Osnat Barazani (alternately Asnat or Asenath) Barazani, was a woman rabbi in Mosul, Iraq, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Now there's a book about her, Osnat and Her Dove, written by a Kurdish-Moroccan Mizrahhi woman, Sigal Samuel, after she found out about the existence of the earliest recorded female rabbi.

"The daughter of Rabbi Shmuel ben Netanel Ha-Levi of Kurdistan, who had no sons, Osnat was trained to be a learned scholar of Jewish sacred texts and mysticism. She married Rabbi Jacob Mizrahi, one of the best students at her father’s yeshiva, and helped him run the school after her father died. In fact, Osnat did most of the teaching while her husband focused on his own studies.

"After Jacob died, Osnat made a smooth transition to becoming the head of the yeshiva, splitting her time between teaching and making desperate attempts at fundraising to keep the institution afloat. In time, Osnat’s son Samuel became an outstanding scholar and was sent by his mother to Baghdad to run a yeshiva there. Osnat herself is remembered within the Jewish and general Kurdish communities as a great leader, teacher and mystical miracle worker.

"Unusually, Osnat was never made to do typical women’s work, and her father insisted that her husband Jacob promise never to demand she do household chores. “I grew up on the laps of scholars, anchored to my father of blessed memory… I was never taught any work but sacred study,” Osnat wrote in one of her surviving letters."

Support from an unusual father mattered to so many women who were able to breach the barriers thrown up against their sex. Having no brothers was another factor. 

The image above shows people flocking to see Rabbi Osnat, the wonder-working healer.

"Crucially, in a 2000 article published by Yad Izhak Ben Zvi (Hebrew only), husband and wife scholars Prof. Renee Levine Melammed and Dr. Uri Melammed contradicted earlier assumptions that Osnat was not as learned as men, and therefore incapable of producing letters in accomplished, scholarly Hebrew that referenced Jewish sources.

"The article authors point out the biblical and Talmudic references in her writings, and that contemporary documents make not a single mention of opposition to Osnat taking over as yeshiva head after her husband’s demise. Additionally, she is referred to in reverential terms by community leaders and great scholars, such Rabbi Pinchas Hariri, who addressed her in a letter as “My mother, my rabbi.”

“I found the juxtaposition of those words just amazing,” said Samuel, who used them in “Osnat and Her Dove.”

"However, the author drew the line at legends that although impressive, were not suitable for young audiences. For instance, there is one whereby Osnat froze an intruder in his tracks before he could rape her by merely calling out holy names."

You can see more of the illustrations from the book here:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/worlds-1st-female-rabbi-led-a-16th-century-mosul-yeshiva-for-kurdish-jewry/?fbclid=IwAR31FvDnrcDLcKZS2tPqIGl1eXK4fBPJUPKC9dURjFMsWNKrO9WnqLQ5Eb8