present-day Palestine. However, a woman must not be alone in the fields (b. Ber. 3b), and it was not customary even in the country for a man to converse with a strange woman.17 The woman’s position in the house corresponded to this exclusion from public life. In their father’s house, daughters came behind the sons. Their education was limited to learning domestic arts, especially needlework and weaving, and they looked after their smaller brothers and sisters (b. B.B. 141a; b. Nidd. 48b Bar.). Towards