Tweeting the Talmud
The ancient text was never intended for Twitter. Then again, it was never intended for women either.
“The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.” This is the stinging opinion of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, a second-century Jewish scholar, as expressed in the Talmud, a 63-volume work of intricate Jewish legal debates, composed from the second to sixth centuries and redacted in Babylonia. Only a few women are mentioned in its 2,711 pages.
The very same sage elsewhere stated that a man who taught his daughter the Torah was teaching her frivolity, wasting his precious time. I take comfort in Ben Azzai, the sage who rejected Hyrcanus’s opinion and obligated fathers to teach their
