Sarah Bas Tovim שרה בת טובים
her tkhines Jewish women read for two hundred years
She calls herself daughter of Mordechai of Satanov and great-granddaughter of a rabbi of Brisk; in her text one hears the road from a rich and vain youth to a poor wandering old age—and that, it seems, was the truth of her life.
With her a double honesty is owed, and here it is. In folk memory she grew a legend, and the nineteenth-century maskilim printed forgeries under her name—so the older scholarship doubted she had existed at all. Present scholarship, having sifted the texts, holds her historical. The years of her life are unknown; the window is set by the century of her prayers.
Shloyshe Sheorim is named for its three parts: the first gate on the three women's commandments—challah, family purity and the Sabbath lights; the second on the Days of Awe and on the candles women twisted for Yom Kippur; the third on the blessing of the new moon.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- Shloyshe Sheorim — the tkhines on candles, challah and the new moon
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Satanov, the dispute over authenticity and the maskilic forgeries
- Jewish Women's Archive, "Sarah Bas Tovim" — the contents of the three gates
Basis: Talmud and midrash.