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Women in Judaism:
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| Spring 2001 | Volume 2, Number 2 |
"I had never considered myself religious. I am the daughter of a secular city, of the generation that witnessed the Holocaust to ask: 'Is God dead?' For me as for other Jewish feminists, religion perpetuated the patriarchal tradition that denied women access to Judaism's most sacred rituals and enshrined them within the strict confines of their biological role. The Judeo-Christian religion kept alive that feminine mystique which was at the heart of the problem.
It took the confidence born of the women's movement for me and other Jewish feminists to embrace our Jewishness, but in a new way. We took the task of making Judaism accept that women are equal to men in the sight of our God." [Betty Friedan, Life So Far: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 330.]
Commentators of Quern text 4Q184 have variously identified the poem's subject, the Seductress as a prostitute or a symbol of enemies to the Essenes. Rather than a "real" woman, or even a code for a particular, specified anti-Essene group, she is a vehicle for promoting the ideals of the orthodox poet, an alarming example of the fate of the wayward. An emblem legitimated by the feminine models in the Hebrew Bible upon which the poet draws, the evil woman as heretical symbol rages anew. Her amplified presence in 4Q184 affirms an ideological "siege mentality" that manifestly distinguishes "in group" from "other" in several Qumran documents.
An examination of women's role in the economic life of the mishnaic and talmudic periods might lead one to assume that women were excluded from the business domain. However, evidence from the rabbinic literature demonstrates that women did participate in business and property transactions with peers and family members, and this was not perceived as a deviance requiring a special approach.
The generation of authors who grew up in the 1920s and began to publish in the mid and late 1940s gives expression to the socialist Zionist ideology that predominated in pre-state Israel. Social Zionism and the ethos of national Jewish revival were intertwined with notions of male and female sexuality. The most explicit association between female sexuality and her innate difference from the national struggle for survival and independence is expressed in the works of Yigal Mossinsohn. This article analyzes the ways in which Mossinsohn constructs women as an aggregate Other.
There is no doubt that Amos Oz, winner of the 1998 Israel Prize for literature, is the country's most successful and internationally celebrated author. A summa of his resonant popularity in the media and academia is evidenced by the Oz Archive at Ben Gurion University boasting over 25,000 articles dealing with his works. As a pilot endeavor, this article examines the negative prejudices associated with female ageing and elderliness as depicted in Oz's canon.
Lichtenstein, Rachel and Ian Sinclair. Rodinsky's Room. London/ New York: Granta Books, 2000. Reviewer: Elaine Margolin [ Review ]
Savina J. Teubal, Ancient Sisterhood: The Lost Traditions of Hagar and Sarah. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1990. Reviewer: Esther Fuchs. [ Review ]
Osherow, Jacqueline. Dead Men's Praise. New York: Grove Press, 1999. Reviewer: Steven Schneider. [ Review ]
Hasan-Rokem, Galit, Tamar S. Hess, and Shirley Kaufman, eds. The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present. A Bilingual Anthology. Foreword by Alicia Suskin Ostriker. New York: The Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1999. Reviewer: Lois Bar-Yaacov.
[ Review ]
Levitt, Laura. Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home. New York: Routledge, 1997. Reviewer: Franci Williams. [ Review ]
Amia Lieblich. Conversations with Dvora: An Experimental Biography of the First Modern Hebrew Woman Writer. Translated by Naomi Seidman. Edited by Chana Kronfeld and Naomi Seidman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Reviewer: Esther Fuchs.
[ Review ]
Kornbluth, Sarah Tikvah and Doron Kornbluth, eds. Jewish Women Speak about Jewish Matters. Detroit: Targum/Feldheim, 2000. Reviewer: Mindi Altman. [ Review ]
Women in Judaism - Carmen Levin [ Letter ]
All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. The editor extends special thanks and blessings to this issue's contributors who displayed endless patience and endurance.
© 2001 Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal
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