For the source text click/tap here: Ketubot 23
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Following the principle of ha-peh she-asar hu ha-peh she-hitir the Mishna (our daf) teaches that a Jewish woman who was held captive is believed when she says, “Nishbeti u’tehorah ani –
I was held as a prisoner, but I am pure [I was never sexually molested].”
We explore the representation of molestation in the Bavli and more recently by Prof Tamar Herzig who exposed previously unknown evidence of the organized gang rape of a group of enslaved Moroccan Jewish girls and women in Livorno – a port city on the Ligurian Sea – at the beginning of the 17th century.