A Wonderful Idea for a Trilogy.
Rashi's Daughters
Maggie Anton
Banot Press , 386 pp.
reviewed by Allan Gould
Perhaps the greatest of all Jewish scholars, whose commentaries are at the centre of every student's intellectual life, was Solomon ben Isaac of medieval France (or Rashi for short). He fathered only daughters, and it has long been rumoured that he taught them Talmud (going against strong opposing views on this, common in the 11th century, and before, and since), possibly even teaching them to lay tefillin and pray regularly, which were not considered obligations for the female sex. The once secular, now religious and scholarly author recognized the gold mine which lay behind this seemingly minor factoid of Jewish history: what was it like to be a woman, a millennium ago? A Jewish woman? What was it like for an intelligent young Jewish girl to be caught up in such a patriarchal faith, with its rigid laws about sexuality, marriage, and more? Or to be a brilliant scholar with no son to study with or inspire? This is the background for the trilogy by American novelist Maggie Anton, Rashi's Daughters (Book I: Joheved; Book II, just published, Miriam).
The author has done something both admirable and remarkable: she has immersed herself in Jewish medieval history and the Talmud, and sprinkles both heavily through the first two books of her planned trilogy of novels, so that the reader, like each of Rashi's daughters, finds him/herself studying Jewish thought in greater depth than most people do in their lifetime. So, half-way through Joheved, we read from the Mishna, "Women, slaves, and minors are exempt from reciting the Shema and from laying tefillin. . . ." The author goes on, "This didn't sound right. She and Miriam both said the Shema at night as protection against demons; every Jew did. Papa, why are women exempt from these mitzvot?"
Lovers of erotica (and Judaism) may be thrilled to read of the marriage night between Joheved and her beloved groom, which is one of the most beautifully and voluptuously depicted sex scenes ever captured in print. (It's also, not unintentionally, one of the greatest advertisements for saving oneself for marriage, and for the keeping of the laws of niddah, or separation during and after a woman's monthly period.) And those of us who have questioned the seemingly anti-life and anti-pleasure attitudes toward sexuality in the other major Abrahamic faiths (the covering of women from head to toe by burkas in several Muslim lands; the linking of sex with the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden in Christianity, along with the glorification of virginity), will be delighted to read such sympathetic lines from other Jewish texts as "You should delay your climax until your wife has her climax first, and then she will conceive sons." Sexist, perhaps, but please advise me of other faiths which express any interest whatsoever in women's satisfaction from sexual congress.
Rashi's Daughters is a most welcome addition to modern Jewish writing. And a daring one, as well: in Miriam, the second of the series, her husband is filled with longing toward his own gender. (The author is nothing if not controversial in her topics and plots). Are these books Great Art; Literature? I don't think so: they are an inspired concept, deeply researched and well presented. The books lack the authority, power, beauty and depth of quality writing, and too often appear to be study guides to the Talmud, or James A. Michener-type histories (remember Hawaii, Alaska, Poland?) of medieval Judaism. There is often an awkwardness to Ms. Anton's prose, as if she feels obliged to explain all these strange, exotic Jewish beliefs and rituals to non-Jewish (and Jewish!) readers. She is no Saul Bellow or Phillip Roth or Cynthia Ozick, but that's fine; she has set out to write several novels of "Love and The Talmud in Medieval France" as the paperback covers announce proudly, and she is a talented, if limited writer. I am glad that I read the first two volumes of Rashi's Daughters , and I certainly look forward to Anton's final novel. I've certainly never encountered a better depiction of what it was like to be a Jew in Christian Europe, nearly a thousand years ago. Or what it was like to be a thoughtful, devout, yet wise young woman, either.
Allan Gould is an author and journalist who has long studied with Kolel and supported it. He is teaching his fourth course for Kolel in Toronto, in the fall of 2007, on Modern Jewish Literature. (Visit his website: http://www.allangould.com)
