Women and Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship (review)

The field of Jewish women’s and gender studies began to develop in the 1970s. Since then, many shelves of books have been published, reflecting research in the various disciplines that make up Jewish Studies. The present, rather slim volume sets out, according to its subtitle, to document “new insights and scholarship” on women and Judaism. Offering an introduction by Judith Baskin, ten more articles grouped in the categories of “Classical Tradition,” “History,” “Contemporary Life,” and “Literature,” and an epilogue by the editor, it seems to be directed mainly at laypersons not familiar with recent developments in the field. Some of the essays are surveys of past and present research, while others are deeper case studies going into detail about a particular phenomenon.

In her introductory essay, Judith Baskin outlines four themes to consider when looking at women and the Jewish experience: (a) the lasting impact of androcentric biblical and rabbinic traditions; (b) the majority cultures of the host environments; (c) economic resources; and (d) the impact of changing technologies. It is unfortunate that the other essays in the volume don’t necessarily continue or return to these important themes, although there is a tangential reference to the issue of majority cultures in the epilogue. Other overarching issues in Jewish women’s studies are similarly neglected. Apart from a mention of Phyllis Trible, there is little reference to non-Jewish scholars and their contribution to our understanding of feminist scholarship. Esther Fuchs’s chapter on Bible scholarship includes some material on film studies, which is interesting, but there is no further discussion of the multi-disciplinary nature of the field of gender and women’s studies. Are disciplinary questions considered off-limits in a volume that seems intended mainly for laypersons?

When women’s studies, especially women’s history, were first entering the academic world as more or less respectable disciplines, a leading scholar or feminist activist—depending on whether this quote is attributed to Joan Kelly-Gadol or Charlotte Bunch—remarked: “You can’t just ‘add women and stir.’” It was hoped that a feminist or even a gender perspective would revolutionize the academic disciplines and their leading paradigms. But anyone looking in this volume for new insights into the nature and meaning of community, leadership, spirituality, literacy, modernity and other basic terms employed in Jewish Studies may be disappointed. It seems more like an “add women and stir” approach.

Of course, the involvement of women in scholarship and the focus on women as objects of research are admirable accomplishments in and of themselves. Still, by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, we might have expected more, and this, too, is related to the volume’s limited scope. Sylvia Barack Fishman suggests in her essay, “Women’s Transformation of Contemporary Jewish Life,” that “Perhaps the most emblematic of . . . [the] intellectual challenges [posed by Jewish women’s studies] . . . have been and continue to be posed by Jewish feminist theologians and philosophers, who urge a revisioning of Jewish conceptual and religious categories” (p. 188). But the disciplines of philosophy, theology and even mysticism are missing from this volume, as are many of the social sciences, education and the arts. Even the chapter on literature omits any mention of poetry, a field in which there has been some very significant creativity in a number of Jewish communities (and which was addressed in depth in Nashim, no. 19).

But the only community that really seems to matter is the American one. Of the eleven authors, nine are based in the US, one in Canada and one in Israel. Yet, when Pamela Nadell writes in her essay on “Women and American Judaism” that “. . . women used their power to transform American Judaism” (p.156), one is hard-pressed to find concrete examples of how American Judaism has, in fact, been transformed. For instance, has the entrance of women into positions of community leadership effected more far-reaching changes in the community’s agenda, re-ordered priorities, introduced...