antiquity, women were ordained in the fifth century CE, and alternate sages and texts ripple in and out of the ones we know from history. This work of midrash, interpretive stories, opens with: Before God began to create anything, before there was heaven or earth, night or day, good or bad, in or out, up or down, God said, "I must create Myself." and heads toward its conclusion with: It was late afternoon. Tirzah, the designated messiah for our planet, was sitting in her study, up in sixth heaven. These are two of the ways in which this book is different. Liturgist and midrash writer Andrew Ramer not only reinvents Jewish history. He also reinvents his own family, the Talmud, and the Hebrew Bible, adding excerpts from texts by some of our ancient women sages, inviting you to ask yourself, "What does it mean to be a Jew in the twenty-first century? What grounds me and guides me in our tradition? And what gives me hope and dreams in a troubled world of trembling possibilities?"

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