Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XClI, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 589-593 Nehama Aschkenasy. Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Pp. 181. In her epilogue, the author explains how her "theory of the woman at the window" underlies "all ensuing discussions." This explanation is very important , because without it the reader might have assumed that the book falls into two distinct parts. The interesting and sometimes compelling part of this book is the final chapter entitled "In the Palace of Words." This fifth chapter is heavily influenced by Derek Bickerton's dubious theory that human language evolved over the course of prehistoric time from nonexistence to protolanguage. Aschkenasy argues that Eve, as portrayed in Genesis 2-3, speaks a language which exhibits more of the characteristics that separate mature human language from the mere information-bearing function of protolanguage. These include the representation of reality that implies causality, offers reasoning, refers to internal states, and creates new concepts that name new experiences (p. 129). In fact, Aschkenasy contends, "Adam talks only about 'observables in the external world,' while Eve's language communicates 'the contents of one's mind.'" From the data that only 1 1 1 of the 1426 persons named in the corpus of Hebrew Scripture canonized in the Hellenistic period or later are women,1 Aschkenazy draws a totally unwarranted conclusion concerning Israelite women in the Late Bronze and Iron Age: The women's mute universe bothers us because language is what characterizes us as free, intelligent, and rational beings. The human language is more than a tool of communication, it articulates mental and intellectual processes. If women were discouraged from expressing themselves, or if their voice was deemed unimportant, then by necessity their language skills did not develop and mature as well as the men's did (p. 1 20). Moreover, concludes Aschkenasy, "The muffling of the female voice also meant the erotic subjection of women, making the sexual experience the man's domain—he 'knows' her—and thus another form of stunting the mental and social growth of women" (pp. 120-121). 1 For these figures see Cullen Murphy, "Women and the Bible," The Atlantic Monthly, August 1993, p. 42. 590THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW Only rarely (see below) does Aschkenasy cite datable texts, pictorial art, or artifacts from the ancient Near East which shed light on the reality of women's lives in the biblical period.2 Notwithstanding Aschkenasy's dubious endeavor to draw conclusions in the realms of anthropology and social history from a small corpus of ancient Hebrew tales of uncertain date, which are neither belles lettres nor historical writing but rather saga, Woman at the Window occasionally presents a brilliant insight, which might be put to good use in a Sabbath or Sunday sermon. In this regard, Aschkenasy is at her best on Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah—who ironically are nameless throughout Woman at the Window: The women successfully bring about an amendment to the divinely ordained Mosaic law of inheritance that initially ruled that only male heirs could acquire their father's estate (p. 131; cf. Num 27:1-11). Referring to the exposition of Num 27:1-1 1 in the rabbinic midrash Sifre, Aschkenasy writes: The rabbis saw the antipatriarchal impulse in the women's seemingly innocuous speech. According to the rabbis the women exonerated God from the evil of patriarchy and put the blame on the male-made system rather than on Him. The rabbis thus help us to uncover the rather revolutionary aspect of this early tale, which rewards women handsomely for speaking their mind in a circuitous, clever way (p. 131). Almost as creative as her treatment of the narrative of Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah is Aschkenasy's extensive treatment of the Book of Ruth (pp. 145-156), the final paragraph of which reveals Aschkenasy's disparagement of motherhood. This accounts for her idiosyncratic treatment of the failed dialogue between Hannah and Elkanah in 1 Samuel 1: Skeptics might argue that Ruth's story ends on a disappointing note: another woman has become pregnant and given birth to a male child who...