11. yüzyılda Fransa’da yaşayan ünlü Yahudi bilgini Salomon ben Isaac’ın—ya da günümüzde tanındığı adıyla, Rashi—oğlu yoktu, ama üç kızı vardı. Rashi ve erkek torunları hakkında çok yazılıp çizilmesine karşın kızları hakkında hemen hemen hiç araştırma yapılmamıştı. Ancak Maggie Anton, on yıllık araştırma sürecinin ardından öğrendiklerini tarihi roman olarak kitaplaştırmış. Efsaneye göre, Rashi’nin kızları, kadınların kutsal metinleri okumalarının yasak olduğu bir dönemde son derece bilgili, kültürlü kadınlardı.

Yazar, üç kitaplık serinin ilk kitabı olan JOHEVED’i kendisi basmış. Bu baskı, neredeyse hiç tanıtım yapılmaksızın 17 binden fazla satmış, Book Expo America’da PMA ve Foreword Magazine tarafından ödüllendirilmiş. Penguin/Plume tarafından tekrar yayınlanacak (ve hakları şimdiden İtalya ve Brezilya’da satılmış) kitabı MIRIAM ve RACHEL adli romanlar takip edecek. Her bir roman, Rashi’nin başka bir kızının hayatini ilk defa gözler önüne seriyor…

Penguin/Plume, Fall 2007

Set in 11^th century France, RASHI’S DAUGHTERS explores the lives and loves of the three daughters of the famous Jewish scholar Salomon ben Isaac, now known as Rashi.

Book One focuses on Rashi’s eldest daughter, Joheved, torn between her duty to her family and her passion for learning. When she is betrothed to the young scholar Meir ben Samuel, she has yet another passion to contend with. Maggie Anton is currently working on book two in the trilogy, MIRIAM.

JOHEVED, self-published in 2005, has sold an astounding 17,000 copies with minimal publicity and advertising and won a triple crown award at BEA this year: the PMA Ben Franklin Award for Best New Voice – Fiction, Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award for historical fiction, and an Independent Publisher Book Award for historical fiction as well.

Maggie Anton is a scientist and scholar who started researching Rashi and his family nearly ten years ago.

NA Rights to Penguin/Plume; Italian rights to Piemme; Brazilian rights to Rocco

Editorial Reviews

Naomi Ragen, Dec 2004
"This carefully researched work provides a glimpse into the little-known medieval Jewish world in which Rashi lived and worked."

Judith R. Baskin, Dec 2004
 Blending passages of Talmudic argument with imagined human dramas of the medieval scholar's household, it entertains and educates.

Dvora Weisberg, Nov 2004
The way Anton's extensive research and imagination combine to retrieve the lives of Jewish women is realistic and captivating.

Library Journal, July 12, 2005
Much like The Red Tent, it delves into rituals of women who were forgotten by history and marginalized by society.

The Jewish Press, Jan 11, 2006
Recreates a medieval French community faithful to little-known details of Jewish ritual, including marital relations, childbirth, life-cycle events and holidays.

The J of Northern California, August 25, 2005
Takes the torch from Anita Diamant, while using more research to explain the phenomenon that is Rashi and his daughters.

Jewish Times News, August 18, 2005
Anton turns sketchy knowledge of Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi) and his family into an absorbing historical novel.

Book Description
Rashi, one of the greatest Jewish scholars who ever lived, had no sons, only three daughters. Much has been written about Rashi and his grandsons, the Tosafot, but almost nothing of his daughters. Legend has it that they were learned in a time when women were forbidden to study the sacred texts. Rashi's Daughters tells the story of these forgotten women.

About the Author
Maggie Anton is the author of a projected trilogy of historical novels, Rashi's Daughters, the first of which, Book One – Joheved, was published in July 2005. Born Margaret Antonofsky in Los Angeles, California, she was raised in a secular, socialist household and reached adulthood with little knowledge of the Jewish religion. All that changed when Dave Parkhurst entered her life, and they both discovered Judaism as adults. That was the start of a lifetime of adult Jewish education, synagogue involvement, and ritual observance. This was in addition to raising their children, Emily and Ari, and working full time as a clinical chemist.

Starting in 1994, Maggie began studying Talmud with Rachel Adler (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion). Since then she has studied with Judith Hauptman (Jewish Theological Seminary), Janet Sternfeld Davis (University of Judaism) and Dvora Weisberg (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion). She currently studies with Aaron Katz (Academy of Jewish Religion), with whom she is working on a translation of Machzor Vitry.

In 1997, as her nest was emptying and her mother was declining with Alzheimer's Disease, she became intrigued with the idea that Rashi, one of Judaism’s greatest scholars, had no sons, only three daughters. Using techniques she developed doing her family’s genealogy, she began to research Rashi’s family, and the idea of a book about them was born.

Maggie lives in Glendale, California, with Dave, her husband of 34 years, where she is writing Rashi’s Daughters: Book Two - Miriam. She is a member of the Association for Jewish Studies and the Medieval Academy of America.