Tekhine imohos (Women’s Supplication of the Matriarchs)

This trilingual text—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish—written by a woman for a female audience is rather anomalous for this period. The Hebrew introduction emphasizes the women’s prayer, emphasizing the spiritual power of women who pray for the Shekhinah and admonishing them to attend services thrice daily. It also includes a rejoinder to women to heed their husbands and a Hebrew prayer for the New Moon. The Yiddish paraphrase of the Aramaic piyyut (liturgical poem), is essentially the same plea to God for redemption on the merits of the matriarchs, but without the kabbalistic references that would have been inaccessible to most of this text’s Ashkenazic female audience.