Adam S. Ferziger, “Feminism and Heresy: The Construction of a Jewish Metanarrative,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77:3 (September 2009), 494–546 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Unhyphenated Jewish religious feminism
After 9/11 and with the reawakening of a feminist criticism of religion, particularly of Muslim women who insist on wearing the veil as an act of piety, Mahmood (2005) offered a new way to conceive the pious female subject " in a context where submission to certain forms of (external) authority is a condition for achieving the subject's potentiality. " Following her, but in contrast to her Focaultian analysis of subjectivization, we use Deleuze and Guattari's work in A Thousand Plateaus to propose a reading which views thoughts and actions as events of double articulation; neither unidirectional nor bidirectional but a product of lines of flight and a rupture of the hegemonic power through movement toward the margins. In order to do so, this case study discusses how Orthodox Jewish women are creating unhyphenated religious feminism without falling into the binaries of religion and feminism that assume conflicting rationalities. We interviewed 44 women who openly declared themselves feminists and religiously orthodox, all of them members of the feminist religious organization Kolech (" your voice " in English). Feminist scholars who previously engaged with Deleuze and Guattari's theory wrestled with concepts of identity and difference. By contrast, we attempt to show how the concept of flights to the margins in daily decisions and actions articulates a religious feminist female subjectivity as multiplicity in spaces where the authority of both is redefined. The women we interviewed positioned themselves on the seams of religion and feminism by experimenting with temporary actions that changed according to the conditions and possibilities of their lives. The women of Kolech teach us that a feminist critique of religion, and more generally of liberal democracy, is possible from the margins where subjects can exercise their desires and ideas more freely.
Religious Inquiries, 2014
This paper briefly examines two approaches to the position of women in Judaism. One is from an orthodox perspective, represented by Chana Weisberg, and the other is a non-orthodox and feminist approach, represented by Judith Plaskow. By examining these two approaches, we expect to contribute to a better understanding of the diverse views of women in contemporary Judaism. Plaskow criticizes the different positions for men and women in Judaism and views them as signs of a woman's otherness that has resulted from a patriarchal approach on the part of those who authored the scriptures. For Plaskow, the different positions of men and women can only mean a woman's inferiority. Weisberg on the other hand, acknowledges the different positions of men and women, but argues that these differences are indicators of a woman's superiority. Nevertheless, it is fair to state that their preoccupation with either the absolute rejection or acceptance of different positions for men and women has deterred them from addressing the fundamental and undeniable issue of the existence of gender differences. In addition, they have not addressed the possibility of these gender differences as a part of the philosophy behind the different positions of men and women in Judaism.
The Impact of Gender on Jewish Religious Thought. Exemplar: Jewish Feminist Theology
Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)
Jewish feminists have been criticizing and reformulating their tradition's theological language, concepts and ethics since the 1970s. With principal reference to the work of Judith Plaskow, Rachel Adler, Tamar Ross, and Melissa Raphael, this article outlines some key aspects of the Jewish feminist theological project. The article goes on to suggest that while Orthodox Jewish feminism might attend more closely to a revision of the gendered theology that informs its halakhic observance, the prophetic momentum of liberal Jewish feminist theology might be greater were it to profess a more personalist, realist account of the exercise of the divine redemptive will in history.
Idoloclasm: The First Task of Second Wave Liberal Jewish Feminism
Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)
This article suggests that Second Wave liberal Jewish feminism combined secular feminist criticism of the ideological roots of social injustice with traditional criticism of idolatry. Together, these closely related discourses allowed Jewish feminists to argue, with Christian feminists of the time, that the monosexual God who demands that idols be broken is himself an idol: a primary ideational and linguistic projection whose masculine character obstructs the political and existential becoming of women. Liberal Jewish feminists such as Judith Plaskow, in dispute with early Orthodox Jewish feminism, therefore insisted that Jewish feminism must begin with a counter-idolatrous reform of the theological concepts that underpin the relationship between God, self, and world, not with making permissible alterations to halakhah. However, while liberal Jewish feminists reclaimed some of the female aspects of the Jewish God (notably the Shekhinah), the point of reforming a tradition is to be faithful to it. They did not join their more radical Jewish sisters in a more or less pagan break with ethical monotheism, not least because the latter's criticism of idolatry funded their own prophetic drive to the liberation of both women and God from captivity to their patriarchal idea.
ABSTRACT The present article examines the way in which Jewish theology deals with the potential clash between Divine injunctions and moral imperatives. I take Modern-Orthodox feminism (“religious feminism”)1 as my test case, scrutinizing some of the ideas it has developed about dealing with contradictions between religion and moral principles. The decision for religious feminism is based on the fact that its theoretical writings offer a trenchant moral critique of religious patriarchalism and the injustices done in its name, chiefly to women, but also direct this criticism inward, in pursuit of internal revision of the religious system, in a process that tries to preserve the obligation to obey Divine commands rather than challenge them. This leads to the question of whether a religious approach that has accepted certain moral principles (in this case, gender equality) can serve as a privileged model for examining the relationship between religion and morality.
God of our fathers: Feminism and Judaism—A contradiction in terms?
Women's Studies International Forum, 1997
Synopsis-There are two strands in my life that have assumed an ever-growing importance to me-feminism and Judaism. They both run through my day to day lived experiences, weave in and out through their numerous layers of meaning, entwining me in their threads. As I have grown more deeply into one, so I have grown more deeply into the other. This paper is a search to discover why. What possible connection can my feminism have to this ancient religion embedded in patriarchal rule, steeped in a tradition that denies me? How can I find a way for my two selves? My search will take me through many fields-through history, the law and biblical texts, through myths, fiction and poetry-each one adding another strand, another piece to the puzzle, as I work my way towards finding my final answer.
The Maturation of Orthodox Feminist Theology Tamar Ross' [henceforth, TR] monograph is the most profound theological work produced by a contemporary Orthodox Jew. Most modern Orthodox theological positions are staked by male clergy who are trying to find a usable past more culturally accessible and less parochial as what is presented as Orthodox Judaism in our time. Building on Blu Greenberg's On Women and Judaism, TR has not only defended her place as a participant in contemporary Orthodox Judaism in order to accomplish her Feminist goals, she has actually produced a larger work of modern Orthodox thought that is academically rigorous, without any apologetics. She is meticulously collegial, yet uncompromisingly focused on identifying and correcting the seemingly conflicting pushes and pulls of being Orthodox, modern, and female.
Die Religionen der Menschheit Begrtindet von Judaism lll Culture and Modernity Cover: The Duke of Sussex' Italian Pentateuch (British Library MS15423 flsv) ttaly, ca. L441-7467. 1. Auflage Alle Rechte vorbehalten, 2020
This chapter provides an interpretive literary history of feminist engagements with Judaism in the U.S. in the last fifty years.