1733-5760 Women Protagonists in the Hebrew Morality Composition Tzemach Tzadiq by Leon Modena  Tohar Vered author Bar-Ilan University 03kgsv495 Correspondence to: Vered Tohar Vered.Tohar@biu.ac.il 15 03 2018 Volume 15 2017 47 61 Copyright © 2018 2018 <p style="text-align: left;">This article proposes a reading of three stories from the Hebrew morality book Tzemach Tzadiq [The Righteous Shoot], composed by Leon Modena (1571-1648) and based upon the 13th century Italian treatise Fiore di Virtu [The Flowers of the Virtues]. These stories, which present plots with female protagonists, demonstrate women’s mystique in this early Modern Hebrew compilation and reveal the attitude of Modena and his readership towards women who deviated from the norm. Although Tzemach Tzadiq is a hegemonic patriarchal text, it reveals an intra-gender relationship where these female protagonists protest against their social inferiority by means of self-violence.</p> 2 Fiori di Virtu, Venice 1487. 3 Tzemach Tzadiq, Venice 1600. 4 Tzemach Tzadiq, Vilna 1855. 5 Tzemach Tzadiq, New York 1859. 6 Tzemach Tzadiq, Tel Aviv 1949. 7 Tzemach Tzadiq, Jerusalem 1977. 8 Tzemach Tzadiq, Jerusalem 1992. 10 Abarbanel, N. (1994), Havah and Lilith, Ramat-Gan. 11 Acker, P. (2006), Horror and the Maternal, Beowulf, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 121: 702-716. 12 Adelman, H. (2012), A rabbi reads the Qur’an in the Venetian ghetto, Jewish History 26: 125-137. 13 de Beauvoir, S. (1952), The Second Sex, trans. by H.M. Parshley, New York. 14 Bland, K. (2009), A Jewish theory of Jewish visual culture: Leon Modena’s concepts of images and their effect on locative memory, Ars Judaica 5: 59-66. 15 Bourdieu, P. (2001), Masculine Domination, trans. by Richard Nice, Bloomington. 16 Cohen, T. (2002), One Beloved, The Other Hated: Between Fiction and Reality in Haskalah Depictions of Women, Jerusalem. 17 Collins, T. (2000), Intimations of Feminism in Ancient Athens: Euripides’ Medea, Sydney Studies in English 26: 3-24. 18 Dan, J. (1976), Modena and Sefer HaYashar, Sinai 78: 197-198. 19 Dan, J. (1975), Hebrew Ethical and Homiletical Literature, Jerusalem. 20 Elbaum, J. (1990), Openness and Insularity: Late Sixteenth Century Jewish Literature in Poland and Ashkenaz, Jerusalem. 21 Ferrante, J.M. (1975), Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, New York. 22 Fetterley, J. (1978), The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction, Bloomington. 23 Gilbert, S., Gubar, S. (1979), The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination, New Haven-London. 24 Gries, Z. (2010), The Hebrew Book in the Jewish World 1700-1900, Oxford. 25 Hursthouse, R. (2010), On Virtue Ethics, Oxford. 26 Lipsker, L. (2009), Matia Ben Heresh, in: Y. Elstein, A. Lipsker, R. Kushelevsky (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Jewish Story, vol. 2, Ramat-Gan: 275-290. 27 Malkiel, D. (2003), The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World, Jerusalem. 28 Morgan, G. (2002), Medieval Misogyny and Gawain’s Outburst against Women, The Modern Language Review 97: 265-278. 29 Parush, I. (2004), Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society, Waltham, MA. 30 Reines, D. (2003), Jewish People in the Eyes of the Venetian Nobility, in: D. Malkiel, The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World, Jerusalem: 39-54. 31 Rosen, T. (2003), Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature, Philadelphia. 32 Rosenzweig, C. (2015), Bovo d’Antona by Elye Bokher. A Yiddish Romance – A Critical Edition with Commentary, Amsterdam. 33 Rubin, N. (2013), Conqueror of Hearts: Sefer Lev Tov – A Central Ethical Book in Yiddish, Tel Aviv. 34 Safran, B. (1987). Leone de Modena’s historical thinking, in: Twersky and Septimus, Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, 381-398. 35 Sartre, J.P. (1992), Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Nothingness, trans. by M. Warnock, London. 36 Shmeruk, C. (1981), Yiddish Literature in Poland: Historical Studies and Perspectives, Jerusalem. 37 Shmueli, E. (1942), Four Monographs, New York. 38 Simonsohn, S. (1997), Halakha and society in the writings of Leone da Modena, in: I. Twersky, B. Septimus (eds.), Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge, MA, 435-445. 39 Swanton, C. (2003), Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View, Oxford. 40 Thompson, S. (1966), Motif Index of Folk Literature, Bloomington: Indiana. 41 Weinberg, J. (2003), Leon Modena and the Fiore di Virtu, in: D. Malkiel (ed.), The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World, Jerusalem, 137-157. 42 Wojakowski, J. (2000), Jewish printing in old Poland (According to Polish sources), Revue Européenne des Études Hébräiques 4: 97-105. 43 Zabar, S. (2003), The Attitude of Modena to Visual Art, in: D. Malkiel (ed.), The Lion Shall Roar: Leon Modena and His World, Jerusalem.