A Response to the Roundtable Discussion ?Anti-Judaism and Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation?

Abstract

The editors of theJFSR are to be congratulated for facilitating an open dis cussion in an area that has been somewhat submerged: the difference in per spective between American Jewish feminists and third-world feminists, or at least some members of both groups. Mary Ann Tolbert has suggested that in the postmodern world, the notion ofessence in racial, ethnic, or sexual iden tity should be replaced with a notion of location.' Our essence may be more malleable and constructed than we think, but our social location surely influences our perceptions very strongly. The essays in the roundtable Anti-Judaism and Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation (vol. 20, no. 1 [Spring 2004]) certainly illustrate the importance of social location in the competition of isms. The debate within the roundtable is analogous to many other dia logues between members of different oppressed groups. In the United States, for instance, one thinks especially of that between white feminists and African American men and women in the 1970s and 1980s. That dialogue had a history that showed remarkable progress and understanding over time, and I think this one will too.