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and deprives young women from feeling pride in
and solidarity with those who made it possible for
women to become full participants in contemporary life, including academic life. Likewise, Jewish students are shortchanged by Laura’s “longing
for change.” Suppose Laura’s vision of Jewish
Studies prevails. What would be the results? The
answer, in my view, is very problematic. Laura’s
methodology makes it difficult for students (Jewish or not) to treat Judaism respectfully, let alone
feel at home in it. On the basis of Laura’s analysis
of rabbinic sources, a student cannot but feel outrage, disappointment, and even contempt toward
the tradition. The actual, lived experience of Jews
through the ages will become, at best, texts to be
deconstructed with the exclusive lens of feminist
norms rather than external realities to be understood on their own terms.
While I agree that feminism is essential to the
growth of Jewish Studies, I have serious reservations
about Laura’s methodology and its implications. I see
Jewish Studies as a perpetual pursuit of truth that I
take to be a religious activity informed by contemporary science and philosophy Such scientific inquiry
is necessarily self-criticaland ever evolving,but it presupposesthat reality is not merely a hurnan construct.
In accord with the messianic impulse of Judaism, I
live in the awareness of the ”not yet”: the world is
unredeemedbut not unredeemable. This is a hopeful
stance toward life that recognizes the created nature
of humans and their existential dependence on God.
As Jews, scholars of JewishStudies, and feminists, we
could contribute to the process of redemption if we
remember where we come from and to whom we are
ultimately accountable.
Hava Tirosh-Samuelsonis an Associate Professor of Hist o y at Arizona State University.She is the author of the
award winning book, Between Worlds: The Life and
Work of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon, and
numerous articles on Jewish intellectual histoy in the
Middle Ages and the early modern period.
Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics
Rachel Adler (The Jewish Publication Society, 1998. 269 pp. $24.95)
Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice
Judith Hauptman (Westview PressJ998. 285 pp. $20.00)
Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History
Miriam Peskowitz (University of California Press, 1997. 249 pp. $17.95)
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Jewish feminists -and also reveal some of the arguments and debates that currently enliven the field of
Jewish feminist thought.
In Rereading the Rabbis, Judith Hauptman offers a
methodology for exploring the ways in which women,
and their particular concerns, are handled in talmudic
law. She stresses the importance of thinking about the
rabbinic legal system as a whole and emphasizes the
need to read individual passages both contextually and
intertextually. Such a close and careful reading makes it
obvious how a particular passage works in relation to
associated rabbinic texts and how it functions as part of
How does a feminist read rabbinic text? What questions does she bring to her reading? What resources
does she draw on? What methods does she apply?
Three recent publications - Rereading the Rabbis: A
Woman’s Voice by Judith Hauptman; Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gendel; and History by Miriam Peskowitz;
and Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and
Ethics by Rachel Adler - demonstrate a sampling of
the different questions, concerns, and methodologies
that Jewish feminists bring to the study of traditional
text. Taken together, they provide examples of the
breadth and diversity of the work of contemporary
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January2000
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She claims that such a reading is necessaryfor the writing of a "credible" book on women and rabbinic material. Read together, the two authors provide insight
into different ways that Jewish feminists can enter ongoing academic debates regarding the nature of scholarship and what it means to be objective.
Rachel Adler provides a different twist on this
debate: she is actively writing theology. While
Peskowitz and Hauptman are working out methodologies for reading and thinking about rabbinic text,
Adler's concern is to engender Judaism as a spiritual
and ethical praxis. Given this concern, it is not surprising that Adler devotes a significant portion of her
book to a considerationof halachah, Jewish law. She
finds the sexism of classical halachah damaging to
both women and men and argues that this is a problem that cannot be ignored, nor can it be "fixed" by
well-intentioned tampering with the system. Yet Adler
takes issue with those who would do away with
halachah completely. She emphasizes the need for a
system through which "the stories and values of Judaism can be embodied in communal practice" and
wants to generate a new halachah that is both engendered and liberatory. Adler clearly differentiates
between her work and that of "secular" scholarship.
Careful readers will note the many ways in which all
three of these books complement and challenge each
other. They are all worth a serious read.
the larger narrative in which it is embedded. Reading (or
rereading)the rabbis in this way allows Hauptman to argue that although it is not possible to "depatriarchalize
the Talmud, " it is possible to see the rabbis struggling to
move the law in a direction that is sympathetic to women
and responsive to their concerns.
Hauptman takes pains to delineate the limits of her
work. She differentiates between the study of the sociocultural history of the Jewish people - which she does not
provide - and the examination of the dynamic construction of Jewish law - upon which she focuses. In this way,
her book invites comparison to Miriam Peskowitz' work,
since Spinning Fantasies comes to similar material with a
very different approach. Rather than attempting to separate the law from its sociocultural context, Peskowitz argues that the rabbis' thinking about gender can only be
understood in relation to the historical and cultural world
of which they were a part. She cautions that ideas about
gender are not always easy to tease out of history or text,
as they tend to be taken for granted in everyday life. In
this way, constructions of gender become "naturalized"
into unremarkable givens, and it is the historian's task to
call attention to this processand the assumptions it brings
forth.
Peskowitz pushes her readers - and herself - to
consider the ways in which our own assumptions about
gender play an active role in our reading of rabbinic text.
She complicates the notion of scholarly objectivity by noting that we, too, are in the process of constructing gender as we read. Hauptman, on the other hand, argues
forcefully for the possibility of an objective reading of text.
Rabbi Deborah Glanzberg-Krainin is a doctoral student
in religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey Merle Feld (SUNY Press, 1999,260pp, $24)
The only thing wrong with this magnificent book is
that it's too short. Rarely have I enjoyed the intellectual
pleasure I experienced when reading Merle Feld'sA Spiritual Life. Her voice is warm and vivid, and as I read her
words she seemed to become my best friend, or at least
someone I wish would be my best friend. Her book is
an autobiographyand a collection of poetry. It describes
her own journey as a young, married housewife and
the new opportunities and challenges offered by the
feminist movement. While many such accounts have
been written of American societal transformations
during the crucial years of the 1 9 6 0 ~Merle's
~
is a
remarkably thoughtful account of how feminism came
to Judaism. Married to a university Hillel rabbi, she had
the chance to watch the first stirrings of feminism among
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January2000
college students. In addition to changes in domestic
arrangements, feminism brought a promise of a new
identity on the spiritual level. Prayer, she writes, "is
the articulation of something very particular a t the
core of one's being, flung out into the universe. Perhaps it finds a mark, perhaps not. The essential thing
is the articulation and the flinging." Her praying became feminist gradually, and her description of that
transformation is both a fascinating documentary of
a crucial era in Jewish history and an inspiration to all
of us to take seriously the imperative that the spiritual
and the ethical must be intertwined.
Susannah Heschel is Eli Black Professor of Iewish
Studies at Dartmouth College.
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