The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: The Tale of Yalta the Shrew

The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: The Tale of Yalta the Shrew

Monday at 12:00pm PDT

Why are shrews always so vicious? How did the ancient world view the differences between the male and female body? And what possessed Yalta to smash 400 bottles of her husband’s wine? We’ll bring the Talmudic tale of Yalta to life through the lens of world-renowned authors and thinkers such as Aristotle and Aelian, William Shakespeare and William Congreve, Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, and more.

Gila Fine is a teacher of Aggada at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, exploring the tales of the Talmud through philosophy, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and pop-culture. She is also a faculty member of the London School of Jewish studies, the Nachshon Project, and Amudim Seminary, and has taught thousands of students at conferences and communities across the Jewish world. As editor in chief of Maggid Books, Gila edited and published over a hundred titles of contemporary Jewish thought, including several bestsellers and eight National Jewish Book Award winners. Haaretz has called her “a young woman on her way to becoming one of the more outstanding Jewish thinkers of the next generation.”