Title: The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud
By: Gila Fine
Maggid
One of the most mysterious people in the world is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. With a personal net worth of over $70 billion, many people would like to identify him or her.
It’s rumored that the US National Security Agency knows Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity based on stylometry, which is writing analysis based on sentence structure, syntax, punctuation, word choice, and more. Experiments identified 80% of users with a 5,000-word writing sample.
Stylometry has been used to question or confirm the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, and Pauline epistles. With the deep packet inspection and near unlimited storage, the NSA has massive amounts of stylometry data at its fingertips.
If the NSA were to perform stylometry on a fascinating new book The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud, odds are they might identify the author as Rav Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. The Berditchever was known as the spiritual defender of the Jewish nation.
However, the author of this remarkable study is not an 18th-century disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch. Rather, it is Gila Fine, a lecturer in rabbinic literature at Jerusalem’s Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.
The Berditchever was known to take a seemingly guilty person and show how they were, in fact, correct and righteous. Here, Fine unleashes her inner Berditchever to analyze six women in the Talmud, whose stories seem to not paint them in the best light.
Cursory glances at Talmudic texts are prone to misunderstanding and misreading, which is why many view the Talmudic rabbis as misogynists. Fine is a close and astute reader of these Talmudic texts and shows how many initial Aggadic impressions of these women can often be misread.
It is said that when giving public lectures on Aggadah, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik would work especially hard on them. He felt the effects would not be devastating if an attendee misunderstood his Talmudic lectures. However, given the nature of Aggadic texts, if an attendee misunderstood the lecture, they could leave with heretical ideas or think that the rabbis of the Talmud were buffoons.
The nature of Aggadic texts is that they contain ideas that are quite deep but prone to misinterpretation. Often called rabbinic tales, Aggadah is far from simple anecdotes. They explore deep, metaphysical concepts hidden deep in the text. Furthermore, misunderstanding these narratives could lead one to believe in G-d’s corporeality, polytheism, or other heretical concepts. Thus, Rabbi Soloveitchik made an effort to ensure they were understood with crystal clarity.
With the goal of understanding the deep meaning within these stories, Fine’s approach is to read each story twice. The initial read determines its primary meaning. The second read uncovers the more profound truth that lies between the lines.
For example, in the story of Yalta, the wife of Rav Nachman, the Gemara says she broke four hundred jugs of wine after a rabbinic guest offended her. While Yalta comes across in an initial reading as a shrew, as Fine calls her, her rereading shows Yalta not to be an ill-tempered woman – but instead an extremely intelligent and sophisticated individual.
In the narrative of Bruriah, Rabbi Meir’s wife, she is said to have learned 300 laws from the rabbis in a single day. The Gemara in Avodah Zarah tells of “the Bruriah incident” without detailing exactly what it is. Rashi famously comments that Bruriah committed suicide out of shame from the incident.
Fine shows convincingly, using some aspects of stylometry, that the comments attributed to Rashi were not from him. She indicates that the Bruriah incident isn’t a real Rashi. It is known as a pseudo-Rashi, a latter comment mistakenly copied into Rashi and misattributed to him.
Fine has written a sophisticated and highly original approach to understanding these stories. This is an intellectually engaging and occasionally quite provocative read, much like the protagonists of this superb book.
