A. Housewife’s Reviews > The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud > Status Update

in their stories of the named heroines of the Talmud, the rabbis time and again deconstruct anti-feminine archetypes, in a manner so consistent it cannot but be deliberate, a product of their carefully crafted storytelling

Here, too, Ima Shalom seems entirely passive, submissive, modest...Until we note that the discursive context for Ima Shalom's private midnight dialogue with her husband is a very public dialogue with unnamed questioners--presumably rabbis-- who are interested in the secret of her children's good looks.

If the Destruction of the Second Temple is the foundational trauma of rabbinic culture, the oven of Akhnai is, in many ways, its founding myth.

R' Kook! How could you!
>Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook warned that granting women the vote and enabling their participation in public debate would have a ruinous effect on shalom bayit (lit., peace within the home)..."When we demand of the woman that she go out into the political public domain...[then] raging differences of opinion will destroy shalom bayit, and the rifts in the family will fracture the nation."

https://www.sefaria.org/Tractate_Sema...

Interesting approach to a funeral hesped

In this sense, her choice of words is instructive: 'I will go out and see' echoes the talmudic principle of go out and see [what the people do].' In times of halakhic uncertainty, the Talmud empowers rabbis to make decisions based on reality on the ground, however imperfect that reality might be.