一周前，我正坐在床上为我对西格尔·塞缪尔的采访准备问题奥斯纳特和她的鸽子。塞缪尔的新插图儿童读物是关于女性rabbi.in history, Osnat Barzani, also known as Asnat or Asenath Barzani. I had never heard of Barzani before, having always been told that German Jew里贾纳乔纳斯他于20世纪初被任命为第一位女拉比。
但几个世纪前，奥斯纳特于1590年出生在库尔德斯坦。她的故事令人震惊——她是摩苏尔犹太教士Shmuel b.Netanel Ha Levi的女儿。奥斯纳特继承了父亲对犹太教的好奇心，说服父亲教她阅读，让她独立学习犹太宗教经文。她被认为是律法的主人，塔木德,侧阵,Kabbalah.和希伯来语。在她的父亲和丈夫的死亡之后 - 谁是她父亲的学生，谁在她的情况下娶了她不被家务困扰，并且被允许继续她的研究 - 奥斯纳特被耶稣会的头部，给出了标题tanna’it,a rabbinical title that is equivalent to the one her father carried (tannai).
有关osnat的信息很少。大多数它来自几个字母，手稿，奇妙的犹太护身符，告诉她的超自然力量。根据犹太女性的档案,these included “her ability to limit herchildbearingto two children so that she could devote herself to her studies.” (Love this 17th century take on birth control!)
当我对这种迷人的故事有低调的痴迷时，我的2岁儿子在床上爬上了他最喜欢的消遣，跳上IMA。但在他注意到这本书在我的电脑屏幕上打开，他命令我读它。
Reading to your child is one of the greatest joys of parenting, so of course, I acquiesced. Yet, this time, he asked me to do something I had never done before. “Sing it, Ima,” he ordered. And, being the sucker parent that I am, I sang.
起初，我想唱着书的话听起来像一节经文汉密尔顿,要么maybe from a Dave Malloy musical. But then I realized the rhythms and intonations sounded more like达维宁对我来说，我意识到我在吟诵这本书，就像一本宗教犹太教经文。
这一刻的痛苦让我感到震惊。在这里，我是一本铭记我儿子曾经被读过的犹太领导的第一本书，这是关于一个女性Mizrahi Rabbi。我的儿子将与这个故事长大 - 一个故事我从未听过的故事直到几周的几周 - 作为他年轻人的犹太人“礼仪”的自然部分。我想象在全国各地的客厅和卧室里的同一个场景。我想象着一代新一代犹太孩子们，了解奥纳特巴扎尼，它给了我一个深刻的感觉，眩晕的幸福感。
I have known the author, Samuel, for over half a decade now. A writer from Montreal, she was my editor at my first Jewish media job at theForward，她在那里写了犹太人的多样性和她自己的米兹拉希遗产。塞缪尔现在是一个工作人员的作家Vox'未来的未来完美，这是她第一次进入儿童书籍。（她的第一本成年人书，英里的神秘主义者结束,is a lovely exploration of Jewish life in Montreal.)
奥斯纳特和她的鸽子非常包括她的工作范围：对犹太遗产和神秘主义的探索;一个深刻的女权主义者，但不是所有教学的故事，魔法散文。它装饰着华丽，充满活力的水粉插图，充满了以色列 - 罗马尼亚艺术家Vali Mintzi创造的色彩缤纷的宽松模式。
Mintzi流畅的笔触线将人物带到了生活中，希伯来文字母的传播尤为华丽。“奥斯纳特喜欢希伯来文字母的形状，”在那些页面上的散文写道。“一个看起来像神秘的动物，另一个看起来像匍匐的藤蔓。她也喜欢《律法》的话所提供的答案。每一个问题都在她的脑海中产生了七个新问题。”
就像《圣经》和任何好的儿童读物一样-奥斯纳特和她的鸽子left both my son and me full of questions. He wanted to know about rabbis, and Mosul, and to be reminded about what each Hebrew letter was. I wanted to know more about Osnat and what led to the creation of this miraculous book. Luckily, I could reach out to Samuel and ask just that.
Over e-mail, we discussed the importance of telling Osnat’s story and the value of diversity in Jewish leadership. Our conversation, which has been condensed and lightly edited, is below:
Tell me a little bit about how you came across the story of Osnat Barzani? Why did you feel like that was a story you needed to tell?
I stumbled upon the story by accident. One night, while doing research for a play about Jewish women, I fell down a deep internet rabbit hole and landed on an article about Osnat Barzani. I was stunned to learn that this Kurdish woman became the world’s first female rabbi way back in the 1600s! I’d previously thought Berlin-born Regina Jonas was the first to assume that role in the 1900s.
作为一个家庭来自巴格达的Mizrahi犹太人——离奥斯纳特的家乡摩苏尔只有几个小时的路程——我很激动。我在一个犹太人的环境中长大，那里充斥着德系犹太人的故事，我很少看到关于米兹拉希妇女的正面故事。它阻碍了我对自己能成为什么样的人的感觉。我真的很想当拉比，但我想我做不到，因为我从没见过像我这样的女拉比。
Kids need to see all sorts of people — not just white men — succeeding at becoming leaders. I wanted to tell Osnat’s story because it’s the story I needed when I was young and I think it’s a story that can inspire young readers today.
