It’s rare to find a paean to the rabbis of the Talmud penned by a woman. Yet Fine’s erudition and deep commitment to rabbinic Judaism sustain her determination to redeem many seemingly misogynistic Talmudic tales. Hers is a work of literary rather than historical analysis, but given the few archaeological remains and non-rabbinic Jewish texts predating the Cairo Geniza – especially pertaining to women – there is little recourse. 

The Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and the homiletical Midrash and Tosefta constitute the rabbinic legacy of the second to fifth centuries. The author draws on all these sources, concentrating on the Babylonian Talmud’s female-centered midrashic material to give us a range of negative archetypes, including the shrew, the femme fatale, the prima donna, the overachiever, and the whore. Each chapter surveys one of these figures in popular literature through the ages, then closely examines it in a Talmudic legend, demonstrating that – on a deeper reading – the rabbinic portraits of Marta, Yalta, Heruta, Beruria, and others actually defy the stereotypes. 

Whether by considering each story’s context, contrasting the protagonist with the men around her or the society in which she lives, or evaluating the narrative’s position and effect within a cycle of Talmudic tales, Fine recasts the rabbis’ portrayal in a positive light. The only unconvincing aspect of Madwoman is that she succeeds every time, with both the villainess-cum-heroine and the rabbinic voice ultimately rising above the petty human reality of their period. Nonetheless, this book is highly structured, well-written, and an excellent teaching aid.