S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories, and: Unlocking The Garden: A Feminist Jewish look at the Bible, Midrash and God (review)

Naomi Graetz’s midrashim and expansions of the biblical text are personal and academic, and we must be grateful to her on both counts. Firstly, she reminds us that midrash is a conversation between a fixed text and the historical period in which it was written. When Graetz writes in the introduction to S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories that her “midrashim ... are not only exegetical, they are also eisogetical, i.e. they reflect personal concerns which are read back into the biblical text,” she underscores a truth well-remembered: the rabbis’ ‘oral Torah’¹ is human-made and man-made in real time, and

it is constructed upon their personal, contemporary reflections. Secondly, Graetz sets before us an exemplary model of midrash contemporaneous to our times. Her remarkable midrash on Ki Tetzeh and its haftara² in Unlocking The Garden actually is midrash, in that it is derived from biblical verses. It is also a scholarly exercise, prefaced by explanations of Graetz’s intent and methodology and supported by footnotes. Graetz teaches critical reading skills in the English Department of Ben-Gurion University, and she brings the methods of the modern academy to her craft. She reminds us that the authors of classical midrash were trained rhetors who used the exegetical methods of analysis common to the Hellenistic scholastic standards of their times.

The earlier of the two books, S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories, comprises just that—retellings. She labels the writing in this book “contemporary Midrash” without defining rabbinic midrash, the genre against which any writing that calls itself midrash should be compared. Graetz’s writing in this book is not centered on biblical verses, as was the rabbinic original, and her concern is not with shattering the verses, as did the early rabbis, and building exegetical structures on the atomized pieces. Rather Graetz goes for story. She employs the novelist’s tools—characterization, extended dialogue, descriptive backgrounding, interior monologues—and if her work resembles in form any ancient genre, it is “rewritten Bible.”

What she has in common with the ancient rabbis is, if I may speak for them, intention. “For me the purpose of contemporary Midrash is threefold,” Graetz states in her introduction. “It addresses itself to the biblical text, which cries out darsheni, interpret me! Secondly, it makes the Bible relevant to an audience that does not overly care about its biblical roots. Finally, it serves my need to relate to a text, which I perceive as flowing over with hidden meanings. I feel that in writing midrash I am continuing to contribute to the work of revelation.” With the exception of audience concerns—though who knows for certain what were the needs of the ancient audience?—Graetz and the rabbis are intrigued by the same strange, contradictory, elliptical text. And they stake out the same ground and work the same problem—how to keep the canon open, how to renew the old and make the static dynamic, and how to keep God current. That last is “the work of revelation.” The canon, to which one can’t add or subtract one word, may be closed but it must not remain shut to interpretation. Every generation needs a way in.

Graetz wants to be “consciously feminist.” She wants to “deal with the typically feminine concerns of motherhood, barrenness, resentment about polygamy, the aftereffects of being raped, the joys of shared gossip, the tribulations of the aging process, and the unique relationship of siblings.” Genesis is her territory, and her characters are among its familiar population. Lesser-knowns appear, like Elisheva, Aaron’s wife, through whom Graetz remarks on the deaths of Nada and Avihu, Aaron’s and Elisheva’s sons. “[T]hey offered before the Lord alien...