Leah Horowitz’s Tkhine Imohos A Proto-Feminist Demand to Increase Jewish Women’s Religious Capital
This chapter discusses an article from 1961, in which Haim Liberman introduced the academic world to an eight-page booklet entitled Tkhine imohos. It explains that the booklet has three parts: a Hebrew introduction, an Aramaic piyut, and a Yiddish tkhine. It also points out that Aramaic piyut and the Yiddish tkhine were intended for liturgical recitation in the synagogue on sabbaths when the day of the appearance of the new moon was announced and a special prayer was said to bless the upcoming Hebrew month. The chapter describes the booklet as unusual since it presented material in three different languages and it was written by a woman. It provides a background about Sarah Rebecca Rachel Leah Horowitz as the author of Tkhine imohos, noting how her ability to write in both Hebrew and Aramaic placed her among the Jewish intellectual elite of her era and region.