Making sense of the ‘madwomen’ in the Talmud

(RNS) — Everyone fears a shrew, but we rarely try to understand them. Modern theater makers are consistently troubled about how to present Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” to today’s audiences, and readers of “Great Expectations” are likely to find Mrs. Joe Gargery as opaquely unsympathetic a character as they did in Dickens’ day.

In Gila Fine’s debut book, “The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic,” the lecturer of rabbinic literature at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem bravely tells the stories of the women of the Talmud, the compiled wisdom, law and legend of ancient Jewish rabbis that is the companion to the Torah, relating them to similar literary characters and using them as steppingstones through time to help us see them in three dimensions and broaden our understanding of the entirety of the text. 

The most famous of the women is Yalta, the most mentioned female character in the Bible, according to Fine. In Yalta’s most famous appearance, she breaks 400 jugs of wine in response to a rabbi who slights women.

When the rabbi who insulted her tries to make it up to her, she shuns his offering as “gossip” that “comes from peddlers and lice from rags.”

Fine doesn’t deny that Yalta is a shrew, which she defines as a “mad-woman,” who is “both angry and crazy, raging and deranged.” But Fine wants us to see Yalta as one who is able to “carve out a space for herself.” The author helps us see Yalta better by connecting her to Socrates’ wife Xanthippe, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, Shakespeare’s Katherine (the eponymous heroine in “The Taming of the Shrew”) and Charlotte Bronte’s Bertha Mason, from “Jane Eyre.” (Fine also addresses Jean Rhys’ revision of Bertha Mason in Rhys’ novel “Wide Sargasso Sea.”)

“Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic” is the first work to emerge from a 2-year-old project supported by Sefaria, the digital library of Jewish texts, aimed at giving women a greater voice in the study of the Torah and the Talmud. Called Word-by-Word, the series has given 20 women stipends, coaching and retreats to help them complete their work. The project further expands our idea of who is qualified to write on Torah by inviting high school and elementary school teachers and those working at other institutions to participate.

Fine’s approach arises from her own history as a scholar. In 2022, she told The Jerusalem Post that as a young woman raised in the Modern Orthodox tradition she had been discouraged from reading the Talmud, and later was daunted by it until, as an English major, “Shakespeare, Wilde and Bronte were my way into the literary masterpieces of Talmudic stories.”

Fine’s other evident influence for her book is the groundbreaking volume of feminist theory “The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination,” published in 1979 by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The book changed the way Victorian literature was taught, by putting on display the stereotypes and archetypes of women in that age that tended to render them either as angelic helpmeets or demonic madwomen — uncontrollable and rebellious. (The madwoman in question was Rochester’s first wife in “Jane Eyre.”)

Fine, who often examines the Talmud though the lens of psychoanalysis and pop culture, amplifies the theme by writing about indomitable prima donnas — popular tales of women unsatisfied with what they have, no matter how bounteous — such as Marie Antoinette, Miss Piggy and Norma Desmond, matching them against Talmudic stories of women reduced by their own haughtiness. As Fine explains, “the prima donna narrative generally takes the form of a riches-to-rags morality tale, culminating in the heroine’s fall from grace.”

Two of her prime examples are the daughter and daughter-in-law of a wealthy resident of first-century Jerusalem, Nakdimon ben Gurion, who must petition the court for their living expenses after their patriarch’s death. Another is the story of Marta, a wealthy widow who is traditionally judged harshly for going out to search for food in the city of Jerusalem when it is under siege and people are starving.

“Not every story can be revisioned and not every character can be redeemed,” Fine admits, but she demonstrates that even Marta’s insensitivity, amid the cycle of hatred, zealotry and destruction of Jerusalem after the second temple is destroyed, can be redeemed. Marta’s decision to go out to the marketplace to find something to sustain her even though food is scarce demonstrates the importance of not remaining passive (even though it leads to Marta’s death).

Indeed, Fine points out that Marta’s example influenced Rabbi Yohanan, the teacher known for salvaging rabbinic Judaism by creating an academy at Yavneh that continued the Jewish tradition though the temple no longer stood. “Like Marta, we can take matters into our own hands, go out into the world, and try, each in our own way, to save a little,” Fine writes.

Fine similarly salvages Yalta, showing us how her character may not be quite so flawed as our assumptions compel us to see. Fine explains that the vessels Yalta smashes represent the male assumption that women are mere vessels — her destruction of them is a demonstration of the significance of the vessel — and the woman — in its own right. 

(Beth Kissileff is co-editor of “Bound in the Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on the Tree of Life Tragedy.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)