Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (review)

Book Reviews 145 linked to culture and social agency. Males then are a gender, products ofand producers ofculture, whereas women are but a sex, defmable by a decisive physical characteristic. This negating of female humanity reaches its fullest expression, Brenner argues, in biblical depictions of Israel as a harlot who is stripped naked and sexually violated in punishment for her "sins"; in these "pornoprophetic" texts, the male prophetic voice and intended male audience "assume the right to undress the female and to drive knowledge into her gazed-at being, while they remain safely protected by layers of clothing and self-righteousness" (p. 171). Brenner's analysis ofbiblical sexuality is informed by recent arguments about the subordination ofsexuality to structures ofsocial power in the ancient world. As Daniel Boyarin puts it, "there was no autonomous realm of'sexuality' within classical cultures at all; desire and pleasure were inextricably bound up with the relations ofpower and domination that structured the entire society.... The world was divided into the screwers-all male-and the screwed-both male and female" (Boyarin, cited in Brenner, p. 4). Sexual desire, sexual pleasure, and therefore, sexuality itself, were the prerogative of the "screwer" class. Brenner does a brilliant job in making a case for similar constructions ofsexuality in the world ofthe Hebrew Bible. But in this or any other contested field, strong arguments tend to rely upon a strategy of ignoring or underplaying those texts which suggest otherwise. For example, Brenner discounts the depiction of active, pleasure-seeking female sexuality in the Songs of Songs because even there, female sexual initiative is presented as illegitimate and subject to constraint by guards and watchful brothers. Brenner's argument is difficult in places, and her prose occasionally flounders in obtuse academic constructions, but her book is nevertheless well worth the effort for at least three reasons. First, nowhere else can one find such a careful and thorough feminist analysis ofthe gendering ofsexuality in the Hebrew Bible. Second, Brenner's workbreaks much new ground, such as, for example, where she argues for the historical probability that birth control technologies were available in ancient Israel, belying the Bible's depiction ofwomen as mindlessly driven by maternal, i.e., biological instinct. Third, this book is important for the serious challenges it presents to those recuperative readers who wish to view the Hebrew Bible as a "feminist-friendly" text. Alice Keefe University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women, by Chava Weissler. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 269 pp. $28.50. Interest in the lives and voices ofJewish women has led to fruitful studies over the past two decades. One ofthe most rewarding ofthese has been the research into tkhines, an umbrella term which includes devotional compositions by both men and women for 146 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 both women and men, largely in Yiddish, intended to enhance the spiritual lives of individuals in both the synagogue and the home. The most prominent contributor to the analysis of this literature has been Chava Weissler, who has written profusely on this topic over the past decade, and now has compiled those independent articles in this volume. The merit ofhaving these important pieces all together in one volume is that now general, summary observations can be made about tkhines. In one book we now have an analysis of the culture out of which tkhines grew, a guide to tkhines collections, a systematic study of a number of tkhines and their authors, a discussion of authorship and audience, and an incisive critique of how tkhines have been adapted to the spiritual climate of twentieth-century America. There is also some fine material previously unpublished here; this reader was especially transfixed by the thorough study of the life of the eighteenth-century Leah Horowitz and her compositions,'a startling example of a woman highly educated in Jewish legal and literary texts, who wrote in Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Yiddish. Ms. Weissler complements her study of the older texts with an examination of tkhines in twentieth-century America, and brings the critiques that others have made about contemporary religious practice to bear on how the...