Introduction

In the Passover Hagaddah, we read each year that even Torah scholars, ostensibly familiar with the story of the Exodus from Egypt, are still responsible for retelling it around the table. Those who go further in their liturgical retellings, expanding and elaborating, are said to be worthy of praise. In a commentary on this familiar passage for a contemporary Haggadah, Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg notes that the telling and sharing of stories plays a potent role in liberation movements. It is in the space where stories are shared, she says, that "strategies for transformation" evolve.¹

In this spirit, we continue the discussion of Jewish women's spirituality begun in Nashim no. 9. If there is praise to be had for returning to a story as well known and essential as the Exodus, how much more is there praise to be had for dwelling upon the often hidden, suppressed, or silenced narratives of Jewish women's spirituality.

Israeli and American scholars speak here from the vantage points of various disciplines and interdisciplinary fields. Anthropology has the loudest voice: Five of the scholars draw upon ethnographic analysis—field research—to consult the evidence of women's spirituality. Those working in the contemporary period make sense of emergent forms of spiritual expression by listening to the spoken words of women reflecting upon their engagement. A lone historical anthropologist listens too, but to the voices of Jewish women emerging (perhaps) between the lines of sixteenth-century texts written by men.

Ethnographic research among professionally trained liberal Orthodox actresses in modern-day Israel who address spirituality and worship in their theatrical performances is presented by Reina Rutlinger-Reiner. This is a phenomenon perhaps unknown to American readers. The actresses she studies (mostly trained in university theater departments) discover that theatrical space, conventionally understood by the Orthodox as forbidden, subversive, and idolatrous, can become, for them, both a permissible sphere and a setting for their holy endeavors, avodat kodesh. Rutlinger-Reiner compares these Orthodox actresses, who, in their courageous performances, lay bare the nakedness of mainstream Orthodoxy, to those women who have, in the last three decades, created and sustained women's prayer groups and institutes for advanced women's learning of Talmud. Quoting Tamar Ross, whose book is reviewed in this issue by Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, she claims that these enterprises represent "a break with dominant interpretive traditions of the past and a grass-root initiative of the women themselves in an effort to resolve dissatisfying aspects of their current situation."²

Irit Koren's essay, "The Bride's Voice," is also based on anthropological fieldwork among young Orthodox women in Israel. Koren investigates how religious, feminist Jerusalem women have managed simultaneously to participate in the rabbinate-mandated wedding ceremony and to challenge it though subtle moves. Addressing the passive role a woman plays in the traditional ceremony, they have forged strategies for introducing more balance and equality into the rite, and greater agency and visibility for the bride. These include reinterpreting the meanings of the ceremony for themselves and working with rabbis who would either accept or avert their eyes from modifications. Koren's informants have created parallel ritual acts, introduced ritual variations, refused to participate in certain customs, and engaged in legal resistance. Echoing Reiner's discussion of Orthodox feminist theater, Koren characterizes their actions as creating "a performance in which they are able to unite their identities as religious women and as feminists." Here, we see that when small groups of women on the margins perform old rituals in even slightly different ways, they can generate significant social change within a rather unyielding system.

"Meanings of Shekhinah in the 'Jewish Renewal' Movement" is part of Chava Weissler's larger study of the American Jewish Renewal movement, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork at renewal services, retreats, and conferences. Portraying the Renewal movement as a "wellspring of women's energy,"³ Weissler investigates the consequences of investing God language with feminist imagery. Shekhinah is the prime example, but other variations have evolved, including Imenu Malkatenu (our Mother, our Queen), Rahamema (Compassionate Wombmother) and Elohatenu, Ruah ha'olam (Goddess, Spirit of the World). New God language...