The dictionary definition of entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” Following this definition to its logical conclusion, every pre-modern woman who managed a household was an entrepreneur since the household, at least until the seventeenth (in some places until the eighteenth) century, was an economic enterprise. For the purposes of this article, however, we have limited this broad definition of entrepreneurship, concentrating on women who specialized in commerce, selling what they themselves produced or what others produced and, in later centuries, women who were actively involved in the money economy.

Most of the earliest records relating to Jewish women entrepreneurs provide evidence only of prosperous women. This is because deeds and ownership lists were the transactions most often recorded in ancient societies, and it is this kind of information that remains. Such documents, preserved either in stone or on papyrus, reveal women as property owners, philanthropists, and buyers and sellers of real estate or large amounts of movable goods.

There are records of women property owners as early as the fifth century BCE. One was Mibtahiah, who lived in the Jewish colony of Elephantine. She bought and sold her properties and also owned valuable goods that she disposed of independently. Later records, from rural Egypt in the second century CE, show Jewish women who owned large herds of livestock. In that same century, documents from the Cave of Letters, uncovered by archeologists in the 1960s, inform us of Babatha, a woman from Judea who owned property and lent money to her husband.

Since poorer women rarely required the use of official documents, fewer details of their economic activities have been recorded. This fact gives a skewed image to history, since most people, whether Jews or gentiles, men or women, were not large property owners and thus have left scant evidence behind. However, from the little we know, we can assume that almost all women, from the richest to the poorest, were economically active. Even women who performed the traditional female jobs of spinning, weaving, and growing and preparing food often engaged in selling the surplus and thus were entrepreneurs.

Women who hired themselves out as wet-nurses might also be considered entrepreneurial, as they performed this service in exchange for money and accepted the responsibilities and risks that went along with that work. Wet-nursing was one of the few ways poor women might earn money without an initial investment, and several extant contracts are witness to the fact that some Jewish women earned a living in this way. One such woman, Theodote of Alexandria, lived in the first century CE and contracted to suckle a slave child for eighteen months. She was to get half of her money in advance. Another contract revealed a similar agreement with a wet nurse named Marta.

Both the Codification of basic Jewish Oral Law; edited and arranged by R. Judah ha-Nasi c. 200 C.E.Mishnah and the Lit. "teaching," "study," or "learning." A compilation of the commentary and discussions of the amora'im on the Mishnah. When not specified, "Talmud" refers to the Babylonian Talmud.Talmud, reflecting Jewish life styles from the first century CE to the sixth century CE, assumed that most women worked. The sages carefully explained that the proceeds of a married woman’s labor belonged to her husband unless he failed to provide for her maintenance. In that case, she was allowed to use her earnings to support herself. These were traditions that conformed closely to social usage throughout the Middle East. They also fit well with the Biblical ideal of the woman as helpmate to her husband.

As helpmate, a woman might be a busy entrepreneur; she could buy and sell the fruits of her own or other women’s labors in the marketplace, acquire estates, plant vineyards, sew garments, either for her family or for sale, and teach other women. All these activities were expected of her in her role as helpmate. In fact, long before the Mishnah and the Talmud laid out the duties of a wife, these activities were all mentioned in the Biblical book of Proverbs (31) that described a woman of valor.

In later centuries, the assumption that women would work and make their own economic contribution to the household became even more entrenched, especially in Europe. In the early tenth century, R. Meshullam ben Kalonymus of Lucca, Italy, one of the founders of the Mainz Jewish community in Rhineland, Western Germany, pointed out in a Halakhic decisions written by rabbinic authories in response to questions posed to them.responsum: “It is the custom of men to appoint their wives as masters over their possessions.” In the eleventh century R. Solomon ben Isaac (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac; b. Troyes, France, 1040Rashi) of Troyes, France, noted that a woman could do four things at one and the same time: “Watch the vegetables, spin flax, teach a song to a woman for a fee, and warm silkworm eggs in her bosom.” (Rashi to Ket. 66a, s.v. “ve’shalosh be’arba.”) At least two of these activities were income-producing.

In Muslim society, despite the growing isolation of women from the public and working life of the community, there is much evidence that Jewish women worked, most often side by side with husbands, but sometimes also independently. This was particularly evident in medieval Egypt. While Jewish women certainly did not enjoy equality, and their professional opportunities were much narrower than those available to Jewish or other minority men, they did often function in a variety of occupations.

If the father of a bride was rich enough or influential enough, a medieval Egyptian Jewish woman’s marriage contract (Marriage document (in Aramaic) dictating husband's personal and financial obligations to his wife.ketubbah) might allow her to keep her earnings and use the money to buy her own clothes. Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jewish women in Arabic-speaking areas often had a similar clause in their marriage contracts, stipulating that the profit of a wife’s labor belonged to her and was not the property of her husband. This was one of the factors encouraging substantial commercial activities among the Musta’rab, indigenous, Arabic-speaking Jewish women. Interestingly enough, in spite of the relatively freer atmosphere for women in Europe, such a clause was never adopted in the marriage contracts of Jews in the West.

East or west, however, the women who appear most frequently in commercial records were widows. Widows often took over their husbands’ businesses, and while this was usually out of necessity, many were successful and even expanded the original enterprise. Because a woman usually received the promised payment from her ketubbah upon the death of her husband, this might give her a considerable sum of money, a lump sum never available to her while married. Many widows took the opportunity to invest this money, either by lending on interest—a common activity for women, both married and widowed—or as part of a commenda. A commenda was a type of partnership in which a person could invest as a silent partner in someone else’s business with a promise of a share in the profits. Other widows simply continued a skill that they had practiced in their husbands’ or fathers’ homes, such as embroidery, sewing, weaving, or other handicraft, and turned it into a business. Widows who failed most often became the responsibility of the Jewish community, and many appear on the charity rolls in every area of Jewish settlement.

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