Rashi’s Daughters Book I: Joheved

by Maggie Anton

  Salomon, tired but satisfied after a long day in the yeshiva, slowly set down his manuscripts. He was taken aback when Joheved handed him the query; surely it hadn’t arrived at this late hour. His daughter seemed unusually quiet. Normally she was full of questions if he returned while she was still awake. He began to tell her about his studies, but she stopped him and asked him to read the letter first.

  Salomon read it twice, then surveyed his visibly nervous daughter and weighed how to respond. She couldn’t know that, in Worms, the prayer leader in the women’s section of the synagogue reputedly wore tefillin, or that Tractate Eruvin reported that King Saul’s daughter, Michal, did so as well. In fact, a woman laying tefillin wasn’t nearly as scandalous as a woman studying Talmud. But it was not something to be done lightly. Salomon decided this would be an opportunity for Joheved to learn how responsa answers were determined.

  “This question is a bit more complicated than the ones I usually receive. My reputation must be growing,” he teased her. “You can help me answer it by getting out Tractate Berachot. There’s a section in the third chapter that should be useful.”

  Joheved’s hands shook as she lifted the manuscript out of the storage chest. Papa must have figured out who wrote the query, yet he wasn’t acting angry or even surprised. Did he really need to look up the answer? He knew Berachot by heart. Maybe he wanted her to see the answer herself, so she wouldn’t be angry at him for refusing her permission. With great trepidation, she began to read from the spot he pointed to. It was in Hebrew, and she could see it was Mishnah.

  Women, slaves, and minors are exempt from reciting the Shema and from laying tefillin. But they are obligated in prayer and in the command to attach a mezuzah.

  This didn’t sound right. She and Miriam both said the Shema at night as protection against demons; every Jew did. “Papa, why are women exempt from these mitzvot?”

  Salomon stroked his beard as he answered her. “In general, women and slaves are exempt from time-bound positive mitzvot, those that command us to do something at a certain time. And when you think about it, both the Shema and tefillin involve specific times. We say the Shema in the morning and at night. Tefillin are time bound because they are not worn at night or on Shabbat.”

  Joheved nodded and Salomon continued, “The reason women and slaves are exempt from them is because a slave’s time belongs to his master and a woman’s time belongs to her husband.”

  She could see the sentence that mentioned tefillin and nervously read on.

  Women are exempt from tefillin—this is obvious.

  But Joheved didn’t see anything obvious about it. “It is?”

  “The Gemara wonders why the Mishnah even mentions tefillin, since we know it is time bound,” he explained.

  And indeed, the answer followed.

  Since tefillin is compared to mezuzah, you might think that women should be required to lay tefillin just as they are required to attach a mezuzah to their doors. The Mishnah informs us this is not so.

  “Tefillin and mezuzah are both mentioned in the same section of Deuteronomy as the Shema, which is why they are discussed here together,” Salomon said.

  To Joheved none of this made sense. The Gemara’s objection sounded logical to her, the Mishnah’s rules arbitrary. And neither said whether women were permitted to wear tefillin or not. She was about to ask her father about this, when Salomon urged her to finish the passage.

  Since the commandment of mezuzah is compared to the commandment of Torah study, you might think that women should be exempt from mezuzah just as they are exempt from Torah study. The Mishnah tells us that women are obligated to attach the mezuzah.

  “Women are exempt from Torah study because it says that fathers are obligated to teach their ‘sons’ Torah; daughters are not mentioned.” Salomon stopped to think. “It also says those who study Torah prolong their days…but can this mean that only men need their life lengthened, not women?” He sat stroking his beard, a puzzled expression on his face. “A difficult question, and I don’t have an answer.”

  Joheved’s jaw dropped. She had never heard Papa admit he didn’t understand something in the Talmud. She sensed that their lesson was over, but he hadn’t answered her question. Or had he? The Gemara stated that women were exempt from saying the Shema and from Torah study, yet she and Miriam both recited the Shema and studied Torah. If these were permitted, why not tefillin?

