The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1918 page)

Rabbinical seminaries
.

Seminaries for the training of Jewish
rabbis
. Traditionally, rabbis were trained in
yeshivot
, but under the influence of the
Haskalah
, it was felt that the old
Talmudic
curriculum was not adequate for the modern professional rabbi. In the USA, the
Conservative
Jewish Theological Seminary was founded in 1886, the Reform
Hebrew
Union College in 1875, and the Elchanan Theological Seminary (later a unit of
Yeshiva University
) in 1897.

 
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(
c.
713–801 (AH 95–185))
. An outstanding
S
f
and one of the few women in Islam to be considered the actual equal of men. Her name R
bi‘a means ‘fourth’; she was the fourth daughter of a poor family, and while still a child sold into slavery, but later freed. She devoted herself to a life of prayer, poverty, and seclusion. She combined extreme asceticism with a purely disinterested love of God, and is generally acknowledged as the first S
f
to teach this aspect of piety which later became prominent in Sufism. Miracles were attributed to her, and her sayings and teachings were handed down from one generation to another of S
f
s.

 
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Rachel
.

Wife of
Jacob
and one of the matriarchs of Israel. Her tomb is a place of
pilgrimage
, especially for barren women, since Rachel was barren for many years.

 
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