Person · 5550–5631 AM · 1790 CE — 1871 CE
Rachel Morpurgo רחל מורפורגו
the first woman in many centuries to publish poems in Hebrew
Born in 1790; Hebrew, Talmud and the Zohar she learned at home—in the Luzzatto line that was not thought strange for a girl. She married at twenty-nine, against the family's wish, raised four children and wrote at night and on the new moons.
The journal Kokhvei Yitzchak printed her; the collection Ugav Rachel—"Rachel's Harp"—was gathered nineteen years after her death. Shadal, her cousin and the first philologist of the generation, was proud of her aloud—and that opened doors that were not then opened to a woman.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- Ugav Rachel, 1890 — the poems, gathered after her death
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, the Luzzatto line and the cousinship to Shadal
Basis: Talmud and midrash.