Family

Eve’s character is posited to be that of the original and quintessential woman. The Midrash interprets her traits as representative of the negative aspects of femininity. Eve’s punishment for her sin is also tied to the traditional ideas of the fundamentals of womanhood – childbirth, pregnancy, and male spousal domination.

Dinah was the only daughter of Jacob and Leah, and the Rabbis present her as possessing many positive qualities, as was fitting for the daughter of the progenitors of the Israelite nation. The rabbis also offer many different explanations for the rape of Dinah, trying to understand the troubling story.

Elisheba is mentioned only a single time in the Torah she-bi-khetav: Lit. "the written Torah." The Bible; the Pentateuch; Tanakh (the Pentateuch, Prophets and Hagiographia)Torah (Ex. 6:23), as the daughter of Amminadab, the sister of Nahshon and the wife of Aaron the High Priest. The Rabbis speak at large concerning her. They note her importance, since her life was bound up with the most distinguished families in Israel: her husband was appointed High Priest, her children were deputy high priests, her brother was nasi (chieftain) of the tribe of Judah and her brother-in-law Moses led the Israelites. The A type of non-halakhic literary activitiy of the Rabbis for interpreting non-legal material according to special principles of interpretation (hermeneutical rules).midrash accordingly applies to Elisheba the verse “And may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah” (Ruth 4:12), which was meant to signify that Elisheba, too, was descended from the royal line since she was from the tribe of Judah (Ruth Zuta 4:12). Commenting on Jacob’s blessing to Judah, “You, O Judah, your brothers shall praise” (Gen. 49:8), the Rabbis list Elisheba daughter of Amminadab among the important people and officials that were born to this tribe and call her “the mother of the priesthood” (Gen. Rabbah 97:8).

Esther, the main character in the book named after her, is a young Jewish woman who becomes queen of the Persian empire and risks her life by interceding for the Jewish people to save them from a pogrom. Set in the Persian diaspora, the Book of Esther depicts the struggle for Jews to survive in the face of hostility in a foreign land.

Queen Esther, the central character in the Biblical book named after her, is extensively and sympathetically portrayed in the Rabbinic sources. In their commentary on the Book of Esther, the Rabbis expand upon and add details to the Biblical narrative, relating to her lineage and history and to her relations with the other characters: Ahasuerus, Mordecai, and Haman.

Elisheba was the wife of the high priest Aaron and the mother of their four sons, but she does not appear in any stories. Mention of her in the genealogy signifies the importance of women in the destiny of their children.

Nelly Wolffheim spent her career developing and teaching a kindergarten curriculum based around Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic framework. She taught this curriculum, which encouraged children to express their sexual desires, to Jewish women teachers in Berlin. After escaping Germany for England in 1939, Wolffheim struggled to continue her research but began publishing her work again after the war.

The Jewish population of Turkey navigated far-reaching changes in the political, social, and geopolitical spheres in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, as the Ottoman Empire pursued reform and collapsed and the Turkish Republic that took its place imposed a process of “Turkification” on its residents. During this period, Jewish women partook in traditional customs relating to religion, family, and the home, while also accessing new opportunities in the public sphere through education and political engagement.

Hasya Sukenik Feinsod served as director of the Hebrew Kindergarten Teachers College. In 1919 Feinsod was appointed by the Education Committee to serve as superintendent of kindergartens in Jerusalem. She headed the Association of Kindergarten Teachers, and she was the first and only female representative on the Education Committee.