It would have been hard to imagine that the Talmud could have its influencer – until a charismatic young woman named Miriam Anzovin landed on TikTok with humorous videos punctuated with the names of birds.
Broadcast on social media in a flirtatious and familiar tone – not to mention a neat hairstyle and flawless makeup – his comments on the Daf Yomi (the daily study of a page of the Talmud) attracted the attention of the media jews [américains] and Israelis at the start of the year. His videos titled Daf Reactions [“Je réagis au Daf”]also posted on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, earned him his quarter hour of fame and clickbait titles praising his “a little grain of salt on the Talmud” who lead “the Daf Yomi to the ears of millennials and Generation Z”.
Fighting for the place of women
Miriam’s latest video [datée du 19 février, voir ci-dessous] shows that she does not intend to be satisfied with this sudden notoriety and her tens of thousands of subscribers on the networks who in turn compliment her for her eyeliner, her clothing choices and her ability to make the study of the Talmud styled by calling the great sages “frenemies” [“faux amis”, de friends et ennemies]. After a warning that the video in question is directed “to a very informed public”, Miriam relies on a text from the Talmud addressing the issue of rape to denounce the treatment reserved for women by the religious authorities.
She explains that this is also one of the reasons that led her to leave the bosom of Orthodoxy, having herself been the victim of a sexual assault. Miriam notably fires red bullets at the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and its positions on the question of marriage and divorce, acknowledging in passing the work of a collective of women fighting for change, and ending her video with a personal message, delivered in Hebrew and English, “to those who cling to power thanks to the ambient misogyny and to the sexual aggressors who count on the fact that no one will believe their victims, since they are women and children”. Planting her gaze into the camera without blinking behind her eyeliner and eye shadow, Miriam replies: “Fuck you, you poor shit.”
The Talmud page that inspired her evokes the devastating consequences of raping one’s wife cohen (“Jewish high priest”). According to Miriam’s interpretation, it is not the rape itself that is considered the primary transgression in this passage, but the fact that it was committed against the wife of a cohen – after the assault, the victim is forbidden to return home to her husband.
In the sarcastic style that characterizes her, Miriam recalls that, of course, the wife “suffered terrible trauma” most “perhaps we could worry about how the important men around her must have felt?”.