Orthodox Jewish Women Take A New Lead In Talmud Study In Israel

Among devout Orthodox Jews, the intense study of Talmud is no longer just a man's world. Women are increasingly delving into this central religious work, and American expats in Israel are at the forefront of the trend.

They're following a custom called Daf Yomi, Hebrew for "daily page," which involves reading a page a day of this centuries-old, multivolume collection of rabbinic teachings, debates and interpretations of Judaism. It takes about seven years and five months to read all 2,711 pages.

In early January, as Orthodox Jewish men held gatherings to mark the end of the cycle, called Siyum HaShas, Orthodox women in Israel held their own large-scale Talmud celebration for the first time. Some 3,000 women of all ages cheered in a Jerusalem convention center, according to the event's organizers, Hadran.

"I never thought I would live to see this day," said Tamar Stern, a Chicago native, sitting in the second-to-last row at the celebration. She attended Orthodox Jewish schools in the 1960s and 1970s, never allowed to learn Talmud with the boys.

Sitting in the first row, Sherri Saperstein, 49, was beaming. She grew up in New York and Boston and now lives in the Israeli town of Ramat Beit Shemesh, home to a community of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who avoid contact with female strangers and still see Talmud as a man's pursuit.

"I was sitting in the post office," Saperstein recalled. "Two men behind me, who would probably never talk to me, were sitting behind me. They were talking about the 'Daf.' I knew exactly what they were talking about because I am in this process, I am learning the 'Daf'!"

The women's Siyum HaShas was co-organized by Michelle Farber, 47, a New York native who teaches a daily Talmud class for women from her living room table in Raanana, a quiet suburb north of Tel Aviv.

Men wrote the Talmud and, for centuries, it has mostly been men who have studied it. Today, Talmud study groups — and even related podcasts — are almost all exclusively delivered by men.

"Because they're given by men, they're not actually kind of seen from a woman's perspective," said Farber. "When I teach, I think a lot about the women's issues on the page."

One part of the Talmud discusses the ancient practice of dedicating money to the Temple in Jerusalem, in which Jews should give an amount relative to what the text considers to be their individual worth. In her classes, Farber notes the historical context. "This was written in a time where women were valued as less because women weren't educated and women weren't working," Farber said.

The modern-day Reform and Conservative movements of Judaism have long embraced a more egalitarian approach, ordaining women as rabbis and allowing equal participation in leading prayer and study. Some progressive Orthodox communities in the last few decades have widened women's roles in leading prayer and participating in Talmud study, and women are expanding the boundaries more and more.

American immigrants like Farber are helping lead the push for women's Talmud study in Israel, in part because many were exposed to Talmud early on. Some Orthodox schools in the United States began teaching the sacred text to girls in the 1950s.

At 8:15 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, a dozen women, mostly U.S.-born, pored over Talmud books as Farber used a whiteboard to explain the day's page: a complex discussion about women's menstruation, which, according to Orthodox practice, affects when a woman may have sex with her husband.

Each page of Talmud is a small block of mostly Aramaic text surrounded by commentaries, which are nestled in yet another layer of commentaries.

"A brain workout, right?" said Geula Zamist, who flew in from New Jersey to attend Farber's class and the big women's Talmud celebration. "It's such a great way to start a day. It's such a spiritual exercise to use your brain in such a completely different way."

Farber hosts a daily Talmud podcast called Daf Yomi For Women, in English and Hebrew, with about 250 subscribers. Her aim is to make the Talmud more approachable for women.

One of her podcast listeners is U.S.-born Ilana Kurshan, the author of a memoir about studying Talmud. Even with their dated assumptions about gender and class, she says, Talmud stories are worth learning.

"There is a story about a man who mistook his wife for a prostitute. A story about a man who was so engaged by his Torah study that he neglected to come home to his wife for years and years. They're stories that just make you think differently about so many aspects of human experience, and in that sense these texts are really timeless," Kurshan said in an interview at her home in Jerusalem.

The new trend of Talmud study is not limited to Orthodox women.

Nonreligious "secular yeshiva" programs in Israel teach Talmud, while the organization Svara runs a Talmud camp in U.S. cities for "queer, straight, trans, aleph bet beginners, experienced Talmudists, secular, religious, Jews [and] non-Jews."

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