Person
Rivkah bat Meir Tiktiner רבקה בת מאיר טיקטינר
the first Jewish woman whose book reached print
Her family was tied to Tykocin in Poland; she lived and died at Prague in 1605. The book is divided into seven gates and appeared after her death—Prague 1609, Cracow 1618. There is also a Simchat Torah song of forty couplets.
She was a darshanit—she preached before women; the title page calls her a preacher. Scholarship's caution is honest and we repeat it: "probably the first"—the past cannot be searched to its end. But no such book older than hers has been found.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- Meneket Rivkah, Prague 1609 — counsel in seven gates, printed after her death
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Prague, the year of death and the caution "probably the first"
Basis: Talmud and midrash.