While it is often assumed that the world of traditional Jewish learning and scholarship was the exclusive province of men, the historical record suggests something else. Beginning with a halakhic responsum (t’shuvah) addressed by Moses Maimonides to a man who tutored young Jewish women, Michelle Margolis provides a whirlwind survey of female authors, scribes, typesetters, publishers, and illustrators, accompanied by numerous images of the books and manuscripts themselves. She writes:

We have evidence of women making books in the amazing and heartbreaking elegy for Dulce of Worms (violently murdered, along with two daughters, in 1096), [composed] by her husband Eliezer (a/k/a the Rokeaḥ), [one of the great rabbis of his day. He wrote that:] “before she was killed, she would buy parchment to write books; her hands sewed the clothing of students and torn books; and she wove thread for the book (bindings).” The entire dirge, written in the form of Eyshet Ḥayil, [i.e., Proverbs 31:10-31], is more than worth a read.

Women and children often worked in the press as “zetseren” (typesetters). A woman or child’s smaller hands had much more dexterity with the tiny pieces of type. One of the most famous girls who worked in the press was Ella bat Moshe ben Avraham Avinu and her sister Gella. Ella started at a very young age (nine), but continued working in presses in Dessau, Halle, and Frankfurt. Thus, her name is found at the end of a the talmudic tractate of Niddah printed in Frankfurt am Main, 1697-99.

This and more can be found on the social-media website Twitter, at the link below. Margolis has also written a follow-up post here.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.