Women's group brings equality to Talmud study
Over 3,000 women participated in a gathering to celebrate the completion of a seven and a half years of Talmud study put on by the Hadran association, dedicated to make practice inclusive of women.
The website of the Hadran group features a big picture of a female officer of the Israel Defense Forces poring over a Talmud tome. “This is the entire Torah, the entire principle of all,” said Rabbanit Michelle Farber Cohen, the co-founder of the group and the initiator of the Jan. 5 gathering to mark the completion of a cycle of Talmud study by women in the Jerusalem Convention Center. “We are educating women to participate in and contribute to every field, including those that were once closed to us.”
The Talmud was compiled after the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. It is a collection of complex interpretations of the Torah and Jewish law, put together both in Babylon (Babylonian Talmud, compiled in what is now Iraq by about 500 AD) and in the Land of Israel (Jerusalem Talmud, completed about 200 years earlier).
