Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation (review)

Feminism Encounter Traditional Judaism is a collection of essays that were no doubt originally written as separate pieces, but have now been adapted and joined together by a common thread. In dwelling upon various points of encounter and tension between feminism and Jewish tradition, they reflect a process that Hartman herself has undergone in formulating and then establishing a new model for Orthodox synagogue worship, capable of addressing feminist and egalitarian sensibilities. In this sense, the book is the background story of the founding of the first Orthodox “partnership” minyan, which to a great extent was established as a result of Hartman’s initiative and vision.

The book begins by addressing some of the general issues that set the stage for Hartman’s project. Thus, Chapter 1 (“Feminism and Modern Orthodoxy”) reflects upon the problematic relationship between feminism and Orthodoxy in light of Modern Orthodoxy’s relationship to modernity at large; Chapter 2 (“Facing the Legacy of the Canon”) lists the range of possible responses available to feminists when confronted by canonical texts whose truth or dictates are no longer real or viable in their eyes, using various responses to Freud’s understanding of the psychology of women as a model. The following chapters focus on a few more specific issues that arise in the effort to formulate a halakhic approach that is more attuned to women and their subjective experience in the context of prayer, and dwell on the broader ramifications involved. Chapters 3 (“Modesty and the Religious Male Gaze”) and 4 (“The Patriarchal Voice in Liturgy”) belong to this category. While Chapter 5 (“The Hands of Rabbis: Orthodox Women and Niddah”) has no direct bearing on the notion of partnership minyanim, this survey of Orthodox women’s responses to another area of potential dissonance with women’s felt needs and sensibilities serves Hartman to illustrate various methods of feminist co-existence with traditional norms bearing an androcentric thrust, as exhibited in a comparable field. The final two chapters (“Roles, Rules and Responsa: The Backlash against Feminism” and “Go Away and Change”) provide a critique of establishment resistance to feminist efforts.

The first thing to be said about this book is that Tova Hartman knows how to write. Her style is both forthright and highly articulate, allowing her obvious sense of conviction and passion for her cause to come through in no uncertain terms. Never one to beat around the bush, she is prepared to formulate difficult questions with profound clarity and then face them head-on. The intensity of her highly charged engagement with tradition benefits from occasional playful asides: as her sense of cognitive dissonance with tradition increased, her questions “became fruitful and multiplied” (p. 20); parallels between Modern Orthodoxy and secular modernity appear where “the Lonely Man of Faith meets the Lone Ranger” (p. 13); and a critique of the over-protective coddling of the religious male gaze is introduced by the heading “Samson the Nebbish” (p. 51). More importantly, Hartman is perceptive and insightful; she has a flair for sharp, incisive analysis and thinking outside the box. Although the initial impetus for Hartman’s project of feminist re-engagement with tradition was the wish to eliminate the contradictions in her life and—as she puts it—bridge the gap between teaching feminism in a university setting and praying behind a meḥitzah in shul, her recognition of the necessity to live in “creative tension” between conflicting loyalties often leads her to unexpected, thought-provoking formulations that turn stereotypical attitudes on their head.

At times, Hartman’s multi-layered approach leads her to expose popularly held fallacies of Modern Orthodoxy with regard to feminism by casting them in a new light. Ample illustration of this already appears in the first chapter, where Hartman counters Modern Orthodoxy’s allegation that the feminism entails importing foreign values into Judaism by contending that Modern Orthodoxy is no less guilty of absorbing Western influences that bear little relationship to the Jewish past. Amongst such influences are the modernist celebration...