Torah study for women תלמוד תורה לנשים

The sources. The Mishnah (Sotah 3:4) preserves an argument: Ben Azzai says a man is obliged to teach his daughter Torah; Rabbi Eliezer says that whoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches her frivolity. Rabbi Eliezer's view was accepted.

Maimonides (Laws of Torah Study 1:13) puts it thus: a woman who has learned Torah has reward—but not as a man's, since she is not commanded; and the sages instructed that one not teach one's daughter Torah, because most women's minds are not turned to it. And he distinguishes: what is said applies to the Oral Torah; the Written one is not to be taught to her deliberately, but if one has taught it, that is not the same as teaching frivolity.

The turn. The Chafetz Chaim (Likutei Halakhot, Sotah 21) wrote: all this belongs to earlier times, when what was received from the fathers was firm in every man and each acted by his forebears' custom. In his own days the tradition had weakened, women were learning secular subjects—and therefore teaching them the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Writings and the words of the sages became not merely permissible but obligatory. It is on this that Bais Yaakov stands.

Known by name. They are few, and each is known differently. Bruria, wife of Rabbi Meir, is the only woman whose halakhic opinions the Talmud cites. Yalta, wife of Rav Nachman, from conversations the Gemara thought fit to record. Bat ha-Levi, daughter of the Baghdad gaon Rav Samuel ben Ali, taught from indoors, at a window, unseen by her listeners—recorded by a traveller who saw it himself. Dulcea of Worms taught women and led their prayer—listed by her husband in the elegy for her. Asenath Barzani in Kurdistan headed a yeshiva. Glikl of Hameln wrote the book of her life. The Maiden of Ludmir conducted a Hasidic court—the only such case, and the Hasidic world did not accept it.

What the list shows. It is short—and it is not empty. The rule was not to teach, and the rule held; the exceptions existed and were not counted as breaches—they were written down and remembered. The change came not from inside the argument but from outside: when the girls went into the state schools, the old order stopped protecting, and the greatest men of the generation said so plainly.