Notes
Notes Introduction 1. Cf. N. B. Joseph, "The Feminist Challenge to Judaism: Critique and Transformation;' in Gender, Genre, and Religion, ed. M. Joy and E. K. NeumaierDargyay (Waterloo, 1995), 47-70, esp. 48, ·where the central premise of contemporary feminist Judaism and its transformative key are based on the premise that women are Jews (my italics). See also J. Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, 1990); and E. Umansky, "Females, Feminists, and Feminism: A Review of Recent Literature on Jewish Feminism and a Creation of Feminist Judaism," Feminist Studies 14 (1998): 349-65. 2. M. Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), so. 3. Neither L. H. Schiffman, Who Was aJew? (Hoboken, N.J., 1985), nor S. J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of]ewishness (Berkeley, Calif., 1999), draws distinctions between gender affiliation with Judaism. But see Cohen, "Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?" Gender and History 9 (1997): 560-78, on inherent inferiority of female Jewishness vis-a-vis male Jewishness. See also the useful comments of H. Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus and Other Problemsfor Men and Monotheism (Boston, 1994), passim, on gendered symbols and the links between gendered images, conceptions of men and women, sexuality, desire, and the body. In my study the question addressed is not so much "how a male God is problematic for men's conceptions of self," as has been fully and provocatively explored in God's Phallus, nor the ways in which a masculine image of God undermined female experience (God's Phallus and H. Eilberg-Schwartz, ed., People of the Body: jews and Judaismfrom an Embodied Perspective [Albany, N.Y., 1992], passim), but rather how the female body is perceived to function in society and how gender/sex ideology contributes to the formation of national identity. It is closer to what D. Novak calls "the socialization of human sexuality" ("Some Aspects of the Relationship of Sex, Society and God in Judaism;' in Contemporary Ethical Issues in the jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. F. E. Greenspahn [Hoboken, N.J., 1986], 140-66, p. 150 for quote) but does not follow the underlying assumption that institutions inform us of individuals. Rather the opposite may be the case. There are now several important studies on the gendering of rabbinic Judaism, including J. R. Baskin, "The Separation of Women in Rabbinic Judaism;' in Women, Religion and Social Change, ed. Y. Y. Haddad and E. B. Findly (Albany, N.Y., 1985), 3-18; J. R. Baskin, ed.,]ewish Women in Historical Perspective (Detroit, Mich., 1991); C. E. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian &con- 174 Notes to Page 2 structions ofBiblical Gender (Stanford, 2000); J. Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice (Boulder, Colo., 1998); L.A. Hoffman, Covenant ofBlood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinicjudaism (Chicago, 1996); J. Lassner, Demonizing the Queen ofSheba: Boundaries ofGender and Culture in Postbiblicaljudaism and MedievalIslam (Chicago, 1993); M. B. Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Genderand History (Berkeley, Calif., 1997); M. Peskowitz andL. Levitt, eds.,JudaismSince Gender (New York, 1997); J. R. Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (New York, 1988). On biblical gender premises, see J. Ochshorn, The Female Experience and the Nature of the Divine (Bloomington, Ind., 1981), esp. 181 f. (sex roles and the relation of power to gender). 4. For a useful overview see S. J. D. Cohen and E. L. Greenstein, eds., The State ofjewish Studies (Detroit, Mich., 1990). Cf. L. Davidman and S. Tenenbaum, eds., Feminist Perspectives onJewish Studies (New Haven, Conn., 1994). 5. SecondTemple period has been conventionallydescribed as ca. 500 B.c.E. to 70 c.E., thereafter Judaism begins its "late antiquity," a period that in non-Jewish studies begins about 250. SeeP. Brown, The World ofLateAntiquity (London, 1971). There are numerous studies that provide coverage of select periods, each expressing the author's view of periodization. S. J. D. Cohen's From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia, 1987), and L. L. Grabbe's judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (Minneapolis, 1992) andJudaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Beliefand Practicefrom the Exile to Yavneh (London, 2000) are three from a huge crop. 6. Jubilees, 2 Maccabees, and Josephus provide the exceptions and paradigms of rejection. They have been transmitted through the church. A. Momigliano , Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, trans. M. Masella-Gayley, ed. S. Berti (Chicago, 1994). 7. J. Neusner, Self-FulfillingProphecy: Exile andReturn in the History ofJudaism (Boston, 1987), passim, on the diversity...
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