LITERATURE + LECTURES

Brazos Bookstore is pleased to present Maggie Anton, who signs and discusses her book, Rashi's Daughters: Rachel.

Brazos Bookstore and the Initiative for Jewish Women are proud to present Maggie Anton, author of the popular series,Rashi's Daughters. The third book in the series is Rashi's Daughter, Book III: Rachel, A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France, which she will read and sign at this evening's event.

Rachel is Salomon’s favorite and adored by her husband, Eliezer. But everything she holds dear is threatened as the marauders of the First Crusade massacre the Jews of Germany and her father suffers a stroke. Eliezer wants them to move to the safety of Spain, but Rachel is determined to stay in France and help her family save the Troyes yeshiva, the only remnant of the great Talmud academies.

"A stunning achievement. You will not be able to put this book down, and may even find yourself rushing off to study Talmud." --Judith Hauptman, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture, Jewish Theological Seminary; author of Rereading the Rabbis, A Woman’s Voice.

Maggie Anton was born Margaret Antonofsky in Los Angeles, California. Raised in a secular, socialist household, she reached adulthood with little knowledge of her Jewish religion. All that changed when David Parkhurst, who was to become her husband, entered her life, and they both discovered Judaism as adults. That was the start of a lifetime of Jewish education, synagogue involvement, and ritual observance. In 2006, Anton retired from being a clinical chemist in Kaiser Permanente's Biochemical Genetics Laboratory to become a fulltime writer.

In the early 1990's, Anton learned about a women's Talmud class taught by Rachel Adler, now a professor at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. Nearly every Wednesday for five years, she and about six other women met around Rachel's dining room table to study Tractate Berachot. Now Anton continues her studies individually with Rabbi Aaron Katz Ph.D., Professor of Rabbinics at the Academy of Jewish Religion (CA branch).

In 1997, as her children Emily and Ari left the house and her mother was declining with Alzheimer's Disease, Anton sought new interests. She became intrigued with the idea that Rashi, one of the greatest Jewish scholars ever, had no sons, only three daughters. Slowly but surely, she began to research the family and the time in which they lived. Much was written about Rashi, but almost nothing of the daughters, except their names and the names of their husbands. Legend has it that Rashi's daughters were learned in a time when women were traditionally forbidden to study the sacred texts. These forgotten women seemed ripe for rediscovery, and the idea of a book about them was born.