Empowering Women in the Lessons of Rabbanit Yemima Mizrahi

Abstract

This paper examines the rhetoric used by Rabbanit Yemima Mizrahi in her weekly Torah portion lectures to women, in which she applies a feminine point of view. For eighteen years, Rabbanit Mizrahi has used her unique rhetorical style to attract a faithful, diverse audience of Jewish women in Israel and abroad. This study investigates her rhetoric in fifty videotaped lectures and presents five of her rhetorical tools: metaphor and simile, puns, syntactical-rhetorical repetition, humor, and slang. The study also examines how her rhetoric attracts women from all walks of life, irrespective of their level of religious observance, age, and socio-cultural background, and without proselytizing. Moreover, she uses her rhetoric in a direct way, avoiding any type of authoritative distance, to transmit a message of sisterhood through empowerment of women as she interprets the Torah portion.