> Whereupon the father bird said, «Well spoken, my child, and wisely; your life I will spare and I will carry you to shore in safety.>>

Above all, my children, be honest in money matters, with both Jews and Gentiles, lest the name of Heaven be profaned. If you have in hand money or goods belonging to other people, give more care to them than if they were your own, so that, please God, you do no one wrong.




The Maid of Ludomir
A semi-legendary figure, reputed to have been one of the few women in Hasidism who functioned as a fully-fledged spiritual master (Tzaddik or Rebbe).
Hannah Rachel, the Maid, was the only daughter of Monesh Verbermacher, an educated and well-to-do Jew in the Volhynian town of Ludomir (Vladimir-Volynskiy). From an early age she was distinguished not only because of her beauty but also–unusually for a girl–by dint of her ardor in prayer and remarkable aptitude for scholarship.
Her betrothal to a beloved childhood playmate, which entailed the customary separation of bride and groom until the wedding, distressed the Maid and led her to withdraw from society. Her distress was exacerbated by the sudden death of her mother, following which she became a recluse, never leaving her room except to visit her mother’s grave.
On one of her visits to the cemetery she fell into unconsciousness, which was followed by a prolonged and mysterious illness. When she recovered she claimed to have been given “a new and elevated soul.” She broke off her engagement and declared that she would never marry, having “transcended the world of the flesh.”
From then on she adopted the full rigor of male ritual observance and absorbed herself, like a male pietist, in intense study and prayer. She became known as the “holy Maid” or the “Virgin” of Ludomir, and acquired a reputation for miracle working. Men and women, including rabbis and scholars, flocked to the beit midrash in Ludomir which functioned as her hasidic court. She would grant blessings on request and deliver her weekly hasidic teaching at the third Sabbath meal, as was customary among male Tzaddik im.
While her popular following grew, the male leadership of the movement disapproved, viewing her activities as a pathological manifestation of the powers of evil and impurity. Pressure was put on the Maid to abandon the practice of Tzaddikism and to resume her rightful female role in marriage. Following the personal intervention of Mordecai of Chernobyl (1770-1837)–the most eminent tzaddik of the region–she reluctantly agreed to marry, but the marriage was never consummated and soon ended in divorce. She married again, but divorced once more, apparently remaining a “maiden” to the end of her life.
However, her marriages did have the desired effect of putting an abrupt end to her career as a Rebbe. She eventually immigrated to the Holy Land, a remote corner of nineteenth-century Hasidism

 Nehama Leibovitz- the Rashi of our times. I had thee honor to be in her classes as a student and to also arrange for her to lecture for one of my programs when I ran the Histadrut's Center for Jewish Studies in Israel.
Nehama Leibowitz was born in 1905 in Riga, Latvia, to Mordechai and Freyda Leibowitz. She grew up in a home filled with Jewish and general culture, competing in her father’s Bible quizzes against her brother, Yeshayahu, who later became a famous and controversial Israeli philosopher.( Whom I also hosted as a guest lecturer). In 1919 the family moved to Berlin, where Leibowitz taught, wrote articles and studied for her doctorate, , ,  she finished her doctorate they fulfilled their dream and moved to Israel (c. 1930).
She traveled around the country on buses, in taxis and on airplanes teaching Bible and commentaries to teachers, new immigrants, soldiers, kibbutzniks and thousands of ordinary people. She received a professorship at Tel-Aviv University in 1968 and was awarded several prizes in the course of her life, including the prestigious Israel Prize in the Field of Education (1956).
She was a deeply religious person, but of the sort that emphasized halakhah and Torah study, moral responsibility, ethics and humanistic focus, rather than ecstatic and mystical dimensions, which she feared might prove shallow or transient. Thus she had little to do with Hasidism or Kabbalah.
Leibowitz also opposed the ideas of feminism and the feminist movement. . . While she upheld equal pay and rights for women, Leibowitz did not consciously desire to change the balance of designated gender roles within traditional Jewish society. Leibowitz refused to acknowledge that she was a revolutionary in any way; but ultimately her unique achievements changed Orthodox society’s perception of a woman’s capabilities and undoubtedly opened doors for the female Torah scholars who followed; this itself is proof of the power of gradual, evolutionary change.


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