Ответ, как и было обещано, под катом:
The Jewish education of women provided another, related opportunity for converts to criticize Jews. Von Carben had been one of the first to point out the gender distinction in education, and other sixteenth-century converts and missionaries castigated Jews for not providing their daughters with religious instruction equal to that of men.73
Eighteenth-century convert Gütgen Steinhardin wrote an autobiographical account that provided considerably more nuance than most polemical pronouncements. She conceded that her parents did not neglect her intellectual development; they sent her to the house of a Praeceptor (teacher) of Hebrew. After her father’s death in 1762, amidst the changes that overtook the household, she stopped attending school at age ten; her formal education ended there. After that, her mother taught her things women needed to know about running a household, including the scrupulous observance of religious precepts pertaining to women, ‘‘which included many ridiculous and stupid ceremonies.’’ Eventually, she wrote, she came to detest the religion and, with God’s grace, came to understand that he could never have given such abominable laws.
Prosperous Ashkenazic Jews in the seventeenth century educated their daughters considerably, although the curriculum for Jewish girls differed from that for boys. Gütgen complained that she learned how to read Hebrew without understanding it, and that her father taught her nothing of the religion, because it ‘‘was not the custom among Jews to teach their daughters about religion.’’ She recalled, ‘‘At those times I prayed, ‘Dear God, why didn’t you give the female sex precepts by which to honor you?’ Our entire practice is more like beasts than human.’
Convert Gottfried Selig... found it peculiar that, when it came to knowledge of God’s word, Jews kept their daughters virtually in the dark. ‘‘They rarely educate them beyond the ability to read their Judeo-German books filled with superstitious teachings. They learn to read Hebrew without comprehension. Just as male children were introduced to Hebrew language, Bible, and Talmud at an early age, so it is the reverse with them [females].’’75
Joseph Samuel Frey wrote of the sharp discrepancy between the education of Jewish boys and girls: ‘‘My sisters were taught to read the prayer book in the Hebrew language, i.e. to pronounce the words, but without understanding even the literal meaning of a single sentence.This alas is usually all the education which the females receive.’’ To supplement his argument for the mission to Jewish women, Frey contrasted this Jewish inconsistency with Christianity (which made no such discrimination between the sexes!) ‘‘Those who believe that females have souls as well as males, . . . will as much lament the neglect of their education as they will disapprove of the impious daily thanksgiving of every Jew:... ‘that thou hast not made me a woman.’ ’’76
Carl Anton categorized Jewish women with unschooled Jewish men and mocked their illiteracy. ‘‘The ignorant and the female sex know so little, that all they know about the ten commandments is that they are ten in number.’’77
Источник
Кстати, стоит отметить, что, несмотря на всю эту критику (за которой евреи следили достаточно пристально, как и вообще за литературой выкрестов), никаких практических выводов из нее сделано не было, возможно -поскольку в то время крестились как раз преимущественно мужчины, причем нередко - как раз получившие неплохое, по тогдашним меркам, религиозное образование. Так что ситуация не будет меняться еще больше ста лет, что в конце XIX-XX вв., в конце концов, таки приведет к волне крещений и смешанных браков, на этот раз уже среди женщин. Но это уже другая история.
Ну и чтобы два раза не вставать - еще одна история из тойже монографии, имееющая непосредственное отношение к правам женщин:
The case of one Jewish woman provides a most enterprising twist on the use of conversion. Her husband refused to grant her a divorce, and the Jewish court refused to coerce him. The woman converted to Christianity, forcing the court to coerce her husband to issue the divorce. As soon as the court began the proceedings, thewoman reverted to Judaism. As soon as this happened, the husband retracted his assent. The rabbis ruled that the court must continue to coerce him ‘‘because of the likelihood that she would apostatize again if the divorce were not granted.’’
Интересно, сработает ли этот метод, если применить его в современных раввинских судах?