Seven years ago, Hadassah Silberstein-Shemtov, herself a Ḥasid, established the Batsheva Learning Center to teach ḥaredi women Talmud. Rachel Frommer explains why this institution is so unusual, and what it has accomplished so far:
These ultra-Orthodox women are seeking to overhaul the average ḥaredi girl’s education, with its steady diet of biblical subjects, but very little study, if any, of Gemara or Mishna, the two [texts] that constitute the Talmud. Unlike the boys’ yeshiva system, which is founded on intimate study of Talmud, female ḥaredi education entirely excludes it.
These women believe their communities are in desperate need of not one or two learned women every other generation, but legions of them, who can teach girls Talmud starting from elementary school. They feel this educational overhaul is crucial to imbue ḥaredi girls with a true, deep understanding of their own Judaism. Without personal knowledge of Gemara and Mishna, the texts shaping every moment of an Orthodox Jewish life, they believe quotidian rituals and practices are done by rote, but without appreciation for their origins, development, and purpose.
They see a discordant reality where the writings forming the ancient roots of rabbinic Judaism are foreign lands to the women living by their strictures. They watch from outside as the learners of Talmud are inducted into a masculine fellowship of study with their contemporaries and the rabbinic figures animated in the Talmud’s pages. Communities are cloven in two, with men ingrained with a near-reflexive comprehension of the famed talmudic language and analytic method and women ignorant of the fundamental texts upon which their lives depend.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/class-of-their-own-ultra-orthodox-women-talmud