Schwab: Dancing with the actual Torah is actually a much more modern practice than we might thinkBecause like that just seems a little risky.
Yael: Like hug it. I get a little nervous.
Yeah, it is. I will say me like me personally, I’m always like, whoa…
Schwab: From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Jonathan Schwab.
Yael: And I’m Yatel Steiner.
Schwab: Welcome back, Nerd Nation. With the holiday of Simcha Torah coming up, we wanted to re-release a fascinating episode from two seasons ago.
Schwab: We’re releasing an excerpt from the episode.
So here’s what you need to know since you’re gonna be diving right in.
First, Simcha Torah is a holiday we celebrate at the end of Sukkot, at the end of a lot of holidays that we’re all going through now. and we mark the completion of the annual Torah reading cycle and celebrate it with dancing, usually dancing with the Torah itself in synagogue.
This episode focused on a very fascinating woman named Rifka Tiktiner, also known as Rivka Bot Meyer, who lived in Prague in the late 1500s. She died in 1605, and just before she died, she finished writing a book that would be published posthumously, that is the earliest full-length published work by a female Jewish author.
This 400-something year old book is the earliest book that we have written by a Jewish woman. The book is called May Neck at Rifka, and it tells us a little bit, and we have a couple of other sources also that tell us about the very fascinating life of this woman, of Rifka Tiktiner, Rifka Bot Meyer. Seems like she taught to mostly women, but possibly men as well, traveled around a bunch of different cities, was extraordinarily
Learned and was well renowned, her gravestone, where she’s buried in the Prague Cemetery, alongside some very famous Jewish people and a lot of famous rabbis, describes her as a darshanit and rabbanit.
Yael: It’s an ethical guide for Jewish women written in Yiddish.
She quotes the Bible, she quotes the Talmud, she has an extreme depth of knowledge and thinking about her today, we would probably cast her in a feminist role, but I don’t think that that’s a concept that she would have even been familiar with. And maybe she would have and maybe she would have worn it with pride and maybe she would have shrugged it off the way that another amazing woman, Ray Frank, shrugged it off. And it’s a really it’s a really cool story.
And I think the Simcha tora element gives us an opportunity to re examine it today and
Yael: I’m excited.
Schwab: Yeah.
We’ll link to the full episode, which is worth listening to, and you know, our conversation about how we square the definition of a feminist with who she was and the little we know about her.
but the Simcha Torah element, like you said, I think is a really great point if you only have some time and are preparing for this holiday. Because of what she does, one of the things that she wrote along with this book is this really interesting Simchatura poem, which gives us a little bit of an insight into what Simcha Torah looked like a few hundred years ago. and as a powerful reminder for how customs have evolved throughout Jewish history.
Schwab: It’s a really beautiful episode, so enjoy.
Yael So where is the poem? Where did we?
Schwab: So the poem is published in the same book, but it’s definitely a different sort of thing. It’s kind of a song, kind of a prayer. It’s called Simcha’s Taira Laid. Simcha’s Taira is the Yiddish pronunciation of Simcha Torah, the holiday for the celebration of the Torah. And it’s a poem or prayer that she wrote with the intention that it is sung or recited, presumably by women, on the holiday of Simchat Torah. And again, like very well written, very poetic, like referential to a lot of different things. But it’s, part of it is a vision of a meal God is hosting.
Like in the end of days in messianic times and all the people who are invited to it and shared in it. But this is something that, again, we assume women are are meant to recite together, maybe on on Simchat Torah, which then leads, I think, down down like a really interesting side path of of what did Simchat Torah look like in Prague in the 16th century, which I was very interested in the more the more I learned about it, especially because again, is she a feminist figure? Is she progressive? Is she for expanding women’s opportunities? Like the role of women in the community in Jewish practice is pretty central question of modern Jewish identity.
I think it’s fair to say and Simcha Torah is one of those I think that had that has like become a big question of like
Yael: Right.
