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Ayala Deckel
Head of BINA: The Jewish Movement for Social Change, lectures on identity, Judaism and gender. Author of "Home and Back" (Hebrew). Likes to read, write and tell stories of life.
Judaism
The stargazers predicted that Rabbi Akiva’s daughter would be bitten by a poisonous snake on her wedding day. The great sage now faced a cruel question: How to contend with such a prophecy? The Talmud tells of his choice, and how his daughter ultimately saved herself, unlike a certain Sleeping Beauty…
Very few know her story. It isn’t taught in schools and certainly not in kindergartens, but according to the midrash, Hannah, daughter of Matityahu, sister of the Maccabees, was a key figure in the Hanukkah story. What does the midrash tell us of the woman who stood up to protect her Jewish sisters? How did she use her wedding day to spark the fire of rebellion in her brothers?
More delicate than the princess from “The Princess and the Pea”, more spoiled than a Kardashian. Among the Talmudic legends surrounding the destruction of ancient Jerusalem is the strange story of a wealthy woman who was unaccustomed to contact with the outside world. Why did the Talmudic sages choose to focus on this particular tale, and is there a modern lesson to be learned from it?
Diaspora
We never heard these stories. Forgotten stories of Jewish women who lived in Egypt and chose to remain there with the Muslim men that they loved, even though their families had immigrated to Israel. It’s time we shared these stories.
“When we left Egypt we could only take one suitcase and twenty Egyptian lira. That was all,” my grandmother said. “It was forbidden to take more than that, and we were very worried how we would manage in a new land without anything.”
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