Dude looks like a lady: You don't have to cross-dress to study the Torah anymore, yay.

On TV, women dish endless midrashim on the guys in their lives their idiosyncrasies in the bedroom, their chest hair and what to do about it. Me? I’m more a Talmud gal.

What’s a Talmud gal? We’re women who are more interested in using our minds to think than using our minds to speculate. We sit with hard ideas, and crack at them until we can suck the meat from the nut. We have well-trained minds, seasoned from years in the academy and neo-yeshivot where we are welcomed, where Yentls of the 21^st century can show up with blown-out hair and well-moisturized skin. We plunge into the page, tearing at the sugya. We wrestle with Rav, plunge with Papa and shimmy with Shimon.

Most of my gal-pals are Talmud gals as well. We don’t do midrash on men. We're more interested in the ideas behind ideas. We are bold, bright, independent and sexually liberated.

It’s been over 20 years since Babs made Yentl. As an outed Talmud gal, I admit it – there are few things hotter than stepping into the Talmud Time Machine with a sexy man across the table. What should we read today? Want pornography? Visit Sotah. A little legal sparring? Let’s stop at Sanhedrin. Some blood worthy of modern-Hollywood? Gimme more Zevachim! As the temperatures rise, we stop for a moment of stretching. It’s at this moment that I can appreciate my study partner – his long legs, the way his yarmulke falls to one side, his bleary eyes from focusing intently on the text. And I love the moment that he remembers that I am a woman. Is that steam on his spectacles?

Yes, once in a while, I’ll hear from some medievalist that I shouldn’t even be studying Talmud. The Tosefot will taunt. Some Tanna will contend that speaking to me is evil. And of course, the omnipresence of their chatter -- “Where is your husband, where are your children, where are your good-woman-of-valor qualities?” spins endlessly in my mind. But, thankfully, I have not only a well-trained mind, but a sensible one. I know that their opinions only represent one side. And I know that by me stepping into their world, I am finally giving voice to the other side. It’s not their world anymore. Now, it’s our world, too. All of ours.