  She gathered up her courage and repeated these thoughts to her father. He stared at her silently, a small smile on his face, and then she realized that she had won. He had made no objection to her argument.

  “You realize that once you take on this mitzvah, you are committed to it?” he asked with a sigh. At least she wouldn’t be wearing tefillin in public, like the woman in Worms. Here in Troyes, they were worn only at home.

  “Oui, Papa.”

  Salomon’s voice became stern. “I cannot stress too strongly the importance of scrupulous cleanliness before you put on tefillin, especially when you’re older. Do you understand?” Much of the opposition to women wearing tefillin stemmed from fear that they would not be sufficiently sanitary during niddah.

  “Don’t worry, Papa. I’ll be careful to wash my hands first.”

  “But you are betrothed now.” He paused and stroked his beard. “Perhaps we should write to Meir about this.”

  Joheved’s heart sank. Did her time belong to Meir already? What if he didn’t approve? And even if he did, it could take months before they’d find out.

  “As long as you live in my house and not your husband’s, my permission is all you need,” he decided.

  Joheved’s belly relaxed and she gave a sigh of relief.

  “And I suppose my permission is meaningless unless you have tefillin to pray with,” Salomon continued to the logical conclusion. “Which means we must buy you some.”

  “Merci, Papa.” Joheved hadn’t thought that far. But Papa was right; she couldn’t expect to borrow his every morning.

  Even so, Joheved was surprised when Salomon presented her with her own set of tefillin the following Sunday, just before she went to bed. Miriam stroked the black leather and looked hopefully at her father, who responded that she was not yet old enough to take on the responsibility of tefillin. Yet as much as Joheved basked in her sister’s admiration, her pride was tinged with trepidation at how Mama would react.

  Walking downstairs the next morning, Joheved steeled herself to face her mother’s wrath. But there were no clanging pots or words of recrimination; Rivka served breakfast and disner in a sullen silence. Overcome with guilt, Joheved had to say something to heal the breach. Rosh Hashanah was less than a week away.

  Joheved finally found her mother alone, weeding the herb garden. “Mama,” she said, stooping to help her. “I can’t explain it, but tefillin makes me pray better. Please don’t be angry.”

  Rivka shook her head sadly and sighed. Why did it upset her so much? “Joheved, just as the Holy One created roosters to crow and hens to lay eggs, so too it is with people. It’s not natural for girls to study Talmud and pray with tefillin; it’s not right.”

  “But Papa found me a husband more learned than I am,” Joheved cried out. Wasn’t that what Mama cared about?

  “If your father wishes to indulge you and pretend he has a son, that is his affair. But Meir may prefer that his wife pursue more feminine pursuits.” Rivka’s voice softened and she said, “Joheved, dear, think about what I’m telling you. I don’t want you to be unhappy when you’re living with your husband.”

  Would Meir really object to her praying with tefillin? Joheved didn’t want to know if her mother was right. She and Meir were married now, so her time belonged to him…except he didn’t know about her tefillin. That was the answer; somehow she’d find a way to pray privately. Then he’d never know she wore tefillin.

  Summer was drawing to a close, and just when vintners thought they’d managed to get through the season successfully, they were denied the fair
weather they’d anticipated. The last week in August brought such a drop in temperature that Bernard the cellarer briefly considered delaying the grape picking. But cool, damp weather inevitably brought a grey woolly fungus, pourriture grise, which quickly ruined a vineyard full of grapes.

  Many believed the ripening process was like pregnancy, that Le Bon Dieu decrees that a grape will be ripe one hundred days after flowering, just as a child will be born ten lunar months after conception. The weather affected only the flavor of the ripe grape, not the time to reach ripeness. Having originally set the harvest for the hundred-day mark, Bernard declared that it would be prudent not to change it.

  Salomon held to a middle ground. “Just as most babies are born after ten months in the womb, with some early and some late, so most grapes ripen about one hundred days after flowering. But it seems to me that heat tends to speed the process while the cold delays it.” He explained that cool weather had both a good and bad side for the winemaker. “The wine’s flavor may suffer because the grapes can not reach optimum sweetness, but fermentation will be slower, and thus easier to control.”

