The Unfinished Business of the Sexual Revolution

"The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul."

—Emma Goldman¹

Since writing the piece, "American Jewry's #MeToo Problem: A First Person Encounter" in June 2018, I have been repeatedly asked: what do I think of Steven M. Cohen's scholarship?² I understand why people ask, but the question misses the larger point of why I did not name him in the text. As the first woman in Jewish studies to speak out, I followed in the footsteps of my #GamAni foresisters Debbie Findling and Danielle Berrin, whose experiences with sexual harassment were in camping and journalism respectively. My goal was not merely to draw attention to the egregious behavior of an individual. I certainly wanted to protect other unsuspecting women from experiencing what I did, and for Cohen to be held accountable, but my ultimate goal was much broader. As indicated by the title, my essay was intended to force the academic and faith communities to which I belong to wake up from their irresponsible slumbers and fully reckon with the fact that gender equality, ethical leadership, and social justice require systemic and structural change.

I am grateful for the invitation to respond to the essay by Lila Corwin Berman, Kate Rosenblatt, and Ronit Y. Stahl. The authors effectively reveal "the construction and tenacity of the continuity paradigm and its deep entrenchment in the politics of Jewish social science research and communal priority setting." Their analysis is essential reading. During the research for my two books on Jews, gender, and intermarriage, I was at least partially ensnared in the Jewish communal agenda about marriage and fertility. I was intent on dismantling the idea that "good Jews" only marry other Jews, and demonstrating that children with one Jewish parent could be fully Jewish while honoring the heritage of both parents.³ Although I used gender and change over time to reframe the assimilation versus transformation debate that the late-twentieth and early twenty-first century continuity narrative hinged on, I see now that my historical analyses were still trapped by the patriarchal and misogynistic structures described by Berman, Rosenblatt, and Stahl that based "family values" on heterosexual couples and the numbers of children they produced. To thoroughly redress the communal agenda's myopic focus on Jewish families defined by marriage and multiple offspring, scholars need to devote significant attention to Jews of all genders, with or without partners or children, or with only one child.⁴

The authors' essay diagnoses a persistent inequity in Jewish communal life, one that is actually larger than they describe. The continuity paradigm—"an obsession with fighting intermarriage and programs meant to encourage Jews to have Jewish babies"—had ramifications beyond who Jews married and how many offspring were generated. While I agree with the authors' historical analysis that Jewish institutions, social researchers, and donors "sought to conserve and control the boundaries of Jewish life in the United States" by portraying intermarriage and low fertility as existential threats, their essay stops short of surveying the full story wrought by the continuity paradigm. What impacts one gender invariably impacts another.

By placing the onus of Jewish survival squarely on women's shoulders, the continuity paradigm reinforced existing gender dynamics that excused Jewish men from the unpaid labor of domestic Judaism. As the authors point out, the continuity paradigm was built on a series of binaries: endogamy/exogamy, core/periphery, correct/incorrect. In so doing, I argue, it reinforced traditional conceptions of Jewish gender, underscoring yet another binary: producer/consumer. Jewish men, like most American men, were encouraged to achieve professional success first and foremost, and thereby to become good providers for their wives and children.⁵ So whether they married coreligionists or women of other faith backgrounds, married other men or chose not to marry at all, men were exempt from Jewish parenting duty. It is not enough, in my opinion, to criticize The Forward's...