Women and Jewish Literature

This essay explores the genesis of “Women and Jewish Literature,” a course I developed at the University of Maryland. The course emphasizes the interconnectedness of reading and writing, particularly within a feminist Jewish literary context, and introduces the particular ramifications for Jewish women of this relationship between consumption and production. Situated at a secular university and teaching a Jewish Studies course cross-listed in Women’s Studies and English, I became highly conscious of the challenges faced by many of my students in approaching materials that require some degree of Jewish literacy. The relationship between the struggle for Jewish literacy in a Jewish Studies course at a secular university and the struggle for Jewish literacy by women who traditionally were denied the rudiments of scholarly Jewish culture became readily apparent as the course progressed. The pedagogical strategies I designed to illustrate the experience of women claiming the right to author Jewish literature also empowered my students in confronting dramatically alien material.