Shifrah bas Joseph

Little is known about the life of eighteenth-century tekhine composer Shifrah bas Joseph (also possibly known Shifrah of Brody); the historicity of the author is not even fully established. Based on information in her Tekhine Imre Shifre (Tekhine of the Words of Shifrah), some of which is slightly contradictory, she was likely the daughter of a learned rabbi named Joseph and the wife of Ephraim Segal, a dayyan (rabbinic judge) in Brody. It is also possible that her husband and she were actually from Posen (Poznań). Uncommonly for such a work, her tekhine is introduced by an unsigned passage which describes her as "prominent, learned, and wealthy," expresses that several prominent figures urged that the tekhine should be published, and mentions that she and her husband plan to travel to the land of Israel. In 1777, a sizeable group from her community eventually joined a migration to Safed, and it is conceivable that she and her husband were among them.