The Jewish feminist question

Abstract

Lilly Scherr and other Jewish cultural feminists are attempting to confront the problem identified by Gershom Scholem. But the solutions most available to us still come under the umbrella of assimilationist compromises, not unlike the ones devised by Moses Mendelssohn in his early attempts to make Judaism compatible with Western European cultural values. As we make a plea for the reappraisal of the role of women in Judaism and demand greater equality between the sexes, we are forced to work with the most assimilated branches of the faith, with those who have already sacrificed a good deal of cultural authenticity in order to accommodate bourgeois universalism. Many of us have given up trying to rework the Jewish religion and seek other so-called Jewish paths to a fuller cultural and political life. These secular feminist visions, however, fall into the same traps as those of the Zionists and Bundists, requiring even a more radical break with Jewish traditions, with the ways that make Jews stand culturally apart.