ong Jews leisure, among non-Jews knowledge,
was lacking to preserve names for the instruction of posterity. Before
Jews could record their suffering, the oppressor's hand again fell, its
grasp more relentless than ever. For many centuries blood and tears
constitute the chronicle of Jewish life, and at the sources of these
streams of blood and rivers of tears, the genius of Jewish history sits
lamenting.

Whenever the sun of tolerance broke through the clouds of oppression,
and for even a brief period shone upon the martyr race, its marvellous
development under persecution and in despite of unspeakable suffering at
once stood revealed. During these occasional breaks in the darkness,
women appeared whose erudition was so profound as to earn special
mention. As was said above, the first names of women distinguished for
beauty and intellect come down to us from the eleventh century, and even
then only Italy, Provence, Andalusia, and the Orient, were favored, Jews
in these countries living unmolested and in comparative freedom, and
zealously devoting their leisure to the study of the Talmud and secular
branches of learning. In praise of Italy it was said: "Out of Bari goes
forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Otranto." It is, therefore,
not surprising to read in Jewish sources of the maiden Paula, of the
family Dei Mansi (Anawim), the daughter of Abraham, and later the wife
of Yechiel dei Mansi, who, in 1288, copied her father's abstruse
Talmudic commentary, adding ingenious explanations, the result of
independent research. But one grows somewhat sceptical over the account,
by a Jewish tourist, Rabbi Petachya of Ratisbon, of Bath Halevi,
daughter of Rabbi Samuel ben Ali in Bagdad, equally well-read in the
Bible and the Talmud, and famous for her beauty. She lectured on the
Talmud to a large number of students, and, to prevent their falling in
love with her, she sat behind lattice-work or in a glass cabinet, that
she might be heard but not seen. The dry tourist-chronicler fails to
report whether her disciples approved of the preventive measure, and
whether in the end it turned out to have been effectual. At all events,
the example of the learned maiden found an imitator. Almost a century
later we meet with Miriam Shapiro, of Constance, a beautiful Jewish
girl, who likewise delivered public lectures on the Talmud sitting
behind a curtain, that the attention of her inquisitive pupils might not
be distracted by sight of