JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

feminism
normativity. An ideology of compulsory heterosexuality, not
innate inclination, feminists argue, has pressured women into
marriage with men and defined homosexuality as sinful. Feminist
analysis has noted that in contrast to male homosexuality,
lesbianism was never clearly defined in biblical literature,
and never condemned with the severity of male homosexuality
in rabbinic literature. Similarly, the condemnation of male
masturbation in rabbinic texts finds no female counterpart,
and the genital self-examination by women that is mandated
in rabbinic laws regulating the laws of niddah replicates masturbatory
acts. Freedom of sexual expression for women and
men is considered central to women’s rights but also essential
to reclaiming women’s control over their bodies after centuries
in which fathers, husbands, and male rabbis regulated women’s
lives (Schneer and Aviv; Magonet).
*Lesbian Jewish identity as both homosocial and homosexual
has been marginalized in the recent efflorescence of
queer Jewish studies and its attention to the (male) body as a
site of Jewish cultural, sexual, and religious identity. Lesbian
thinkers have emphasized the body as a source of the spiritual,
celebrating manifestations of women’s sexuality and arguing
the centrality of eroticism to religiosity (Plaskow, Standing
Again at Sinai). Although numerous gay and lesbian synagogues,
as well as a World Congregation of Gay and Lesbian
Jewish Organizations have been founded in recent decades,
only the Reform and Reconstructionist rabbinical seminaries
ordain openly gay and lesbian rabbis (R. Alpart, S.L. Elwell, and
S. Idelson, eds. Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation (2001)).
Adler has argued that the traditional male-only environments
of rabbinic study not only fostered homoeroticism,
but was dominated by a “methodolatry” that revolved around
male concerns, omitting those of women. Responding to a
husband’s post-World War II query, asking a rabbi if he is halakhically
obligated to divorce his wife because her incarceration
in a concentration camp may have included forced intercourse,
Adler notes that only the man’s requirements form
the question and not those of his wife. In responding to the
absence of women from the formative practices and exegeses
of rabbinic Judaism, Plaskow insists that women as well
as men stood at Sinai and received God’s revelation, and that
their experiences and interpretations should be included as
equally normative as the rabbinic law developed by men in
response to the revelation.
Other feminist analyses of halakhah proceed differently.
Both R. Biale and Hauptman have pointed to halakhic interpretations
that have been favorable to women, and to sociological
processes of analyzing halakhah that result in lenient
conclusions. These scholars explain certain traditional practices,
such as excluding women from being called to the Torah
for an aliyah, as reflections of particular social settings, not
as eternal legal dicta.
Changes in Feminist Theory
Postmodernism, which has had a strong influence on feminist
theory, has changed the modes of understanding power and
analyzing language. Instead of viewing power solely as hierarchical
domination, feminist theory, influenced by M. Foucault,
has come to understand power as capillary, a disciplinary
regime maintaining its force not only through conventional
sources of domination, but also through the unconventional,
including language itself. Complementing Foucault’s understanding
of the exercise of power are studies by Gramsci
and Althusser of the consent of the disempowered to regimens
that maintain their subjugation. Changing the understanding
of power opens new ways to interpret women’s position
within Judaism. T. El-Or’s study of ḥaredi (ultra-Orthodox)
women demonstrates that their education is designed to keep
them in a state of ignorance and subordination to men. By
contrast, Sered’s studies argue that women’s piety and rituals
create a sense of personal self-worth and permit female
religious leadership within women-only domains, such as the
mikveh and ezrat nashim. L. Levitt has challenged classical
liberalism as a tool of feminist empowerment, and M. Peskowitz
has called for greater attention to the ideological function
of rabbinic texts in creating power structures and the adherence
to them. Surprisingly little attention has been given
by Jewish feminism to theorizing race and class, in contrast
to other feminisms. E. Shohat has written on Arab-Jewish
identity and the biases toward Europe in Jewish selfunderstanding,
and K. Brodkin has described How Jews Became
White Folks (1999) in the United States. Feminist efforts
to address antisemitism as part of a larger critique of
racism are notable within a multicultural atmosphere that
has tended to ignore Jewish experience (Biale, Galchinsky,
and Heschel, eds.; M. Brettschneider, ed.; Bulkin, Pratt, and
Smith, eds.).
Contemporary attention to the ways Jewish women’s
experiences have differed from those of men has led to both
internal and external critiques of Judaism. While countless
Jewish theologians in previous generations proclaimed the
moral superiority of Jewish law, most disregarded the ethical
significance of the inferior status of women in Jewish law.
Written in apologetic terms for a wider Christian readership,
traditional Jewish theology tended to defend the traditional,
subordinate role of women as an expression of respect for a
femininity that is considered intrinsic and not culturally produced.
Jewish feminism has struggled with the fine line between
its critique of Judaism’s sexism and antisemitic attacks
on Judaism.
Bibliography: A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish
Women in Medieval Europe (2004); J. Plaskow, “Feminist Anti-Judaism
and the Christian God,” in: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion,
7:2 (1991), 99–108; K. von Kellenbach. Anti-Judaism in Feminist
Religious Writings (1994); S. Heschel, “Configurations of Patriarchy,
Judaism and Nazism in German Feminist Thought,” in: T. Rudavsky
(ed.), Gender and Judaism (1995); idem, “Jüdische-feministische Theologie
und Antijudaismus in christlich-feministischer Theologie,” in
L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz (ed.), Feministische Theologie und die Verantwortung
für die Geschitchte (1988); M. Friedman, Martin Buber’s
Life and Work: The Early Years 1878–1923 (1981); K. Goldman, Beyond
the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Ju-
756 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6