  A few days later, when carts full of grapes began to arrive at Salomon’s courtyard, Baruch declared to Anna, “If this is a slow fermentation, let the Holy One save us from a fast one.”

  For the next three weeks, except for prayers and meals, Salomon’s household and students spent every waking hour on the vintage. First the grapes were piled into vats in the courtyard, the last job performed by non-Jews. Then Salomon’s people took over. Wearing linen boots and their oldest chemises, they trod the grapes vigorously.

  Then they waited for the stinging smell of fermentation to fill the courtyard. From then on they labored in shifts, both day and night. Morning and afternoon, Joheved, Miriam and Anna carefully climbed into one of the vats. Their combined weight was barely enough, even with a bit of bouncing, to break the thick raft of skins and grapes buoyed on the surface by the fizzling fermentation below.

  Once into the warm half-wine, they used blunt wooden spades to turn the raft fragments upside down and tread them back in. Anna’s years of hard living had given her a strength and stamina that now served her well, despite her pregnancy, and the girls agreed that they could not have worked an entire vat without her.

  In the other vats, Baruch and the younger students did the same, all under the watchful gaze of Grandmama Leah. Leah no longer needed walks to soothe her agitation. She circled the courtyard like a hawk, intently observing the treaders, every so often dipping a finger in the vats and taking a taste. At night, the courtyard lit by torches, Salomon and the older students took their turn.

  Joheved and Miriam had never spent so much time in the vats before, and never without their father’s supervision. This stage of making wine had its risks. Once the deep wooden vat was full, too much carbon dioxide could form and suffocate the treaders. The danger was greatest in warm years when fermentation went quickly, but with the weather on the chilly side, Salomon didn’t expect any such problems. He worried about the process halting before enough sugar had been changed into alcohol.

  Everyone was relieved when the stormy first phase of the fermentation, bouillage, was over in time for the Days of Awe. Thereafter the fermentation would proceed calmly for another ten to twenty days, allowing time for the intense contemplation and prayer that the holiday period demanded. Joheved and Miriam successfully took turns leading the women for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, even though it took every bit of concentration they had to stay awake and follow the service.

  Once the contents of the vats needed only a brief daily treading, the workers returned to their normal lives. One arduous task remained, that of removing the heavy stems, now free of grapes, from the vats and discarding them. Joheved listened carefully as Grandmama Leah and Salomon tasted the half-wine and consulted with each other about whether to leave all or part of the stalks in the vats, and for how long. In a good vintage they gave the wine more astringent tannins, greater flavor and bite. But in a cold, damp year they merely diluted it.

  Baruch was working in one of the vats when Leah came over, took a taste, and suddenly prodded him with a large wooden rake. Before he could reply, Joheved rushed over to see what her grandmother wanted with him and to intercede if necessary. Leah poked Baruch again and demanded, “Young man, take this rake and pull it through the crushed grapes, from bottom to top. Then dump any stems that cling to it outside the vat.”

  Joheved stared at her in astonishment; Leah had never spoken to Baruch before. He raked out several large stalks and asked her, “Mistress, do you want me to take out all the stems?”

  Leah took another taste and made a sour face. “Bah, this stuff has no flavor; the grapes were picked before they were properly ripe. You may as well take out all the stems before what little quality this wine has is lost altogether.”

  Baruch took a drink himself, not wanting to miss the subtlety Leah had discerned, but the liquid tasted sweet and syrupy. “How can anybody call this flavorless?” he whispered to Joheved.

  Leah chuckled at his puzzled look. “When you’ve been making wine for as long as I have, young man, then maybe you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  Joheved had a taste too, and Leah looked at her expectantly. “It’s sweet, but not as sweet as other years, I think,” Joheved said hesitantly. Her grandmother’s smile of approval emboldened her to continue. “It’s definitely not as sweet as two years ago, when everyone said the vintage was superb.”

