Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women's Liberation Movement by Joyce Antler (review)

Joyce Antler has written a comprehensive history of Jewish radical feminism in the United States (an important modifier that would have been well placed in the title) during the "second wave" of the feminist movement, from the 1960s through the 1980s. Her book addresses an important question: What accounts for the very disproportionate role of Jews in this movement, and why was their Jewishness not a factor in the consciousness of many of these activists? Why was their common Jewishness, for all the diversity in their Jewish background and expression, not something they noticed, much less pondered; their Jewishness invisible, even to themselves? Why did so many "never talk about" Jewishness and women's liberation until Antler asked them to?

To address this question, Antler embarked on an ambitious project: She gathered forty "representatives of the two branches of Jewish-inflected feminism together for a two-day conference" in 2011, had them give presentations about the question, interviewed them in depth and researched dozens of others (some deceased). This is the basis for her 400+ page study, which constitutes a definitive work on this subject.

The activists were divided into two main groups: women's liberation feminists who were Jewish, and Jewishly-identified feminists—that is, women who made the Jewish community and Judaism the focus of their activism. These become the two main sections of the book.

The degree to which post-war feminism in the U.S. was marked by the initiative and effort of Jews is truly astonishing. As Antler puts it, "Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick" (p. 2). Indeed, to cite only a few of the better known names, more could readily be added to this list: Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Phyllis Chesler, Gloria Steinem—and this would only be scratching the surface of the first group.

The leadership of such groundbreaking feminist institutions as the Boston Women's Health Collective, which would produce the landmark Our Bodies, Ourselves, was heavily Jewish. Jews were pioneers of consciousness-raising (CR) groups, in which the feminist insight that "the personal is political" took feminism from theory into living rooms, vastly expanding its impact. One of the first groups organizing CR, Bread and Roses, targeted poor, working class and minority women (p. 117), precisely in order to expand the base of feminism, and it "became one of the most influential women's liberation groups in the country." Antler estimates that half or more of its 75 activists were Jews (p. 122). After interviewing some 24 members of the Boston Women's Health Collective and Bread and Roses, Antler concluded not only that Jewishness was a common trait in their backgrounds, but also that "at the time of their involvement in radical feminism, Jewishness was a relevant factor" animating their lives (p. 123).

The "Jewishness" of these feminist activists was extremely diverse. The lowest common denominator was Jewish parents (one or both) or grandparents; and some kind of Jewish story, of immigration—a family flight from antisemitic persecution; some variant of religious expression; Jewish-inflected atheism; political activism (socialist, communist, Yiddishist); a connection to the Holocaust and/or Israel and Zionism; personal experience of Jew-hatred in childhood; or some combination of the above. Whatever the content, Jewishness was a significant factor in the activists' sense of self, though not one to which they gave conscious thought.

To probe her subject, Antler undertakes prosopography, or group biography, painstakingly studying scores of Jews who drove the feminist movement, "using life stories in … collective fashion" (p. 27). Her book is a veritable analytic encyclopedia of radical feminist women, divided into chapters and sections by chronology, geography and category of activism.

The connection of U...