Schwab: Women’s rich and certainly in more progressive orthodox communities, in communities outside of orthodoxy for sure, like how do women participate in what has generally been a very male-dominated holiday, like this one specifically. backing up for a second, like a very common practice on Simchat Torah is all of the Torah scrolls are taken out of the ark and people dance with them around the synagogue. And until recently, people meant men. And now, like in some synagogues, that means men and women, not necessarily together, but separately, how separate is the question?
It takes us in all sorts of really interesting directions. I did not realize this in looking into this and like what did this look like in Prague in the 16th century.
But dancing with the actual Torah is actually a much more modern practice than we might think. Because like that just seems a little risky.
Yael: For both men, for even men, okay.
Schwab: You know, to like dance with the Torah. The Torah is very precious, very holy.
Yael: It does seem a bit cavalier.
Yeah, especially when people hold it like just by the bottom two wooden things and they don’t, like, hug it. I get a little nervous.
Schwab: So like in Prague in the late 1500s, early 1600s. They would take all the Torahs out and they’d be placed on a central table and then people would dance around that. They weren’t picking up the torah scrolls and dancing with them. Yeah, which makes sense. In preparation for that, this is the part that’s so interesting to me. I’m like, I don’t know, maybe we should go back to doing this.
Yael: That makes sense.
Schwab: , a lot of the Torah scrolls were not kept in the Ark with all of their adornments, right? Like there’s like silver plating, crowns, things like that.So they all needed to be dressed up in…
Yael: Like silver plating and adornments.
Schwab: The Torahs would be dressed in all of their finery for them all to be taken out simultaneously. And that is something that would be done on the afternoon preceding Simchat Torah by the women. Before you’re like, wow, what an amazing creative way to include them. Because the women were the ones who made those things in the first place.
Right, like before…
Yael: Wow.
Yael: Right. The women were doing setup.
Yael: It is really beautiful that the women, that we have this thing that is so holy. It is the epicenter of our religion. And the women are the ones who are tasked with preparing to get the Torah ready for public consumption because they are the lifeblood of the community.
Schwab: Yeah.
Schwab: Yes, right, and like, and are central to the celebration and to the reverence, even if, like we’ve been talking about, they may not have the textual accessibility, right? Like imagining a group of women in Prague in 1600 who were taking the Torah out and dressing it up and preparing it for the holiday.
Knowing that that same group of women might not be able to unroll the Torah scroll and read from it or understand what they’re reading, but that is an important role that they have of setting this up for how central this is. And to connect this back to what we were talking about, not just like a random side thing. The theory is that that’s what this prayer was for, that this is something that women might recite or sing together.
While they were doing that, while they were getting all of the Torahs ready on the afternoon preceding Simchat Torah. Yeah, isn’t it?
Yael: That’s really beautiful. I want to be part of getting the Torahs ready for some Torah.
Schwab: Yeah. Yeah. Right? I feel like we should bring that back.
It’s funny because that now is something that’s like generally done by men
Yael: And it gets me thinking about the fact that even in more lower case C conservative circles, where women on a public level have less engagement and less of a role. There are certain fundamental functions of the Jewish community that cannot happen without women’s involvement and without women’s learned involvement. Like you need women to ensure that a mikvah, dunking in the mikvah is kosher. That is a role that is placed upon a Jewish woman, very much behind the scenes, but without that guardrail, you don’t have a kosher and halachic way for a Jewish home to function. You need women to be part of the local burial society, which prepares a Jewish body for the funeral,And for women, that role is, for dead female bodies, that role is performed by women. And that is one of the greatest mitzvot that can be performed by any human for anotherThe responsibility for that is on learned women in the community, very much also behind the scenes. So there has always been this idea that there have to be women underpinning this entire structure and that they have had to have some level of Jewish learning in order to accomplish it. But I guess this is the first proclamation of that in Jewish history just by virtue of being the first publication for women by women of how to live a virtuous Jewish life.
Music here or sound effect
Schwab
We’ll be back soon with a new batch of episodes and our next season, season seven. But in the meantime, keep an eye out on your feed or keep an ear out for bonus content, refreshed re-releases, things like this. And as always, please spread the word and share our show with your friends and family. Hagsamach.