Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (Paperback) - Common

by Judith Plaskow

A feminist critique of Judaism as a patriarchal tradition and an exploration of the increasing involvement of women in naming and shaping Jewish tradition.Author

Judith Plaskow is a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College. She is cofounder and coeditor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.

Genres: Judaism, Jewish, Religion, Feminism, Nonfiction, Judaica, Theology

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Elisabeth M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subject is Jewish feminism, but the book's relevance doesn't end there. Not only does it deal with specifically feminist and Jewish concerns, it also gets into subjects including hermeneutics, the workings of community, the influence of language in our religious lives, and how one approaches God by the metaphors we use to describe the indescribable.

For the past few years I've been invested in an exploration of gender studies; however, when it comes to feminist writing, I'm hard to please. Having developed my own approach, I'm easily annoyed by what I see as common mistakes in feminist presumption, voice, and direction. That said, Plaskow has done nothing but impress me. It's relieving to find a voice on this subject that deals with the problems so well. She's a rock-solid, well researched scholar, with clear views that are easy to engage (whether to agree, disagree, or just to chew on them).

It's so easy to reject and disengage from a tradition once you realize how much dirty laundry it has. What I find most exciting about Plaskow's work is that she doesn't disown her roots. Instead she takes the best that her tradition has to offer (its priority on justice, self-examination, and devotion to a God beyond human terms) and turns these strengths back on itself, requiring it to become more coherent, more whole. Instead of turning away and creating something from scratch, she thanks her tradition for where it's brought her, then takes its hand to lead it, in turn, to a better version of itself.

This is something that we each need to do for the communities that made us, no matter what those may be.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plaskow's central thesis (with which I agree) is that Jewish tradition is fundamentally male centered and rooted in patriarchal culture, and she does a good job of showing how--from the texts, to halakha, to the very language we use.

What this does, however, is define negative space. We can see what is missing--the language and narratives of women's experience. What we do not know is what should fill it. The evidence we do have of women's religious practice in the past, such as the tkhines she references, show only what women might have added (in this case to the liturgy), not how they have related to the existing text. Plaskow has a variety of ideas, but at times, she risks essentializing women's experience, such as her questioning of women's relationship to law or motherhood.

This book was written in 1988 (per the foreword; published in 1990) and as such, is a little dated (the section on women's relationships with the modern state of Israel is notably so, but to be honest, not getting caught up in the politics of that issue is not a bad thing). Plaskow is upfront about her own biases, which is helpful, but nonetheless, more traditionally observant women may find it difficult to relate to her Reform-turned-women's havurah suggestions.

Despite this critique--I found myself disagreeing frequently--I recommend this book to anyone interested in Jewish feminism, including the Orthodox. She forces you to examine how you view Jewish text and tradition and how you might define that space for women in Jewish history. You may shake your head and laugh at language about the Goddess, or her (somewhat slapdash) treatment of how rabbinic Judaism is only the survivor, not the only branch of Judaism. But you'll have to think about your answers.

[Lisa Feld · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something wonderful about a clear, beautifully reasoned argument. Plaskow explores how women have been excluded or marginalized in Jewish law, in the liturgy, and even in our images of God (for example, if we really believe in a God with no physical attributes, why do many of us react with discomfort at referring to God as She instead of He?). She makes her case for a feminist Judaism working from several different entry points: historical precedent, textual evidence, logical argument, and the modern experience of both the Jewish community and the feminist one, both separately and in their intersections. We are left to wonder how much has been lost through the silencing of women in the text, and how much could be gained through greater inclusion of women in the Jewish community, its laws, its stories, and its prayers.

Late to the party as I am, the book is also interesting in the ways it illuminates the "why" of Jewish feminist practice. Why, when feminine images of God enter the liturgy, do they keep appearing in certain forms? Why have rituals for Jewish women focused mainly on Rosh Hodesh and Mikveh? Reading this book, aspects of my childhood and young adult experience of Judaism suddenly make sense in ways they never did before. It's an unexpected personal bonus to this already important book.

[Kate Irwin-smiler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t have enough grounding in feminist theory to do justice here. I feel like I need a book group for this one. There were times when I checked the copyright date; I wonder how far ahead of its time this seemed in 1990? It still seems pretty forward thinking now.

[Aliza Cotton]

she made some really good points but her points about the state of israel were really not good and did not track with all the other points she was making about feminism and not being a liberal feminist

