Editors' Introduction

This very special issue of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion celebrates Professor Judith Plaskow's work on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday. It is appropriate that we do so because without Judith's intellectual and organizational work, as the founding coeditor of JFSR, the journal would neither exist nor have thrived. It goes without saying that we are deeply grateful for all she has done over the years and we hope that she will accept this issue as a token of our profound thanks.

The issue begins with a special section honoring Judith's theological work. We thank Donna Berman for organizing a panel entitled "The Coming of Lilith: An Assessment and Celebration of Judith Plaskow's Work" at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in 2005, and for gathering the manuscripts of the participants to be published in this special section. We believe these essays are an appropriate birthday bouquet because they do not reproduce the usual academic book review genre—full of flimsy praise and critical posturing—but rather warmly appreciate the intellectual work and personal commitments of the leading Jewish feminist theologian of our time.

In one way or another, these essays display how the personal, the political, and the theological are interwoven in the paradigmatic work of this feminist scholar, whom Rebecca T. Alpert calls a "prophetic voice for truth" and whom Emily Neill praises for speaking "freely at the intersection of the personal, institutional, and scholarly." Mary C. Churchill interprets Judith's ability to ask hard questions and to cut to the heart of the matter as "learning from the wind," while Katie G. Cannon focuses on how "erotic justice" is central to Judith's the*logy. Whereas Susan Shapiro focuses on "Judith's sustained and articulate critical relation to Judaism," Carol P. Christ underscores her focus on "the process of women becoming selves in religious communities"—feminist and Jewish—but also stresses the deep ambiguity that permeates Judith's work.

In her appreciative and thoughtful response, Judith reflects on two aspects of her early work that shed light on its trajectory and the issues the panelists raise. On the one hand, an "extraordinary optimism" exists in her early work. On the other hand, it tracks her "process of coming to grips with the reality of ambiguity" with respect both to "the transformative power of sisterhood" and to the feminist passion to transform Judaism. As Judith concludes, the intersection of theological and institutional transformation becomes increasingly important "as the commitment to egalitarianism that I have taken for granted as the foundation of theological change not only remains unfulfilled but is also coming increasingly under attack." That is "all the more reason why I look forward to continuing the conversation about how we bring our academic work to bear on transforming the structures of the academy as well as the structures of our increasingly frightening world."

The poems following this Special Section wrestle in A Different Voice with the ambiguity and love that scriptures, traditions, and G*d evoke. In her three poems, Yerra Sugarman imagines fragments from the diaries and letters of King Solomon's wife and a fragment of King Solomon's journal. Sheba asks herself, "was I always divided? / Was I always only one . . . as now among the flocked / companions Solomon kisses and savors, / I am only one?" Solomon echoes the question, "Must everything dissolve in aloneness? / You and God not visible? You and I holding / moving shadows—ink stains on sea?" In a decidedly Christian Catholic voice, Susan McCaslin in turn confesses, "Still besotted with Jesus after all these years / despite the unfashionableness of such love . . . What a Mediterranean peasant began / remains untried / except in the shock and awe of saints." This section concludes with Jeannine Hall Gailey's reading of 1 Samuel 1:8 as an aging couples' gendered meditations on love and her exploration of the gift of tongues that echoes Plaskow's the*logical feminist ambiguity and hope. "I wave my palms in an unseen / wind as music vibrates green and holy, / the voices around me / spilling prophecies / in...