The View From Here: Gender Theory and Gendered Realities: An Exchange between Tamar Ross and Judith Plaskow

Abstract

I want to think aloud about some of the permutations and contradictions in Jewish feminists’ attitudes towards gender and gender roles—both contradictions between theory and practice and contradictions within feminist scholarship and activism. Thirty-five years into the Jewish feminist movement, how are feminists theorizing about gender, and what is the relationship between feminist theory and the assumptions about gender that fuel feminist work in our communities?1 What do feminists want in relation to gender roles and gender justice? I am not suggesting that there is any one answer to this question. In coming to speak at this conference, I am very aware that I approach the issue of gender as an American Jew for whom liberal Judaism is normative, and as one who has spent my career trying to get the liberal community to think about feminist issues in more radical terms. Yet I hope that in trying to sort out some of the complexities that characterize my corner of the Jewish world, my analysis may be of use to those with very different starting points and goals, and may lead to some fruitful conversation.