[Katherine Stanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly rigorous introduction to the main issues of feminist Jewish theology. Many of the topics discussed in this book, such as the possibilities for creating more inclusive Jewish communities and language for God, are by necessity speculative and inconclusive, but her explanations of the multi-faceted origins of the patriarchical nature of Judaism are incredibly thorough and clear-headed. Plaskow defends her argument that Judaism can and should be reformed and that reforms to Jewish memory, Jewish community and Jewish language for God are interconnected and mutually reinforcing well, and she has included some interesting information to back up her points. I found the references to Biblical and archaeological scholarship suggesting that the Jewish people have historically embraced polytheism particularly interesting, as they reinforced some of my earlier suspicions from reading Exodus and Deuteronomy that the authors of the Torah were rather ambivalent on the question of whether other gods simply do not exist or whether the Jewish god is simply the the most powerful deity, the 'chief deity in the ancient pantheon [...] elevated to the deity', as Plaskow writes in this book.
Some of her descriptions of how oppressions interlink and how the liberation of white, middle-class women must not come at the expense of other groups of women are pretty familiar territory for those who are familiar with feminist theory. Plaskow does not seem to have anything groundbreaking to say about racism or LGBT issues, the latter of which is dealt with very briefly in this book. However, the book is so short that these unoriginal passages do not bore the reader too much, and their inclusion is necessary for a thorough and complete explanation of Plaskow's arguments.
I particularly liked how Plaskow added [sic] after writers she quotes refer to God as 'he' or use 'he' or 'man' to refer to the whole of humanity.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Standing Again at Sinai" incisively, accessibly considers the concepts of God, Torah and Israel in a feminist light.

For Plaskow, feminist Judaism goes beyond pointing out sexist verses in the Bible, or training women rabbis to lead the same old prayers. It's not just religious practice that is tainted by sexism, it's the texts themselves. Thus the Torah itself must be rewritten -- the people need to "stand again at Sinai" to "hear" a Torah in which women are full members of the community, and masculine as well as feminine qualities are valued in persons, God, and nations.

Not being well read in Judaism or theology, I may be muddling it, but it seems that Plaskow suggests that to this end, Jews could use traditional means of religious revisioning ranging from midrashim to something like prophecy, as well as successful feminist tools such as consciousness-raising groups. This is obviously a huge task, but Plaskow is encouraging, offering examples from her own successful study groups.

I admire how Plaskow writes clearly and vividly, avoids essentialism, honors particular experiences of women (and men), and invariably offers paths to solving the problems she identifies.

[Reb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This classic bit of feminist theology is way too long. And excellent, in a broad and stirring and theatrical way, but could be a lot more interesting and specific for its length (250 pp plus notes). Kind of a hard read in terms of language, just because she's not an elegant writer. But worthwhile--five stars for ideas, three stars for style.

Basically, Plaskow argues for religious Jewish feminism through four key areas: God, Torah, Israel (the people, not the state), and sexuality/relationships. She wants a thoroughgoing and ideological revamping of the whole shebang, and she makes it sound both possible and impossibly far-reaching.

[Amanda Reynolds-Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fantastic book! 'Course, I am coming from it as a person outside of the Jewish community but I think it presents really worthwhile questions that could be applied to a number of androcentric religions (i.e. pretty much all of them) particular for those feminists looking to make these institutions more inclusive. I also appreciate her touching on POC and queer folk (though she made no mention of non-binary individuals, focusing very much on the gender binary for her arguments).

The best chapter to me by far was when Plaskow focused on sexuality, which I found to be fascinating and really well thought out.

[ish · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is good - I felt like I learned a lot about the religion that I love, but at the same time it was uncomfortably anti-Zionist. The author spent so much time proving that feminism and Judaism can exist together, that she seemingly forgot that feminism, Judaism AND Zionism can exist together, and neglected to even acknowledge that many Jews (roughly 95%) are Zionists. It reeks of American exceptionalism and ignorance to the larger experience of Jews in the Diaspora.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book 30 years on is very strange. It’s strange for what has changed in its wake, and it’s strange for what hasn’t. It’s strange for being ahead of its time—when Plaskow writes about wanting to be both a Jew and a feminist, she’s effectively talking about intersectionality. It’s also now very dated, especially when it comes to gender expression. The whole nonbinary issue would in fact be very useful to Plaskow, I think, as she tries to disinvest from masculine pronouns for God.

It is a dry, heaving academic book with almost 30 pages of small-print footnotes. Most of the reviews are in academic journals, though more mainstream avenues have also checked in with Plaskow throughout the years. She is, in many ways, a founding voice for Jewish feminism.

Plaskow’s Jewish feminism isn’t about tearing down the house, but instead engaging in massive renovation. She wants to take away some of the power of rabbinic Judaism, where male rabbis set down our traditions in the age after the Temple was destroyed. She wants new midrashim, new interpretations, in its place.

The book’s primary sections tackle the Torah, the Community of Israel (aka the Jewish people), God, Sexuality, and a little at the end towards the contemporarily popular tikkun olam, repair of the world. Broadly, she wants to create new rituals and theology; she wants a Jewish community where intersectionality and diverse experiences are more recognized; she wants God to be stripped of masculine pronouns and gendered attributes; and she wants sexuality to be tied into spirituality rather than being seen as “other.”

