Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: The world’s first female rabbi finally gets her moment, 350 years after her death
Description: On Oct. 17, at the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards, Montrealer Sigal Samuel won an award for her new children’s book, Osnat and Her Dove: The True Story of the World's First Female Rabbi. It tells the real-life story Osnat Barzani, a Kurdish-Jewish scholar who lived about 400 years ago in Mosul—and had an unconventional upbringing.
Barzani's father ran a yeshiva, but didn’t have sons to share his knowledge with. Instead of forcing his daughter to do chores and get married young, he taught her Torah, the Talmud, midrash, Kabbalah and Hebrew, leading Barzani to eventually become the he...