Freḥa Bat Avraham (Hebrew: פריחא בת רבי אברהם בן אדיבה, died 1756), was a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. Bat Avraham was a member of the Moroccan Bar Adiba family, and

emigrate Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...

d from Tunis to Morocco in the 1730s with her father and brother. She was known for her scholarly knowledge, and was described as well-versed in

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

. She composed

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s and

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

. As such, she was highly unusual for her sex, time, and place. Writing under the name of Bat Joseph, Frehat bat Avraham composed biblical commentary and was also known to have owned a large library.Elior, R. (2023). ''The Unknown History of Jewish Women Through the Ages.'' p. 668. Freha died during the conquest of Tunis by the Algerians. Her father had a

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

built in her memory, which became a place of

pilgrimage A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...

for

Tunisian Jew The history of the Jews in Tunisia extended nearly two thousand years and goes back to the Punic era. The Jewish community in Tunisia is no doubt older and grew up following successive waves of immigration and proselytism before its develo ...

ish women. She was revered as a holy person, or kedoshah.

References

* Emily Taitz, Sondra Henry & Cheryl Tallan,
The JPS Guide to Jewish Women: 600 B.C.E. to 1900 C.E.
', 2003 18th-century Moroccan Jews 18th-century Moroccan women Jewish poets 18th-century women writers 18th-century Moroccan poets 1756 deaths Jewish women writers Writers from Tunis Moroccan women poets {{Morocco-poet-stub