Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Introduction Rochelle Millen Wittenberg University Feminist theologians, as well as historians and writers, have repeatedly emphasized the role of women's experience both as a fundamental source of content and as a criterion of truth. Each discipline, from its feminist perspective, has attempted to recover the voices ofwomen for so long silenced and written out oftheology, history, and literature. This issue of Shofar, entitled "The Spectrum of Jewish Feminism," represents a contribution to the ever-growing corpus ofstudies that gives sound to these previously silent voices as expressed in and through the prism of Judaism. The essays in this issue represent the variegated strands of Jewish feminism in terms of both denomination and motif. Written by scholars who are in different ways also activists, the articles express astute knowledge of the cognitive and conceptual issues allied with the often impervious, seemingly impenetrable realities ofthe practical world. It is one thing to understand an idea that resonates as true in our articulate world; it is quite another for that idea to impact upon institutions, relationships, and the structure of a body of knowledge. In a sense each essay is a personal memoir, demonstrating how a particular Jewish woman has carved out for herself a small area in which her voice, a woman's voice sometimes representing many such voices, needs to be heard. As a group, these essays indeed reflect "The Spectrum of Jewish Feminism," today. In the first article, "Midrash She Wrote: Jewish Women's Writing on the Bible," Adele Reinhartz focuses upon recent exegesis ofthe biblical text by women, using three incidents in the portrayal of the matriarch, Sarah, as the basis of discussion. Reinhartz surveys works aimed primarily at an academic audience, as well as the knowledgeable but non-professional reader. In addition, she describes works written more with the popular reader in mind. In each case, Reinhartz discusses the approach of each writer in regard to Jewish scriptural traditions and the relevance of the biblical material to Jewish women today. Reinhartz's extensive survey of contemporary women interpreting the Bible shows clearly that engagement with the text is independent of denominational affiliation and involves the broadest spectrum ofwomen within the Jewish community. It demonstrates that modern notions regarding women, family, and feminism have been integrated into contemporary exegesis. Her discussion also points to the ongoing and growing body of literature that may be considered modern midrash written by women. 2 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 Judith R. Baskin's "The Scholar as Daughter: Growing Up in a Rabbinic Family" movingly reflects upon the early influences offamily and community as daughter of the Reform rabbi in a small Canadian Jewish community. Baskin's essay certainly resonates with me; I moved to Hamilton, Ontario when fust married and twenty years old. Judith at that time was eleven, and in those Hamilton years we barely knew each other. I too remember being instructed to fill in "Hebrew" rather than "Jewish" under the category "Religion"; in my case it was to give birth at St. Joseph's Hospital. I came to feel the appellation "Hebrew" was a denial of the validity of rabbinic Judaism, and when our second and third children were bom, insisted on writing "Jewish" on the form, to the puzzlement of the nun assisting me. Baskin identifies the subtle and more overt ways Jews were marginalized in the Christian community; her mother, for instance, worked to eliminate mandatory prayer and religious educationfrom the Ontario public schools. The family was very involved in interfaith activities. There was also the othemess of being Rabbi Baskin's daughter and the child of an intellectual and politically activist family in a mid-sized Canadian industrial city. The sense ofwoman as "other" penetrated even the classical Reform movement in the 1950s and 60s; as Baskin notes, the idea of a female rabbi was anomalous at that time. An additional dimension of othemess derived from the infrequent contact with teenagers from the Conservative and Orthodox synagogues. These aspects of othemess contributed toward "the scholar as daughter" becoming an academic immersed in Jewish studies, and, in Jewish studies, focusing upon feminism. While Baskin portrays feminism as arising within a Reform context, Norma...