Here’s a confession: When I find out what women scholars are learning about Jewish women’s lives—and how they’re analyzing what they discover—I’m entranced. There’s hardly any subject that strikes me as too arcane; I’m almost indiscriminately drawn to it all, even when some of the findings have a believe-it-or-not quality, like the fact that in a sect of modern Karaite Jews in California the custom is for women who are menstruating to sit at a separate Shabbat table. (This from a paper delivered at an academic conference.)