Between 1170 and 1180.

According to the Rambam it is forbidden. See his Mishneh Torah. If I remember correctly, it is forbidden, because its for women to do so.

Moses Maimonides, known among Jews as The Rambam, lived from 1135 to 1204. He was born in Cordoba, Spain, and later lived in Faiyum, near Cairo, where he served as official physician to the reigning Sultan. Maimonides is universally recognized as among the greatest minds who ever lived. He wrote ten treatises on medicine. For his own people, he wrote a commentary on the entire Mishna (Oral Torah); a vast compendium of Halakha (Jewish law) which he named Mishneh Torah; and the Guide for the Perplexed, in which he explains various aspects of Torah-outlook and compares them with Aristotelianism.

The Rambam's influence is still strongly felt in the religious Jewish world. Though many avoided his Guide (as they saw no need to familiarize themselves with Aristotle), the Mishneh Torah has become one of the chief underpinnings of Jewish law since its writing; and there are many hundreds of published commentaries on it.

The Rambam (which is a Hebrew acronym) is identical with Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), a rabbi and prolific author of important Torah-works. His magnum opus was the Mishneh Torah ("Yad Hachazakah"), a codex of Jewish law upon which all later such works are based to a large extent.

If someone says "a Rambam," it could mean a volume of the above set of books, since we often refer to a rabbi by the name of his writings.

There is no one thing that all Jews believe, but the religion is based on the idea of ethical monotheism. It has liberal and traditional branches. Israel is the only Jewish country in the world, though there are Jews living in most other countries, with the largest population in North America.

Some important books of the religion are:

The Tanakh (hebrew bible)

The Torah (the first 5 books of the bible)

The The Mishna

The Gamara

The Zohar

The Shulchan Aruch

The Mishneh Torah