<em>Reader Response:</em> The Five Books of Miriam

Abstract

The rich last issue of Nashim, no. 16, included Aaron Singer’s interesting review of The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), by Ellen Frankel, occasioned by the book’s recent publication in Hebrew translation (Am Oved, 2007). I found myself reading Singer’s analysis of the book as “midrash” in light of the Hebrew edition and the unfinished business I have with the publication of Hebrew translations of Jewish feminist books. When I saw the Hebrew edition, I was upset yet again by the assumptions Israeli publishers have about the ability of average, educated Israelis to take in feminist Jewish messages, as indicated by the book’s outward presentation. Two past examples come to mind. Ilana Pardes’s Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach was translated into Hebrew as Haberi’ah lefi Ḥavah (i.e., “The Creation According to Eve”; Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996), and the illustration chosen for the cover was a silhouette of a female nude. Paula Hyman’s Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women became Ha’ishah haYehudiyah bisvach hakidmah (“The Jewish Woman in the Throes of Modernization”; Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1997). Along the same misguided lines, Frankel’s book became Midrash Miriam (“The Midrash of Miriam”). The original title evokes Virginia Woolf’s allusion to the sister that Shakespeare never had, and is a play on “The Five Books of Moses” in English. The title indicates that the author intended her book not as “midrash” in the popular sense of the word, but, rather, as a kind of alternative Torah text, a “midrash” or “commentary” on the Bible comparable to the alternative narratives offered in some apocryphal books (and Bible scholars may point here to one or two books in the Hebrew Bible itself, like Deuteronomy or Chronicles).