Marcia Falk, "God, Language, and Liturgy"(Contemporary poet, translator and scholar; author of the The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life)
As feminist Jews, we do not reject Jewish tradition, for we recognize that we come from it: we are it. Instead, we claim our right to the tradition, our right not just to participate in it as we receive it, but to create the terms of participation. Our right not just to have our foremothers included in prayers, but to have their images, our images, reflected in the God to whom (or to which) we pray. Our right not just to own Judaism, but to make it our own.
Jewish Law and Feminism as Framed by Blu Greenberg
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/halakha-and-feminism/
Principles of Feminism
1. Women have the same innate potential, capability, and needs as men, whether in the realm of the spirit, the word, or the deed.
2. Women have a similar capacity for interpretation and concomitant decision-making.
3. Women can function fully as “outside” persons, in broader areas of society beyond the home.
4. Women can and should have some control over their own destinies, to the extent that such mastery is possible for anyone.
Principles of Jewish Feminism
1. A woman of faith has the same innate vision and existential longing for a redemptive‑covenantal reality as a man of faith. She has the same ability and need to be in the presence of God alone and within the context of the community. Such a woman is sufficiently mature to accept the responsibilities for this relationship and the rights that flow from these responsibilities. If these spiritual gifts do not flow naturally from her soul, she can be educated and uplifted in them in much the same fashion that Jewish men are.
2. Jewish women, as much as men, have the mental and emotional capacities to deal directly with the most sacred Jewish texts and primary sources. Jewish women are capable of interpreting tradition based on the sources. They can be involved in the decision‑making process that grows out of the blending of inherited tradition with contemporary needs.
3. Some women, as some men, are capable of functioning in the positions of authority related to the religious and physical survival of the Jewish people.
4. Women as a class should not find themselves in discriminatory positions in personal situations. In such matters as marriage and divorce, a woman should have no less control or personal freedom than a man, nor should she be subject to abuse resulting from the constriction of freedom.
Jewish Feminist Theology http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-feminist-theology-a-survey/
With the arrival of feminism in public discourse in the mid-20th century, religion–including Judaism–came under criticism for its gender-determined roles, its exclusion of women from communal life, and its apologetics that tried to justify women’s domestic positions.
Many early feminists were skeptical of institutionalized religion, and indeed, some believed that there was no way to salvage Western religion from its androcentrism. These feminists criticized Judaism for constructing a male God and an irrevocably patriarchal culture. However, by the 1970s, other feminists began creating theologies that blended Judaism and feminist principles.
- From your perspective, what are some aspects of Jewish tradition that exclude or limit women?
- How have you or other Jewish women modified/redesigned/reinterpreted this practice to make it your own?
Women of the Wall http://www.womenofthewall.org.il/who-we-are/
Women of the Wall, (Neshot Hakotel in Hebrew) is a group of Jewish women from Israel and around the world who strive to achieve the right to wear prayer shawls, pray, and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem, Israel. The Western Wall is Judaism's most sacred holy site and the principal symbol of Jewish peoplehood and sovereignty, and Women of the Wall works to make it a holy site where women can pray freely. Women of the Wall is comprised of women from all denominations of Judaism- Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Masorti, Renewal and Reconstructionist.
Women of the Wall not only seeks empowerment in group prayer and Torah reading at our most sacred site, but also strives for recognition of our prayer service by the legal and religious Israeli authorities, for the sake of all Jewish women. Our group, with a membership that is not only multi-denominational but spans the political spectrum, embodies a message of tolerance and pluralism.
The first 15 chapters of Exodus present the Exodus narrative. By this point in the story, God has sent 10 plagues and is about to give instructions for the first Passover. Why include a comment about the calendar here?
Exodus Rabba 15:2 Midrash Aggadah to the book of Exodus; compiled 7-10th century in Eretz Israel
"This month shall mark for you [the first of months]" (Exod. 12:2)...The Holy One Blessed Be He said to Israel: 'Up until now, [the keeping of the calendar time] was in My hands...from this point onwards, though, I give it over to your hands, your authority. If you designated [a new month], then it will be so. If you do not, then it will not. In any case, "This month shall be for you.'"
- According to the Rabbis, what is the purpose for the establishment of a new calendar?
- How does it change the relationship between the Israelite people and the surrounding world?
Nahum Sarna, The Calendar (Sarna is a Biblical scholar who taught at Gratz College in Philadelphia from 1951-1957, then appointed librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary and member of its faculty. In 1965 he joined the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis University.)
A people newly freed must henceforth be sustained by its own native resources if it is to achieve true national independence, if it is no longer to be a passive object of history, subservient to a dominant but alien culture. A liberated people must evolve and stress its own distinctive autonomous culture, devise its own structures of national existence, and forge its own institutions. One of its first desiderata is the establishment of a uniform calendar. Such an institution is a powerful instrument of societal, cultural and religious cohesion.
This being so, the Israelites are informed that the month of liberation, the springtime of nature and now the springtime of Israel as a free people, is henceforth to be the start of the year. "This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you." We know nothing of Israel's earlier calendar, but the phrasing unmistakably points to an innovation, to a break with the past.
- What is the main message of this text?
- How does the establishment of the Jewish Calendar relate to Jewish Feminist principles?
Some Additional Resources
MyJewishLearning.org
- Gender & Feminism 101 http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/gender-feminism-101/
- American Jewish Feminism: The Movement Matures http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/american-jewish-feminism-the-movement-matures/
Jewish Women's Archive https://jwa.org/feminism
Lilith Magazine http://lilith.org/
JOFA: Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance https://www.jofa.org
Kohenet: Hebrew Priestess Institute http://www.kohenet.com/
Books by:
- Judith Plaskow (ie Standing Again at Sinai)
- Rachel Adler (Engendering Judaism)
- Ronit Irshai (Israeli feminist scholar of halacha, especially about birth control, fertility)
- Danya Ruttenberg (Yentle's Revenge)
- Bonna Devora Haberman (Blood and Ink)
- Tamar Biala (Dirshuni)