The Five Books of Miriam

The rich last issue of Nashim, no. 16, included Aaron Singer’s interesting review of The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), by Ellen Frankel, occasioned by the book’s recent publication in Hebrew translation (Am Oved, 2007). I found myself reading Singer’s analysis of the book as “midrash” in light of the Hebrew edition and the unfinished business I have with the publication of Hebrew translations of Jewish feminist books.

When I saw the Hebrew edition, I was upset yet again by the assumptions Israeli publishers have about the ability of average, educated Israelis to take in feminist Jewish messages, as indicated by the book’s outward presentation. Two past examples come to mind. Ilana Pardes’s Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach was translated into Hebrew as Haberi’ah lefi Ḥavah (i.e., “The Creation According to Eve”; Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996), and the illustration chosen for the cover was a silhouette of a female nude. Paula Hyman’s Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women became Ha’ishah haYehudiyah bisvach hakidmah (“The Jewish Woman in the Throes of Modernization”; Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1997).

Along the same misguided lines, Frankel’s book became Midrash Miriam (“The Midrash of Miriam”). The original title evokes Virginia Woolf’s allusion to the sister that Shakespeare never had, and is a play on “The Five Books of Moses” in English. The title indicates that the author intended her book not as “midrash” in the popular sense of the word, but, rather, as a kind of alternative Torah text, a “midrash” or “commentary” on the Bible comparable to the alternative narratives offered in some apocryphal books (and Bible scholars may point here to one or two books in the Hebrew Bible itself, like Deuteronomy or Chronicles).

On the other hand, Frankel’s book differs from the Torah text not only in its feminist content, but also in its feminist format. Indeed, for that purpose it adopts the hypertextual, dialogical format of rabbinic midrash, in keeping with Daniel Boyarin’s claim that the Rabbis, especially the authors of the Babylonian Talmud, were deliberately non-linear in their style of composition and therefore more post-modernist and “feminist” than our prejudices about them would allow. The application of the word “midrash” to this unique book is thus somewhat tricky even to the initiated.

I assume, however, that the Am Oved publishing house, wanting to sell the book to educated Israelis, changed the original title to “midrash” in order to soften its bold message. I would like here to offer, after the fact, a solution of my own to the translation dilemma.

In Hebrew, we do not use the phrase “The Five Books of Moses” in referring to the Pentateuch; instead, we say either Torat Moshe (the Torah/Teaching of Moses)—a theological assertion not necessarily confined to the Pentateuch—or Ḥamishah ḥumshei Torah (the Five Books of the Torah). A more appropriate Hebrew title for Frankel’s book might thus have been Ḥamishah ḥumshei Miriam—precisely paralleling the English title.

On top of the problematic title, the publishing house cut the cover art for Frankel’s book from the original four figures to only three. The work adorning the English book is a painting by Ann Altman entitled “The Guardians,” alluding, of course, to the four male shomerim of the Talmud, who are replaced by four women who take care of all creatures. This Jewish context is completely lost in the Israeli version, and the missing figure is the one caring for the human child, so that we end up with three women associated with Nature and not with Culture.