(Ancient Jewish attitudes towards sex tend to be very positive—so long as the sex is performed in very stratified ways between married, heterosexual couples. The Torah’s attitude towards women is often one of absence—we’re not being addressed—but sometimes it’s apparent that we’re around. Like when Moses heralded in God’s word at Sinai by telling men to stay away from women—hence the title of this book. But the Hebrew bible also has occasional references to individual women, including the prophetess, Huldah. In 2 Kings, after the High Priest finds the Book of Deuteronomy in the Temple, it’s Huldah who predicts the Kingdom of Judah will be destroyed because the book hasn’t been honored by the people. I’m particularly pointing this out because I read this on Rosh Hashanah Day One, the afternoon after my rabbi included the High Priest finding the Book of Deuteronomy in his sermon! Granted, he didn’t mention Huldah at all; his focus was on the larger meaning of Deuteronomy.)

But anywho. Text study like this is a bit far and in between in Plaskow’s work. She’s mostly referencing more contemporary (to her time) articles. She uses them to reinforce her argument about why change is needed, and she occasionally posits ideas on how to get there. Since what she’s proposing is massive, her words are meant for the long haul and not an easy fix.

I probably read this too quickly and didn’t take any notes. It’s certainly the type of manuscript that would benefit from a second look, and in a class setting. Off the top of my head I’d argue with the idea of getting rid of masculine attributes for God entirely. I think they’ve served the Jewish narrative well, at times, and can certainly be utilized to understand the Jewish historical narrative. But certainly some female attributes, through the Shekinah and elsewhere, should be amplified. Maybe together, they can combine into something “non-binary,” too.

And, a more academic criticism from Lori Lefkowitz in “Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies,” vol. 9, no, 2, winter 1991: “The boundaries between history and story, between scholarship and midrash, between classical midrash and contemporary feminist midrash, as well as the boundaries between conceptualizations that are historically Jewish and those that are being refashioned to make them Jewish are boundaries that are all blurred or effaced in Plaskow's theology.” She continues, “I think Jewish feminist scholarship should now clarify its methodological principles, its ideological commitments, and the generic conventions of its media.”

My less intellectual take is that Plaskow’s arguments are meant to be loose enough for broad application to women’s spaces. I disagreed on a specific argument here or there, but never the whole. I especially appreciated Plaskow’s focus on Judaism as a community identity. This, hopefully, is the rudder to keep us grounded when it comes to making changes.

[samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

• Introduction: It’s Feminist, But is it Jewish?
• Book sks what might happen to the central categories of Jewish thought as women enter into the process of defining them.
• Either/or view of Jewish feminism
 Jews think feminism as oxymoron to Judaism
 Feminists think Judaism is irredeemably patriarchal and attachment to it incomprehensible and retrogressive
 So Jewish feminists dwell in a state of self-contradiction that can be escaped only by choosing between aspects of our identity.
 Yet this book is a refusal to split the Jewish and the feminist self.
• She is working, per Daly, “on the boundaries” of particular institutions in our patriarchal world.
• Jewish feminism has emerged as a diverse and complex religious and social movement, as diverse and complex as Jewish identity itself. Just as Jewishness encompasses religious, ethnic, national, and communal elements, so Jewish feminists have addressed a range of inequalities in Jewish life.
• Is the goal of Jewish feminism equal rights for women or communal and religious transformation? Is the purpose of feminism to provide women equal access to all the privileges and responsibilities of Jewish men or to integrate women’s experience into Jewish life, and in doing so, to begin a far-reaching and open-ended process of reformation?
 Since women’s subordination in Jewish law and exclusion from public ritual life are obvious and painful, the focus on equai access was a natural beginning stage.
 Yet it became clear that deeper transformation is needed. Women a full members of a tradition that women played only a secondary role in shaping.
 EQUAL ACCESS FEMINISM DOES NOT touch the roots of our marginality or the foundations of our subordination.
• The notion of feminism as a process of radical transformation raises, as a last point, the issue of boundaries.
 Where will change stop? How much of childhood memory and love and value will be eroded by criticism and destroyed? At what point in the reinterpretation of Judaism does the Jewish tradition cease being Jewish and become something else? SHE IS THE ONLY ONE TO ASK THIS SO FAR
 A: While the question of boundaries is one Jewish feminists are frequently asked and that we ask ourselves, it rests on assumptions and anxieties that require careful scrutiny. Often the question of boundaries identifies Judaism with its elite, mainstream rabbinic expression; and further, with certain aspects of rabbinic Judaism that are assumed to be unchanging and essential.
 FURTHER such anxieties misunderstand the nature of fundamental religious change, which is both slower and less manipulable than the question of limits assumes. Boundaries evolve over time in the context of changing circumstances; they cannot be erected in the abstract.
• She lists aspects of judaism she takes for granted, not as list of her limits but as an attempt to clarify what must stay
 1. Jewish women are part of the Jewish people
 2. Jewish history is her history–the texts that record that history are her texts. Ab and Sar are her ancestors. She went forth from Egypt. “As mine, it is a past for me to struggle with, not a past on which I am willing to turn my back”
 3. Little discussion of sabbath/liturgical year/cycles and rites of life. She takes for granted their continuation. Women do need new rituals but cannot discard these
 4. There is a God and that God is one. Yes we need to transform the picture of him, but we can RESTORE viability of Jewish God-talk within Judaism, providing the tradition with a language it has lost and sorely needs
 5. Having been slave in Egypt is the basis of a profound religious obligation to do justice in the world
 6. She writes as a North American Ashkenazi Jew from NY. THis limitation is not a choice obvi.
• 1. Setting the Problem, Laying the Ground
• The need for a feminist Judaism begins with hearing silence. It begins with noting the absence of women’s history and experiences as shaping forces in the Jewish tradition.
• Hearing silence is not easy–over time women insert themselves into it. It is far easier to read ourselves into male stories than to ask how the foundational stories within which we live have been distorted by our absence.
• Charting the Terrain of SIlence
 De Beauvoir: males and females, however, Otherness is not reciprocal: men are always the definers, women the defined. While women’s self-experience is an experience of selfhood, it is not women’s experience that is enshrined in language or that has shaped our cultural forms. omen do not name reality, but rather are named as part of a reality that is male-constructed.
 Jewish women like other women have been projected as Other
 Not absent from Torah, but they are cast in stories told by men. Their presence here does not negate their silence for women do not decide the questions with which Jewish sources deal
 Genesis matriarchs are all strong women. But patrilineality. But the laws.
 Mishnah (2c legal code) deals with “transfer” of women (women in states of transition)--these are male-defined contents and are placed in their own “Order of WOmnen” a division unto itself
 Thus Torah—‘“Jewish” sources, “Jewish” teaching—puts itself forward as Jewish teaching but speaks in the voice of only half the Jewish people.
 From this omission, there is no historical redress–instead, the problem is compounded.
 Goes deeper than who defines Torah or Israel–male language is attached to God. This male imagery is comforting and familiar—comforting because familiar—but it is an integral part of a system that consigns women to the margins.
• Not just any male images attached to God but ones of dominance, of patriarchal family (softness but strict), of political king or warrior
 What emerges then is a “fit,” a tragic coherence between the role of women in Jewish life, and law, teaching, and symbols
 Feminism demands, then, a new understanding of Torah, Israel, God.
• Methodological Underpinnings
 Presuppositions include
• 1. Women’s experience (the element missing in women’s silence)--(DEF) the lived substance of women’s lives, the conscious events, thoughts, and feelings that constitute women’s reality. This is not an essence or abstraction, not some eternally female mode of being that is diff than male being. It is, however, DOUBLED: women is herself and is aware of the imposition of Otherness at once. It is the product of culture and not an innate female nature. Cannot be defined monolithically, must have string of modifiers. But we will use this simple term–women’s experience–for signifying. When we start from women’s experience we realize that there is NO JUDAISM–only MALE JUDAISM
• 2. Suspicion and Remembrance
o Hermeneutics of Suspicion (DEF) “takes as its starting point the assumption that biblical texts and their interpretations are androcentric and serve patriarchal functions.” None of the sources are depatriarchalized.
o Hermeneutics of Remembrance (DEF): insists that the same sources that are regarded with suspicion can also be used to reconstruct Jewish women’s history. Just as no source, however neutral or liberating it may seem, is exempt from feminist scrutiny, so even the most androcentric text can provide valuable information about Jewish women’s past.!
• 3. Critical Method and Religious Unity
o The distinction “critical method/religious unity” points to a second tension in attitudes toward religious texts, a tension not unique to feminism but with which feminists must grapple. GENEROUS AND CRITICAL
• Authority
o To use Jewish texts as a basis for historical reconstruction and to take them seriously as literary units is nonetheless different from investing them with final authority. Particularly since neither the intent nor direction of feminist reconstruction is derived from Jewish sources, the issue of the authority of these sources for feminist thought needs to be pressed further.
o The problem with attempting. to ground.feminist (or-any.contemporary) conviction in Scripture, however, is that it denies or disguises the authority of the reader.
o Authority must be COMMUNAL
• 2. Torah: Reshaping Jewish Memory
• In preparing people for entering SInai covenant, Moses addresses community only as men. Moses’ admonition can be seen as a paradigm of what I have called “the profound injustice of Torah itself.”
• The Torah is not just a history, but a living memory. This injustice is not just historical but proscriptive
 Even the rabbi’s rec-conned this exclusion of women from Sinai (thats how you know it’s bad)
• We must move from this anger to empowerment. We must reclaim Torah as our own. Reenvision the Jewish past.
 Some feminists say: IF MIRIAM LIES BURIED IN THE SAND WHY MUST WE DIG UP THOSE BONES?
 We have to. This faith is all memory. Here the past is a warrant for change and a bulwark against it. Present grows from past.
• History, Historiography, Torah
 Both her sources and the historians who have gone before her record male activities and male deeds in accounts ordered by male values. What we know of women’s past are those things men considered it significant to remember, seen and interpreted through a value system that places men at the center.
 Besides, these sources aren’t really HISTORY. They are TORAH–sacred. The Godwrestling record of the Jewish people. A partial record (moments of intense religious experience cannot be reproduced)
