Tweeting the Talmud
The ancient text was never intended for Twitter. Then again, it was never intended for women either.
by Erica Brown
Jan 03, 2020
4 minutes
“The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.” This is the stinging opinion of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, a second-century Jewish scholar, as expressed in the Talmud, a 63-volume work of intricate Jewish legal debates, composed from the second to sixth centuries and redacted in Babylonia. Only a few women are mentioned in its 2,711 pages.
The very same sage elsewhere stated that a man who taught his daughter the Torah was teaching her frivolity, wasting his precious time. I take comfort in Ben Azzai, the sage who rejected Hyrcanus’s opinion and obligated fathers to teach their
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