There aren’t too many records about Barzani and her life available. Tell me a little bit about the research that went into making this book?
由于没有关于奥斯纳特的书籍，我开始阅读已经写过她的少数学术文章。Renee Levine Melammed的研究特别有用。她把我指向几个以奥斯纳写的现存字母。幸运的是，我读了希伯来语，所以我能够了解原件。
When you read the letters Osnat wrote, you can see that she had a brilliant mind for Talmud and Kabbalah — her text is full of references. You can also see that she was a poet. Her writing is so lyrical. And when you read the letters that Osnat’s contemporaries wrote to her, you see how much they respected her. Rabbi Pinchas Hariri’s letter to her, for example, addresses her with the words, “My mother, my rabbi.”
我认为我们所知道的关于奥斯纳特的一些东西来自护身符真的很酷。库尔德人把关于她的故事保存在那里，一代一代地传下去。
我也对时代的库尔德文化进行了大量的研究，因为历史准确性对我很重要。我想知道哪个乐器在奥斯纳特这样的库尔德犹太人婚礼上播放了哪些乐器，所以我咨询了一个民族武士武士学者。我也看过奥马特等城镇的考古探索。Illustrator Vali Mintzi也致力于这项研究。她发现奥斯纳特轨道上有什么样的衣服和习俗。
我真的很惊讶我以前从未听说过Osnat Barzani。为什么你认为这么少数人对她了解？
一方面，令人震惊的是，几乎没有人知道奥斯纳-她是一个真正的先驱，第一个女拉比！另一方面，我并不感到惊讶。作为一名库尔德妇女，奥斯纳特是米兹拉希历史的一部分，米兹拉希的历史常常被边缘化，取而代之的是德系历史。
Because of this erasure, I think many of us have been trained to assume that progressive and innovative expressions of Judaism only arose in places like the U.S. or Eastern Europe. But there’s so much that was progressive and innovative in Kurdish and Iraqi Jewish cultures. Osnat’s rise to the status of a rabbi is an example of that.
库尔德犹太社区有这么丰富的历史。在涉及妇女在研究和教学的时候显然，这显然是相当于妇女 - 奥斯纳特的故事在任何其他录制的女性拉比之前追溯到几个世纪。然而，大部分犹太社区仍然不知道这一点——事实上，这可能是很多读者（我包括这里的成年人！）第一次遇到它。你有什么想让读者知道的吗？
你说得对，它很富有，却鲜为人知。我发现这真的很特别，尽管库尔德社会是男性主导的，但它为聪明的女性成为宗教、政治和军事领袖腾出了空间。有的以部落首领的身份执政，有的以战士的身份作战。其他人成为诗人或哲学家。这发生在库尔德斯坦的犹太人、穆斯林、基督教徒和耶兹迪人中间。我喜欢不仅是库尔德犹太人，还有其他背景的库尔德人，仍然尊崇奥斯纳特为首批库尔德女性领导人之一。
你和库尔德犹太人谈过这个故事对他们意味着什么吗？
The most meaningful interactions I’ve had during this whole process have been with Kurdish and Iraqi Jews, who’ve told me things like, “As the father of a Kurdish Jewish baby, thank you for writing this story!” or, “It’s so important for my daughter to see someone like her represented in books. I wish I could’ve had a book like this as a kid.”
Osnat passed away more than three centuries ago and in the last few decades, female clergy in certain streams of Judaism is finally becoming the norm. Yet there are still people who balk at the idea of a woman rabbi. Has working on this book and telling this story given you a different perspective on how far we’ve come, and on the advances we still need to make when it comes to diversity in Jewish leadership?
很多人认为随着时间的推移，社会会变得更加进步和包容。但历史证明，进步不是线性的。16世纪的库尔德社会比今天的一些正统美国社区更接受女性拉比的观念。
我想恢复healt Osnat的故事hy for contemporary Judaism, because it can remind us that there’s no need to see female clergy as controversial. Some extremely devout rabbis in Osnat’s time were happy to recognize a woman as a rabbinic leader and we can do the same!
有哪些女性犹太领袖能激励你？
我受东正教妇女的启发，她们在耶希瓦特马哈拉特学习，毕业后成为犹太教的拉比和精神领袖。他们拒绝相信做虔诚的女人和做拉比之间有矛盾。那样的话，他们就像奥斯纳特。我也很受犹太教各行各业的有色人种妇女的启发，她们已经成为拉比。
你希望年轻读者（以及他们的父母/照顾者）从这本书中得到什么？
我希望年轻的读者能够了解他们可以成为领导者，无论它们看起来像什么或他们来自哪里。
我希望所有年龄段的读者都能受到启发，更多地了解米兹拉希犹太人丰富的文化——从库尔德斯坦到印度再到也门。作为一个研究过米兹拉希拉比著作的人，我发现他们经常（尽管不总是）表达一种宽容和温和的世界观，这让人印象深刻。我认为他们实际上有很多东西可以教今天的犹太教如何尊重多样性。与其让他们继续袖手旁观，不如让我们开始让他们的见解发挥作用。