 The Jewish feminist reshaping of Jewish history must proceed on several levels at once. Feminist.historiography can open new questions to be brought to the past and can offer a broader picture of Jewish religious experience. It must be combined, however, with feminist midrash and feminist liturgy before it can shape the Jewish relationship to God and the world and thus contribute to the transformation of Torah.
 Historiography as one aspect of the feminist reconstruction of Jewish memory challenges the traditional androcentric view of Jewish history and opens up our understanding of the Jewish past.
• [Survey of the biblical girlies that have so little substance to them] women’s experience is obscured and erased in biblical writing and that such writing is selected and edited from a highly tendentious perspective.
• Material evidence helps place women in positions of esteem–but even these do not come directly from women’s hands!
 Some material evidence is from women and these are precious: tkhines, petitionary prayers written in vernacular that express emotionality and intimacy of women’s piety, its concreteness and relation to everyday
 The tkhines make clear that at the same time women participated in the established cycle of the Jewish year, they also sought and discovered God in domestic routines and in the biological experiences unique to women. Women were obviously able to find great meaning in their limited number of commandments.
 They also suggest limits of the range of women’s concerns: they are songs written by a bird in a cage.
• SUMMARY OF CONTRIBUTION OF FEM HISTORIOGRAPHY TO FEM RECONCEPTION OF TORAH
 1. reclaiming women’s history reveals another world around and underneath the textual tradition, a world in which women are historical agents struggling within and against a patriarchal culture.
 2. awareness of this neglected world “opens up” and challenges so-called normative texts. We cannot see them as having emerged organically from an eternal, unambiguous, uncontested religious vision
• Reshaping Jewish Memory
 historiography by itself cannot reshape Jewish memory. The gaps in the historical record alone would prompt us to seek other ways of remembering.
 historiography recalls events that memory does not recognize. It challenges memory, tries to dethrone it; it calls it partial and distorted.
 How, then, do we recover the parts of Jewish women’s history that are forgotten, and how do we then ensure that they will be remembered—incorporated into our sense of communal identity?
• 1. Midrash (which has always been supra-historiographal. The open-ended process of writing midrash—simultaneously serious and playful, imaginative, metaphoric—has easily lent itself to feminist use. Together and individually then, orally and in writing, women are creating poetry, exploring and telling stories that connect our history with present religious experience.
• 2. Liturgy: speaking/acting, ritual creativity. More ceremonies for girls!
• These coupled with historiography help us REMEMBER OURSELVES
• Law/halakhah is a murky topic for feminists. It is an important part of Jewish teaching. Reshaping involves far more than reforming law.
 Any halakhah that is part of a feminist Judaism would have to look very different from halakhah as it has been. It would be different not just in its specifics but in its fundamentals.
 It would be different not only in its content but in its practitioners. Women would shape halakhah along with men, codetermining the questions raised and the answers given.
 The boundaries of the legal system would be both contracted and expanded as certain questions would become unthinkable, others imperative. It would be different also in method, for it would know that law is human and be aware of and humble before its own potential ideological abuse and captivity. It would be open to continual transformation in the light of deeper understandings of justice.
• 3. Israel: Toward a New Concept of Community
• The project of creating a Jewish feminist theology begins with memory, for Jewish existence is rooted in Jewish memory.
 Memory is not a static deposit, however; it is neither rules nor happenings that confront us unchanging. As members of living communities, Jews continually re-remember;
 The issue of Torah, then, is tied to the issue of Israel—a term that, for most of this chapter, I will define as “the nature of Jewish community and the Jewish people.”
• If we are to recapture and recreate women’s Torah, the nature of Israel must be such that women’s Torah can be remembered and lived.
• Personhood, Community, and Difference
 Any understanding of Israel must begin with the recognition that Israel is a community, a people, not a collection of individual selves
 Feminism writ large is always trying to undress individualism.
 The theological significance of community in Judaism finds expression in religious, social, and national life.
 CANT BE TRADITIONAL IDEAS OF COMMUNITY: Affirming community, Judaism affirms a male community in which the place of women is an open and puzzling question. At times, it seems as if women are simply not part of Israel at all; more usually, women’s presence in the community is assumed, but assumed as clearly peripheral.
• at the same time women are members of the community, they are members as Other—the Other who easily vanishes behind a male-defined understanding of Israel.
 Approaching women’s situation in Judaism from the perspective of the concept of Israel, however, clarifies the mechanisms through which silence is accepted as natural.
 an Israel in which women are Other is the material base for the preservation and reenactment of a partial view of Torah.
• Toward a Redefinition if Israel
 To redefine Israel from a feminist perspective, we must incorporate the reality of women’s presence into the understanding and practice of the Jewish people so that women’s contributions to Jewish community are not driven underground, thwarted, or distorted, and men’s are not given more weight and status than they ought to enjoy.
 But when women, with our own history and spirituality and attitudes and experiences, demand equality in a community that will allow itself to be changed by our differences, when we ask that our memories become part of Jewish memory and our presence change the present, then we make a demand that is radical and transforming.
• Chosenness, Hierarchy, and Difference
 Must be redressed (esp difference!)
 Chosenness replaced with DISTINCTNESS
 Difference must not be OTHERING or part/whole model
• State of Israel
 The challenge of creating Jewish communities that nurture particularity without hierarchy takes on an important added dimension when Israel is considered not simply as a (landless) people but also as a state.
 Creating a Jewish community in Palestine was not simply the solution to continuing anti-Semitism, however, but also an opportunity to establish a whole and vigorous modern Jewish life.
 Zionism reached behind two thousand years of Jewish wandering to the biblical vision of an integrated communal/economic/family/spiritual life
 Uh
 Palestinian Israelis (Palestinians living within the pre-1967 borders) constitute a segregated and peripheral underclass whose grievances, unlike those of the Mizrahim, seldom capture the attention of the wider society.
 The contradictions of a democracy in which 17 percent of all citizens are suspected as a third column and subjected to discrimination are vastly intensified by Israel’s direct military rule of over a million and a half Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. In the Occupied Territories, there is no pretense of democracy. Palestinians have no control over the government that determines the conditions of their existence, no right of appeal against the judgments of military courts, no secure rights to the land on which they live.
 It seems that the Jewish experience of oppression has led not to the just exercise of power by Jews in power, but to the Jewish repetition of strategies of domination. OH OKAY
 The economic, social, and moral costs of military occupation make it incompatible with equity within one’s own boundaries. The rightful claim of Palestinians to a land of their own renders occupation profoundly unjust.
 When one part has been accustomed to speaking for the whole—male Ashkenazi Jewish Israelis for Israelis, elite male Jews for Jews, middle-class white feminists for women—this redefinition may mean dislodging long-fixed patterns of dominance with difficult and dramatic results.
• Ch 4 God: Reimaging the Unimaginable
• From the recovery of women’s Torah and the reconstruction of Jewish community, we move to the subject of God.
• Ontologically, God is first–but she has postponed the subject of God. Not to deny his centrality but to place God third in the triad of Torah/Israel/God.
• The Jewish understanding of God emerges from Torah and Israel; YET THEY ARE MUTUALLY REINFORCING.
• As I see it, the goal of a Jewish feminist approach to God-language is to incorporate women’s Godwrestling into the fullness of Torah by finding images that can communicate and evoke the experience of the presence of God in a diverse, egalitarian, and empowered community of Israel.
• Traditional Image of Gods
 1. As Male: Maleness is

