Unsung Women | Miriam Spiria-Luria
Miria Spiria-Luria Image by Yehuda Blum
By Irene Katz Connelly March 26, 2020
Who she was: Miriam Spira-Luria
Where and when: 15th-century Padua
What we know: If Miriam Spira-Luria were alive today, she’d be a public intellectual and a prominent voice on Jewish Twitter. But in a cloistered religious community controlled by men, she could never even get a seat at the table. Spira-Luria was born in Germany and married Aharon Luria, a scholar who lived in Italy. According to one of her descendants, Yochanan Luria, she leveraged her husband’s position as an academic leader to gain entrance to the yeshiva, eventually giving public lectures on halakha, or Jewish law and teaching Talmud to young men — all the while separated from her students by a curtain to preserve her modesty.
What she thought: We have no idea what conclusions Spira-Luria reached about the Talmud or how she instructed her students. Unlike those of her male counterparts, her teachings were not preserved. Despite her accomplishments, which she must have pursued with tenacity and and determination, her relative anonymity illustrates her era’s lack of respect for female scholarship.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
