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  • Liberation through the Textual Looking Glass
  • Sarra L. Lev (bio)

Our task of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.

—Barbara Deming, "On Anger," 1971

The Mission

A colleague recently related that at a conference on "Multifaith Dimensions of Theological Education," a group studied a rabbinic story in which Moses asks God to show him the study hall of Rabbi Akiva (50–135 CE). There he sits in the last row, frustrated at not understanding the discussion until R. Akiva explains to his students that his teaching was passed down from Moses at Sinai, at which point Moses is comforted. A Christian feminist scholar asked something like, "Isn't there an ethical problem in distributing a text like this which is so steeped in assumptions regarding hierarchy and gender, without explicitly stating a critique of that text?" The presenter answered that the way in which the group was studying the text—sitting in a room with women and men in a non-hierarchical setting—constituted an implicit critique. The implication was that consequently, no explicit discussion of those particular issues was necessary.

Unfortunately, this is a fairly common answer to this type of question. But what I found more difficult is that I myself had previously considered this text rather benign as rabbinic texts go. The scholar's reaction to the text made me rethink the way I approach my teaching as a Jewish feminist, especially at a rabbinical college. This article addresses the question of what it means to teach these types of texts in a rabbinical college setting, and will suggest a hermeneutical model that has not, to my knowledge, been employed on rabbinic texts (or on biblical ones in a Jewish setting, for that matter). None of the issues I address here are new—they are, unfortunately, the issues that Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza began addressing decades ago. My work draws directly on hers, focusing especially on her insistence that we must neither ignore the difficulties in the texts nor paint them apologetically as something they are not. As she explains, [End Page 170]

Whereas those feminist scholars who seek to defend biblical religion tend to downplay its androcentric-kyriarchal character, post-biblical feminists tend to declare that the contention that the bible has been and is read by wo/men in a liberating way is an instance of "false consciousness." . . . A critical feminist interpretation for liberation . . . must not deny this conflict but reconceptualize it as a site of struggle. . . . Feminists in religion may neither abandon nor defend kyriarchal religions. Rather they must articulate the religious-theological agency of wo/men and their authority to participate in the critical construction and assessment of religious, biblical, and theo-ethical meanings.1

Here, I take up the challenge Schüssler Fiorenza has posed to reconceptualize the conflict as a site of struggle. The hermeneutics I present draws on that which might appear (and has appeared) in the context of Christian seminaries, but some parts will necessarily be different. While there is significant overlap, I will limit this discussion to the issues that are relevant in a rabbinical school education. The goal of this paper is to suggest one possible direction for feminist studies in a rabbinical school setting.

So What If They Are Rabbinical Students?

The main issues that separate teaching in a rabbinical college from teaching in a purely academic setting are:

  1. 1. Rabbinical students are expected to approach this literature as in some way holy (whatever that may mean to each of them), and therefore as having spiritual meaning in their lives.

  2. 2. Rabbinical students are not studying the literature just to know it, or even just to live it—but also to teach it to other Jews (for most of whom this may be their only exposure).

  3. 3. As spiritual leaders, I believe it is the role of rabbis to confront injustice. Thus they need to learn the critical tools, as rabbis, to understand and oppose oppression.

  4. 4. Rabbinical students will be in positions of religious power. Thus it is...

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