excommunicated and banned and beaten." Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg also ruled that a battered wife could petition a rabbinical court to compel a husband to grant a divorce, with a monetary fine owed to her on top of the regular ketubah money. These rulings occurred in the midst of societies where wife-beating was legally sanctioned and routine. Education Jewish women had a limited education. They were taught to read, write, run a household. They were also given some education in religious law that was essential to their daily lives, such as keeping kosher. Both Christian and Jewish girls were educated in the home. Although Christian girls may have had a male or female tutor, most Jewish girls had a female tutor. Higher learning was uncommon for women. (See Female Education in the Medieval Period). There are more sources of education for Jewish women living in Muslim-controlled lands. For example, Middle Eastern Jewry had an abundance of female literates. Many women gained enough education to help their husbands out in business or even run their own. Jewish women seem to have lent money to Christian women throughout Europe. Women were also copyists, midwives, spinners, and weavers. Views on the education of women From certain contexts of the Mishnah and Talmud it can be derived that women should not study Mishnah. There were female Tannaitic Torah jurists such as Rabbi Meir's wife, Rabbi Meir's daughter, and the daughter of Haninah ben Teradion Haninah's daughter is again mentioned as a sage in the non-Talmud 3rd-century text Tractate Semahot verse 12:13. Rabbi Meir's wife is credited with teaching him how to understand some verses from Isaiah. In the Mishnah there is also a reference to certain women teaching men the Torah from behind a curtain, so that no man would be offended. A yeshiva, or school for Talmudic studies, is an "exclusively masculine environment" because of absence of women from these studies. Maimonides Maimonides tended to elevate the status of women above that which was common for the Middle Ages. For example, Maimonides permitted women to study Torah despite the fact that other contemporary and preceding legal opinions of his time did not. Haim Yosef David Azulai, AKA 'The Hida' The Hida wrote that women should study the Mishnah only if they want to. According to the Hida, the prohibition of teaching women does not apply to a motivated woman or girl. His response