The ancient Jewish texts pertaining to our subject have been visited and revisited; the juiciest pumped and squeezed, yet not desiccated – hence the justification for this enquiry of ours. Indeed, the significance of many of the texts remains elusive. Studying them involves decoding what are often cryptic aphorisms and then assessing what they might have meant to their authors and original audiences. Historians and feminists – two groups to have grappled with the material – know the drill. Not that historians and feminists share the same goals. To the historian's grief, religious texts tend to dwell more upon what ought to be than upon what is. But this bane of the historian is a boon to the serious Jewish feminist. For unlike the historian, ravenous to learn what happened in the past, the latter's goal is to discover legal and religious precedent to the end of upgrading gender equality within the contemporary Jewish community. So whereas the puristic historian is academic from start to finish, the socio-religious concerns of feminists lead them down a path outlined by several able pens: