What has the Talmud ever done for us? This is a pertinent question for those generations of Jewish schoolchildren forced to pore over its text to no discernible effect on their later secular lives.

(RNS) — In her debut book, ‘The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic,’ Gila Fine, a lecturer of rabbinic literature at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, shows how the women in the Talmud ...