  Of course Leah didn’t remember what the vintage was like that year, but she did know how sweet an excellent wine should taste at this stage in its formation. “Joheved is going to be a great winemaker some day, just like her grandmother,” she announced.

  Once the stalks were removed from the vats, their contents would sit undisturbed until the grape skins and other solid debris settled to the bottom. Then it was just a matter of running the wine into the casks and storing them in the cellar. When that final job was done, it would be time for the Cold Fair, with its return of merchants and students to Salomon’s yeshiva.

  But winter also brought the pox to Troyes, and Rachel was among those stricken. An endemic childhood disease, smallpox swept through a community about once a decade, sometimes so severely that a third of its children died. Worried about his youngest daughter, Salomon spent a week unable to study properly, even though Rivka assured him that Rachel wasn’t nearly as ill as Joheved and Miriam had been during the previous epidemic. Indeed, this outbreak was milder than usual, with most of Troyes’ children surviving it. Rachel recovered with no visible scars, and like others who survived the pox, she now enjoyed immunity for life.

  twelve

  Winter 4832 (1072 C.E.)

  With the smallpox epidemic behind them, it seemed that the rest of winter would pass uneventfully. Then Anna’s labor began. For two days she struggled, but the baby didn’t come. Joheved wasn’t sure how long labor was supposed to take, except that Mama had delivered Rachel in only one night. When another evening came and the women were still occupied with Anna, Joheved volunteered to divert her little sister’s attention.

  “Tell me the story of Rachel from the Bible.”

  Joheved groaned inwardly. “I told you that one last night.”

  “I like stories with Rachel in them.” Her voice was a whine.

  “What if I tell you one about a Rachel in the Talmud?”

  “There’s a Rachel in the Talmud? Tell me, tell me.”

  “All right, but let me put more charcoal on the brazier first,” Joheved said. Then she began the story.

  “Akiva was a poor shepherd who worked for one of the richest men of Jerusalem. His master’s daughter, Rachel, saw Akiva’s great potential and fell in love with him. She promised to be his wife if he would devote himself to Jewish learning.”

  Joheved wasn’t sure this was the right tale for her self-centered little sister. It was more about Akiva than Rachel. “Now Akiva was over thirty years old and still d
idn’t know the alphabet, but Rachel insisted that he could be a great scholar.”

  “Then what happened?” Rachel asked.

  “Akiva went off to Babylon to study, and when Rachel’s father found out she’d married one of his shepherds, he refused to support them.”

  “Were they very poor?”

  “Oui, they were. Once there was so little food in the house that Rachel had to cut off her beautiful braids and sell them.” Joheved tugged gently at one of her sister’s braids.

  “After twelve years at the yeshiva, Akiva returned to Jerusalem. He was approaching his house when he heard a neighbor berating Rachel, saying, ‘How much longer will you live like a widow?’ Rachel replied that she was so sure her husband was devoting himself to Torah that she would gladly wait another twelve years. So what do you think Akiva did when he heard that?”

  Joheved wanted to hear that Akiva entered his home, embraced his long-suffering wife, and promised to study Torah in their own city from then on, but little Rachel knew the correct answer. “Akiva went back to his yeshiva.”

  “That’s right. After another twelve years, he returned with thousands of disciples,” Joheved said. “When Rachel saw Akiva surrounded by his students, she pushed through the crowd to greet him. They tried to turn her away, but Akiva embraced her and told them, ‘All that I possess and from which you benefit, I acquired only because of her.’ When Rachel’s father heard that a great scholar had come to town, he went to Akiva and asked for help in making peace with his estranged daughter.”

  “Rachel’s father didn’t recognize his own son-in-law?”

  Her little sister was getting excited in anticipation of the happy ending, and Joheved couldn’t help smiling. “Rachel’s father repented for making his daughter suffer all those years, and Akiva made his identity known. They were all reconciled, and Rachel’s father gave Akiva half his wealth. And as a reward for his faithful wife, who had sold her hair for him years before, he bought her the finest hair ornaments in Jerusalem.”