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Press Release
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact Carol Fass
(212) 691-9707
cfass@fasspr.com
RASHI’S DAUGHTERS SECRETLY STUDY FORBIDDEN TEXT
New book by Maggie Anton
marks 900th
anniversary of a great Talmud scholar’s
death
At
a time when most women were illiterate, Salomon ben Isaac (the great
scholar one day to be known as
Rashi)embarked on a task unheard of in the Jewish community: teaching
Talmud
to his daughters. While Rashi is famous for his extensive Talmud
commentaries,
almost nothing of his daughters is known besides their names and those
of
their husbands and sons. This is the first book ever to explore the
personal
and intellectual lives of these women, who were also vintners,
midwives,
merchants and mothers of the next generation of Talmudic scholars.
Rashi’s Daughters
weaves
actual events, as described in ancient Judaic texts, into an account of
the
lives of Joheved, Miriam and Rachel. Talmud is an integral part of the
novel:
readers will learn along with Rashi’s students as he explains selected
texts.
This is also the story of the French Jewish community - how they lived,
loved,
worked, ate, prayed and interacted with their non-Jewish neighbors. The
novel
provides a wealth of material about medieval Jewish women’s daily
lives,
including little-known details about their rituals of marital
relations,
childbirth, life-cycle events and holidays.
Rashi’s
Daughters, the first book of
a
three-volume family saga, focuses on Joheved, the eldest. A serious,
practical
and dutiful young woman who holds her own in a man’s world, her
passionate
nature waits to be awakened by the right man. But will Meir ben Samuel,
the
student her father arranges for her to marry, approve of her decidedly
unfeminine studies?
This
novel is built on five years of exhaustive historical research, ten
years of
Talmud study and a bibliography of over 300 sources. On the 900th
anniversary
of Rashi’s death, it is a celebration of the life of an extraordinary
man
and his equally extraordinary daughters.
Rashi’s Daughers
By Maggie Anton
ISBN 978-0-452-288782
U.S.
$15.00 /
$18.50 Can.
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