By Simon Rocker
While religious demonstrators in Israel have taken to the streets to demand that women be kept in their place, here is a more enlightened view from the Middle Ages.
The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York has revealed that in its library is a copy of a 500-year-old siddur written by the Italian scribe Rabbi Abraham Ben Mordechai Farissol.
Traditionally, men offer a daily blessing for having not been made a woman, while women give praise for having been created "according to Your will".
Farissol instead offered this alternative for women to recite: "Blessed Are You… For You made Me a Woman and Not a Man".