Friday, February 21, 10am
JC3, Las Moras 47
$250, $200 members

The Women in the Talmud: wise, pious and rebellious

Rabbi Uriel Romano talks presenting his book, "The Women in the Talmud: wise, pious and rebellious".

The talk is in English.

Queens that convert to Judaism? Intimate encounters between Roman midwives and great rabbis? Wives who disguise themselves as prostitutes?  Feminists of the third century CE?  The Talmud, the most studied and revered book of Judaism after the Torah (Pentateuch), is a monumental and encyclopedic compilation of laws, customs, discussions, traditions but also stories, stories. In the more than 2,700 pages of the Talmud there are thousands of stories, some of a whole page, others of a paragraph and others of just one line. The main protagonists of these stories are usually rabbis in meetings with other colleagues or with unsuspected characters; however, in the Talmud, among these thousands of stories, we find a handful of stories where women have a leading role in the story. Women who speak, who argue, who disguise themselves, who seduce, who cheat, who teach, who cry.

This is the theme of a new book by Rabbi Ariel Romano, originally from Buenos Aires. Rabbi Romano was raised as a typical middle-class Argentine Jew. He attended Jewish School, enjoyed Shabbat dinners, and took trips to Miami. Why not! He did all the things necessary to affirm his Jewish identity.

In 2001 the Argentine exploded into a thousand pieces, like that vessel that according to the Kabbalah exploded at the time of creation. With his family and he on vacation in Miami, they did what generations of Jews did before them: they continued traveling and to survive, they remained in the United States. But when he finished high school Uriel decided to go to Israel. It was in Israel that he really began to feel connected to the Jewish People, am Yisrael, which led him to seminary and becoming a rabbi.

In April 2015 he married, He received his rabbinic ordination on the same day he found out they were expecting. He worked in the US, but after his first child was born, they decided to repatriate to Argentina, where he and his family now live.

This book, The Women of the Talmud: Wise Pious and Rebellious, seeks to bring to the surface of that unfathomable sea that is the Talmud the stories of these few women whose stories or teachings were recorded. In each of the chapters, a woman is analyzed in detail, some named and others anonymous, some Jewish and other pagan. The reader can find stories of pagan prostitutes who for love converted to Judaism, of beautiful women who seduce judges, of women who disguise themselves in order to be free, women who teach where study is the exclusive heritage of men, women who work miracles, women whose feet on coals do not burn, and more. An exciting book about women who left their voices and stories in the Talmud but were never before reunited in a single volume, this book is an attempt to give voices back to those women whose stories of long ago still have a message for the readers of the 21st century.

Join us on Friday, February 21st at 10am, when Rabbi Uriel Romano presents and speaks about this amazing and unique book.

xxx