The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 623-627 Betsy Halpern-Amaru. The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Pp. ? + 182. Betsy Halpern-Amaru's The Empowerment of Women in the Book ofJubilees is an insightful book about Jubilees, the aims of its author, and the artistry of his biblical interpretation. Contrary to the expectations evoked by the fashionable rhetoric of its title, there is no implication that the priestly author of Jubilees wished to "empower" women to act as equals to men. Rather, Halpern-Amaru uses the author's unusual interest in female characters as a lens through which to explore his methods of "rewriting the Bible," on the one hand, and his attitudes towards genealogical purity and the dangers of intermarriage, on the other. She argues that his treatment of primeval and matriarchal women communicates a "matrilineal principle of religious and ethical purity," which functions as a crucial component of his promotion of Jewish endogamy and which may even represent our "earliest evidence for the operation of a matrilineal principle of descent" within Judaism (pp. 4-7). The first chapter of this book considers Jubilees' portrayal of primeval women from Eve to DEdna. In the case of Eve, comparison with Genesis exposes Jubilees' characterization as surprisingly sympathetic. Consistently highlighting the commonalities between Eve and Adam, Jubilees depicts them as partners. Just as the interest in Eve reflects a special concern for the marital harmony of genealogically appropriate unions (a man and his "rib" representing the ultimate in endogamy, with God as the ultimate "matchmaker "), so the insertion of women into the subsequent genealogical notices signals the special significance of maternal lineage. Halpern-Amaru meticulously examines the structure and content of these notices, highlighting their tacit promotion of endogamy. Within Jubilees' expanded genealogies , female ancestry becomes pivotal to the propriety of a marital union (pp. 18, 40). By featuring first-cousin marriages in the primeval era, its author is also able to assure no intermarriage between the lines of Seth and Cain, thereby guaranteeing the purity of the line of Shem that leads to Abraham and the Jewish nation (p. 1 9). Tb underline the importance of endogamy, Jubilees presents a striking negative paradigm: the angelic Watchers. For Jubilees, the sin of the Watchers is not that they descended to earth from heaven (cf. 1 Enoch 6-16), but that they married "whomever they chose" (Jub 7:21). According to Halpern -Amaru, the violence of their progeny thus functions as an ominous warning against the dangers of intermarriage (pp. 20-22). When Kainan strays from Shem's line to marry from the line of Japheth, his exogamous 624THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW choice is likewise linked to moral degradation, as he falls prey to the temptations of magic and astrology (Jub 8:2-4; p. 24). This marks a general decline in both moral and genealogical purity (see pp. 25-26). The trend is fortuitously stemmed by an archetypicalIy proper marital union with correspondingly positive moral consequences: Terah marries °Edna, the daughter of his father's sister, and the patriarch Abraham is born (see p. 27). The next three chapters are dedicated to the treatment of Sarah, Rebekah , Leah, and Rachel in Jubilees. Halpern-Amaru here shows how the genealogical principles introduced in the earlier accounts are embodied in narrative form in Jubilees' characterization of the matriarchs (p. 40), focusing on the patriarchs' choice of wives with proper genealogical credentials (ch. 3), the marital relationships between matriarchs and patriarchs (ch. 4), and the matriarchs' role as mothers (ch. 5). In Genesis, family disharmony plagues the patriarchal narratives, and the matriarchs are usually the locus of discontent. Using subtle textual manipulations, Jubilees inverts the biblical picture. As with Eve and Adam, Jubilees reworks the stories to depict the matriarchs and patriarchs as cooperating partners within idealized marriages (e.g., pp. 47, 60-61, 70)—even adding material to ensure that the unloved Leah may share a special affinity with her husband (pp. 64, 71-72, 101). Moreover, the matriarchs exert a corrective influence on both their husbands and sons, wielding their power within the domestic realm towards "nurturing the covenant" (pp. 51...