Engendering Jewish Religious History

8 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 ENGENDERING JEWISH RELIGIOUS HISTORyl by Miriam Peskowitz Miriam Peskowitz is Assistant Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida and is trained as an historian of Judaism. Her forthcoming book is titled Spinning Fantasies: Gendering the Ordinary in Romanperiodjudaism (Berkeley: University of California Press). Introductions/Mediations Defined provisionally, in tenns of the tasks it attempts, postmodem feminism can analyze the gendering of representations into canonical and noncanonical divisions exemplifying sexual difference.... [AJ feminist postmodemism will understand the mediated nature of knowledge and representation, as well as the altered political subject produced by these mediations.2 Their limited task is to undo the effects of a colonial history on the production of knowledge.3 '1 wish to express my gratitude to Laura Levitt for her repeated readings and critical suggestions, as well as for the pleasure of our ongoing discussions about these topics. I thank another close colleague, Susan Shapiro, for reading this text more delicately and subtly than I could ever have done. I appreCiate as well Judith Plaskow's responses to an earlier, oral version, and thank various other readers for their suggestions. I dedicate this paper to Jean O'Barr, Professor of the Practice of Women's Studies at Duke University, without whose early guidance and direction it could not have been written. 2Jennifer Wicke and Margaret Ferguson, "Introduction: Feminism and Postmodemism; or, The Way We Live Now," Boundaries 2: Special Issue: Feminism and Postmodemism 19 (1992): 4-5. 3Gayatri Spivak, "Feminism in Decolonization," Differences 3.3 (1991): 139. EngenderingJewish Religious History 9 Feminist histories of women and gender intend, in most cases, to challenge masculinist traditions for presenting the past. Despite an overt challenge to certain authorities and narratives, many feminist studies of Judaism still rely on some highly problematic methods and categories of traditional, enlightenment-based historiography. While new insights and information have emerged from feminist studies ofJudaism, for the most part the terms and categories of our feminist conversations have not been a topic of sustained, public critical discussion among us. Yet, at our best, feminist intellectuals challenge the terms of conversations.4 Critical terms such as "representation," "mediation," "political subject," and the "production ofknowledge" immeasurablycomplicate the projects of theorizing feminism with regard to Judaism, and theorizing Judaism with regard to feminism. This paper explores these complexities of thinking a gendered history ofJudaism. By "gender" I mean attention to several overlapping things: the constructed nature of differences ascribed to women and to men; the constructedness of the cultural significance given to distinctions between male and female humans; and the politics of empowering these notions of differences into authorized knowledge. The complexities and complications of doingJewish women's histories, cultural histories of gender, and our other, variously named, feminist projects must revolve around the recognition of "woman" and "gender"-even"feminism" -asconceptual problems, as terms that involve uncertainty.5 The quotation marks around these terms point to their status as categories into which and around which we organize knowledge. As this paper commences, I suggest that some terms of feminist analysis are strategic. They are "inessential" terms of conversation that have served well, but which need not always organize our inquiries. I wish to scout out some emerging discourses and new critical practices and possibilities. ~hese problems are not new among some feminist thinkers (although a good deal of writing by and about female religionists continues to ignore, argue against, or dismiss the complexities of the constructedness of gender and sexual difference). We thirikers and theorists of Judaism are beginning-individually and collectively-to tackle them in ways that reflect the specific relations, complexities, and interpretive histories of working with Jewish texts. 5Since this paper has a multiple, interdisciplinary readership, I should explain what I mean by the term "problem," as my usage counters the common perception ofa "problem" as "something bad." Instead, I refer to a surprisingly useful dictionary definition: a "problem" is "any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty." (Random House Dictionary, 2d edition, 1993). 10 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 This essay originates in the very real conceptual constraints I encounter both while doing research and while teaching...