[a · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been reading this book while the Supreme Court opinion was leaked and now as its obscene promise was finally fulfilled just yesterday. It’s been particularly sad to read it now as we see that at least in the US the religiously sanctioned misogyny of Judaism which was inherited and expanded upon by Christianity continues to be vigorously defended at the very highest levels of our government. Jews today are mostly in favor of abortion rights but it doesn’t make it any less infuriating to read about the vision of a God used to dominate women.

In America we all have to deal with the Abrahamic God, perhaps through our own faith but certainly through the dogma of our rulers. We can benefit from Plaskow’s thinking now more than ever, in this time where women have fewer rights than we did when this book was published in 1990.

Plaskow has great practical ideas about the restructuring of community: women are not to be simply given equality within the traditional male-dominated system; the system itself must be recast in light of women’s history and tradition. Only when the community as a whole, including women as equals, recreates itself and reconsiders its own laws and traditions for the present day will the little Kabbalic bit of Torah each person has access to become known to the community. It makes sense to cast woman’s struggle for equality as a struggle to reveal the Torah in its fullness.

But even though I am sad and angry about the intractability of the religious misogyny that accreted around the Abrahamic God, and though I agree with many of Plaskow’s practical suggestions, I don’t quite agree with some of her theological suggestions.

Theology isn’t centrally important to Jewish community, and I am generally willing to dismiss theology as idle godtalk. But that doesn’t mean idle godtalk shouldn’t be done well. Even idle godtalk should take seriously the old philosophical saws of the problem of evil and the problem of free will; it shouldn’t simply dismiss them as problems to solve at a later date.

We can all agree we should treat others with love and kindness, and that this is the best way to honor and maybe even experience God in the world. We should not attempt to “dominate” others.

But does this mean that all images of a dominating God are invalid?

In our moments of deepest grief, God truly can feel like an autocrat. The God of Job rules the world without regard for human happiness. Job questions God, demanding answers, and he is given none. Humans are absolutely subject to the power of God, and though they may be allowed and even encouraged to wrestle with this God, they are no less under its power for all their wrestling.

We need, I think, these images of God as a heartless and fickle ruler that will never explain itself to rage against in our deepest moments of grief.

For Plaskow, images of God as a distant and dominating ruler are illegitimate because they are both the product and the license of patriarchy. Following this line of thinking, Plaskow quickly runs up against the old problem of evil. True monotheism cannot permit evil to be independent of God. Plaskow allows that “while we must speak about God in this other sense, it is unnecessary to do so using images of hierarchical domination. … The God who brings to birth and destroys, gives forth and takes away, judges my limitations and calls me to struggle, is terrifying not for God’s distance, but precisely for God’s nearness. That which is awesome, painful, or evil appalls or bewilders me not because it is far away, but because it is all around and near as my own heart” (168).

