Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues

This article brings to the fore an understudied aspect of ancient Jewish women’s lives: pilgrimage donations to the Jerusalem Temple, made via a procedure called mishkal. While the laws about mishkal, a procedure by which a person could donate their worth to the Temple by giving an amount equivalent to their bodily weight, are formulated in the masculine, stories about mishkal in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli consistently feature female protagonists. These stories thus may be read as recalling a form of Temple piety particularly associated with women, as well as enabling the construction of Temple memory. The rabbinic stories about mishkal can also be located within a wider culture of women’s pilgrimage in the ancient Mediterranean.