A Prophetic Voice for Truth

Last spring, a new neighbor moved in across the street from me. I walked up her driveway for a cordial hello and ended up chatting for twenty minutes. We clearly connected, and she put her finger on why, once we both revealed that while we lived in Philadelphia, our roots were in New York City. She missed the honesty, she suggested, of what she called the world of New York Jews, who speak directly and are willing to say what's on their minds, even if it's not pretty, with a tinge of sarcastic humor thrown in to sweeten the deal.

This anecdote describes a trait I like about my neighbor and about myself, but more, it is the quintessence of what I like about Judith Plaskow. Judith not only chats like a Jew from New York; she also employs that honesty in her intellectual work, and to great advantage. Donna Berman's introduction to The Coming of Lilith says it well. Judith's work asks us to "honestly confront and acknowledge that which is difficult and painful to see in ourselves, our tradition, and in God" (3–4). And Judith, in her life, does the same. In this tribute, I want to talk about Judith Plaskow as a prophetic voice for truth.

Why a prophet? Judith has confessed to wanting to be a rabbi, but she has also admitted to being happy that she isn't one. And although her rabbinic skills are quite adequate, especially in the midrashic/sermonic area, we have enough rabbis in the Jewish community, probably too many. But we are short on prophets, those (mostly) guys in the Bible who were rather blunt about what they thought was wrong with the social fabric of their world, and who also believed some higher power had called them to make sure others saw and did something to correct it. What Judith shares with the prophets is a passion for telling the truth, no matter what the consequences. But Judith doesn't only tell the truth or talk a good line; she enacts her beliefs in the real world. I'm not exactly sure what higher power has called Judith to this vocation, but that has more to do with my beliefs than it does with her ideas. If I read her correctly, she would probably say her communities are the source of her authority, even, ironically, as she calls her communities to task. I'm sure she'll correct me if I'm wrong.

Lest you think I am going to critique Judith's work as an essentialized assertion about the truth, be reassured that nothing could be further from my mind. Judith knows the truth about truth, that it's neither one nor universal, but shifts with context (and with variations in the community of authority) and isn't clear-cut, neat, or clean. This insight was driven home to me in "Facing the Ambiguity of God," where Judith criticizes herself and by extension the entire first generation of religious feminists, who took the meanness and aggression out of God when they challenged his maleness. To the critic who argued that God isn't only a loving friend but also an angry lover, Judith said yes, right you are, even though I don't like it. She knows the truth when she sees it, knows it is indeed ambiguous, fluctuating with the circumstances, and tells it anyway.

Not only does Judith tell her friends the truth but she tells herself the truth as well. For that reason, my favorite essay in The Coming of Lilith is "Revisiting Lilith," where Judith does not pretend she had all of Jewish feminist theology figured out in advance, although nothing prevented her from making that claim. For a public Jewish intellectual to admit she didn't really know when she wrote about Lilith many years ago that she was writing a profoundly Jewish text, a midrash on a midrash, or for a lesbian to say she hadn't intended the homoeroticism in the Eve/Lilith connection (or God's with Adam for that matter) is a...