If Miriam Never Danced . . . A Question for Feminist Midrash

58 SHOFAR Fall 1995 Vol. 14, No.1 IF MIRIAM NEVER DANCED . .. A QUESTION FOR FEMINIST MIDRASH by Jennifer Gubkin Jennifer Gubkin is a graduate student at the University of Southern California in the Department of Religion and Social Ethics. Beginning with the insight that "facts" are only known through the ways they are presented, and, furthermore, that this representation produces the very "fact" which is perceived, one may ask how our notions of a genderedJudaism, a Judaism constructed with differing roles for men and women, are produced and sustained. Many feminists have analyzed this construction using the concept of "patriarchy," which Dimen defines as "a system of domination ... where gender denotes a structure of political power masquerading as a system of natural difference.,,1 Using the concept "patriarchy" highlights the extent to which the Jewish tradition, particularly through its sacred texts, was and still is created, transmitted and sustained by men. For some feminists this insight leads to a rejection of Judaism in its entirety. Others engage in the difficult and ongoing work of transformation. Although they use multiple approaches, these feminists share a fundamental belief that Judaism can be transformed .2 Generally, if we follow Peskowitz's metaphor of a construction 'Muriel Dimen, "Power, Sexuality, and Intimacy," in Germer/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being arm Knowing, ed. Allison Jaggar and Susan Bordo (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 38. 2Jewish feminists are participants in multiple feminisms. They may be socialist feminists, Marxist feminists, lesbian separatists, postmodern feminists, etc. Some avoid the word feminist altogether precisely because of its tendency for fragmentation and/or the way it suggests a fictitious unity. I use the term liberal JeWish feminism to refer to a feminism which bases its call for emancipation on the idea of equal rights, which are owed due to woman's membership in the species Homo sapiens, or allegiance to a social group identity IfMiriam Never Danced 59 site, "patriarchy" depends as much on the window where women stand outside and peer in as on the steel beam which enables the structure to stand. liberal Jewish-feminists have emphasized the former; if we include all eyes as we look through the window or look at Judaism in a different way, we can change the patriarchal practices which have defined men's and women's Jewish lives for centuries. In the invitation to panicipate in this forum, laura Levitt suggests that "the vast majority of work in Jewish feminist studies has been tied either implicitly or explicitly to the Enlightenment's emancipatory project." She asks us to consider the consequences of this strategy, and to query "alternatives to this way of constructing knowledges." The seamless, universal subject posited by the Enlightenment has been justly criticized for its lack of attention to specific cultural constructions, gender being one of many. Nevenheless, this so-called "universal" subject granted a new agency to men and eventually to women as well. One imponant legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums is a space for humans to self-consciously produce new meanings in texts traditionally understood as the revealed word of God. Some contemporary feminists use midrashim to create new meanings within a traditional Jewish genre. Peskowitz brings a number of critiques to this use of midrashim. In the context of discussing Plaskow's distinction between history and memory as developed in Standing Again at Sinai, Peskowitz critiques the suggestion that Jewish feminists turn to midrash for several reasons. Three of these reasons penain directly to midrash. First, midrash holds marginal authority in the economy of rabbinic texts. Second, the false dichotomy between history and memory naturalizes memory and obscures the social and cultural processes which produce midrash. Third, midrash, as the appeal to women's voices, risks essentializing women and erasing the power differential alluded to in the question "which woman can speak for women?,,3 Peskowitz's critiques highlight the difficulties inherent in a liberal, Enlightenment-based feminism, which posits a universal, unmarked subject and a collective according to gender. Several feminists have pOinted to the paradox of a feminism which claims individual rights on the basis of group identity. See essays !?y Nancy COlt, Rosalind Delmar and Deborah Rhode in What...