I agree the terror of evil is close to us and within us. But is the destroying God not also just as distant as it is near? Is not much of the tragedy of human life that we can never be as close to God in our lives as we might wish, and that at certain moments in life, like Job, we encounter a distant God who is impossible to reach for answers?

Ultimately I see nothing antifeminist or inherently patriarchal in the idea of a distant God in whose power we remain absolutely. The only problem comes when this image is mixed up with that of maleness. Of course a distant God is not a warrant for men to decide they too get to be distant autocrats.

Plaskow reaches this impasse, I think, through a lack of engagement with the old problem of free will. If God has absolute power, then humans must have no free will, right? Plaskow decides accordingly that our ideas of God must be whittled down so as to retain the concept of personal responsibility, which is crucial not only to feminist thinking but to Judaism in general.

Paradox is a dangerous thing, and we should be wary of becoming drunk and powerless by giving in to it too much. But sometimes paradox is simply the most logically coherent conclusion. Here I think the most satisfying conclusion is simply to say that human understanding is a small thing compared to God—by definition God lies partly within but also largely beyond human understanding. Humans are able to experience and understand parts of God, but not God’s entirety. God is near, within us and our world, but also far, as that which creates and destroys. Human free will is immensely important on the plane of human understanding. But the human plane is only a fraction of existence, and the will of God exists on all planes. Human free will and thus human responsibility is infinite, but some infinities are large enough to contain others, and God’s power is the infinity that contains all other infinities. In simplest terms, God’s absolute power is able to create and sustain human free will in a way that we, as humans, will never be able to understand because our brains simply can’t contain all of God. The problem of free will arises when we expect to be able to fully comprehend God.

When we accept that human personal responsibility is compatible with absolute divine dominion, we don’t have to limit our names of God, which must be infinite as God is infinite. As much as we need a God who arises in human community and in human kindness, we need a God to rage against.

Especially in times like these where our rights are being stripped away in plain sight.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historically incredibly important, but very much of its time. Plaskow's focus on passages from Torah without (most of the time) discussing how these passages were related to throughout history is problematic. It is ironically un-Jewish to treat Torah in isolation from Talmud, midrash, and other commentary. Providing more of the context could have achieved the same means, but more strongly because her critique would have been more solidly grounded.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the Jewish and Christian feminists i've read this year, Plaskow may be my favorite. she's certainly quite readable. the first part of the book really captured my imagination, as she tries to figure out how to recover the female voices that are silenced across the history of Judaism. The rest doesn't interest me as much, but I'm still grateful I've read it.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally dislike nonfiction, and this didn't change my mind, although I did find the topic and arguments overall interesting. My only critique is that as a non-Jewish feminist, I didn't know some of the concepts Plaskow talked about, and there wasn't really a satisfactory explanation. So although I followed along well enough, some things were unclear.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was a long time coming. My experiences as a liberal Jewish woman owe a lot to the theology outlined herein. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in gender relations in Judaism and religion in general.

[Maggie · Rating 1 out of 5]

HA!

[Maurice Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has had a huge influence on my work as a rabbi.

[Kyle Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

most "new" thing for those coming from a Christian background is the discussion of oral Judaism - something most Christians are completely unfamiliar with.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A (the?) classic work of Jewish feminist theology. Clear, grounded, and creative. Definitely worth reading for anyone interested in Judaism or feminism and religion

[Doris Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I. Like. This

[shamaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The classic groundwork to a feminist Judaism that doesn't go as deep as I wished it would

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A NOTED JEWISH FEMINIST REEXAMINES THE TRADITIONS

Judith Plaskow (born 1947) is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College, a co-founder of The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and Past President of the American Academy of Religion. She has also written/edited books such as 'The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972-2003,' 'Sex, Sin, and Grace: Women's Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich,' 'Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality,' etc.

She wrote in the Introduction to this 1990 book, "The subject of this book is feminist Judaism. Exploring the implications of women's increasing involvement in naming and shaping the Jewish tradition, it asks what might happen to the central categories of Jewish thought as women enter into the process of defining them... The commitment that underlies this book is precisely a commitment to creating a new Jewish situation, to making a feminist Judaism a reality."

She observes that Jewish feminists "dwell in a state of self-contradiction that can be escaped only by choosing between aspects of our identity." (Pg. ix) She identifies her central reason for writing a Jewish feminist theology as "to articulate one version of this vision and to foster its growth." (Pg. 23-24) She suggests that since women have been traditionally excluded from halakhic (law) argument, "excluded from the spiritual path of legal study and argument, women might have developed other avenues to God more fully." (Pg. 66)

While she rejects the notion of a supernatural deity "who singles out a particular people," she argues that to reject this idea of God is not to reject the God "who is met in community and wrestled with in history," nor does it deny that loyalty to God which has been at the center of Jewish identity. (Pg. 104)

She suggests bringing women's experience to the naming of God, to continue the "long process of Jewish Godwrestling that demands of each generation that it search for and speak its own symbols, standing again at Sinai with the consciousness of today." (Pg. 136)

Plaskow's book is a stimulating and challenging invitation to rethink many traditional ideas, and should be of considerable interest to anyone interested in contemporary spirituality, particularly as expressed in the Jewish tradition.

