How Rabbi Akiva’s Wife Became an Orthodox Role Model

In July 2020, Rabbi Menachem Karmel of Yeshiva Gedola Montreal replied to a query posed by a "Group of Girls." The Dear Abby-style exchange appeared in a children's magazine popular with the right-wing Orthodox community, which, loosely speaking, brings together everyone from the more stringently observant modern Orthodox to self-described Yeshivish Jews. The letter writers asked Karmel why pictures of girls did not appear in the pages of the periodical. "We feel misrepresented when we see pictures of boys our age, but not girls," they wrote.