[Dora Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was assigned to me in 1991 in a class on Modern Jewish Thought, but I never had a chance to read it. Since it is considered a seminal work in Feminist Jewish theory and theology, I decided to tackle it now. It was not an easy book to read. It is filled with academic language and theory that requires a deep level of concentration in order to process. I had to reread many sections in order to be sure I understood what Plaskow was saying.

Regarding the content, however, this is a fascinating work; it is no surprise that it is still considered relevant 30 years after publication. Plaskow divides the book into six sections. The first is an introduction to the topics she will address. The second is, “Torah,” focused on the idea of remembering and reclaiming Jewish women’s history as well as writing new midrash to further include women. Section three she calls, “Israel,” but she means the Jewish people as a whole. Here she focuses on acknowledging and respecting the diversity within our own community as Jews. Section four is about G-d. She addresses the ways in which traditional language about G-d focuses on power and domination, and how we need to continue to explore new ways to imagine and discuss G-d. Section five is about sexuality, and how we need to embrace the full range of women’s experience—including the erotic—in order to fully embrace our spirituality. Section six is about “repair of the world;” we cannot find new communities as Jewish feminists if we do not also work for a more just society as a whole.

While I found this book to be a challenging read, I enjoyed thinking about the ideas Plaskow presented. She inspired me to find better ways to live my life as a Jewish feminist, and to continue to build feminist communities within and outside of Judaism.

[Emmett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Standing Again at Sinai may be 35 years old, but its issues, insights, and vision remain utterly relevant today. Plaskow’s prose is both clear and captivating, and she makes illuminates complex ideas while weaving together an incredibly large base of source texts, fields of thought, and time periods.

I realized only a few pages into this book that I would need to raise the bar for what I underlined, otherwise I would end up underlining the entire book. Plaskow is an incredibly compelling writer. Her arguments are well organized and laid out, she makes references with an ease that reveals how well read she is, and she connects back to previous sections of the book in ways that anchor and stabilize her arguments.

And of course Plaskow is describing a patriarchal Judaism that is still alive and well in our times—in some ways strengthened by the rightward slide of American politics. She surfaces, describes, explains, and connects things that are viscerally familiar to my experience of Judaism, revealing the underlying ideologies and institutions at work. I feel I need to carry this book with me at all times in order to refer to it in discussions of Judaism and Jewish community.

I cannot possibly recommend this book too strongly to anyone who is interested in feminism, Judaism, modern spirituality, social justice, or all of these things.

[Zhelana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made some good points, but a lot of them I think were dated. But then... Then! She starts talking about how all gods are God, and we should just rename God Isis or Diana! I think she is missing a key bit of history about how people in Biblical times tried to make this argument and worship Canaanite gods and every single time they got smited (smote?) for it. This should be offensive to every Jew and is certainly offensive to most pagans, too. Her over reliance on Starhawk as a source makes me wonder if she is secretly a pagan out to end Judaism as we know it. Also, I don't think calling God "She" automatically sexualizes God. If we accept the very foundation of our believes: Adonai Echad, then there are no sexual partners for God and s/he can't be sexualized regardless of which pronouns you use.

[Charles Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a pretty solid belief system that I thought was fairly pluralistic and super feminist. Turns out, I was way off. Plaskow shook up every aspect of my faith, and challenged me to reconsider how far I'm willing to adapt my beliefs and practice to consider how my religion can be truly equal. From theology to text to sexuality to language, this book upended any comfort I had with what I thought I knew to be a feminist Judaism.

One idea that sticks in my brain, and that I can't let go of: the idea that all hierarchies are inherently patriachal, and also inherently wrong. Is there a feminist, morally just hierarchy? Does feminism not believe in hierarchies in any way, above and beyond gender? And can one construct a human-based hierarchy that is in fact just? I...don't know anymore.

[KP · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Written in the mid-80s, released in 1990, this book definitely has aged unevenly in some ways. The theology is still very, very sound, as is the overall analysis; absolutely worth reading, it's still very relevant. But anyone reading this in 2021 should know that things are constructed very much along a gender binary, and there isn't much intersectional analysis - both of which the author has acknowledged in recent interviews as things she would change were she revisiting it. One thing that did bother me, though, was the author's repeated use of disability as a metaphor for barriers to women; this didn't explicitly come up in any interviews, so I just wanted to note it here.)

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because as i delve into my own Judaism as a woman, I have noticed it being cited in almost every text I read. It was really interesting to see the Jewish feminist movement at its beginnings, and gratifying to see how my experience doesn’t reflect the traditional iniquities that early feminists fought against. It was a slog to get through - it took perseverance, since I read every sentence a couple times in order to fully process it. I think it is an important foundational text for those really serious about understanding and uplifting Jewish feminism, but wouldn’t recommend it to anyone with a causal interest.