Standing Again at Sinai Judaism From a Feminist Perspective Summary

Feminist Theologian: Judith Plaskow Image past courtesy judith plaskow

It has been xx years since Judith Plaskow published the first-ever book of Jewish-feminist theology, "Standing Once more at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective." Much about Jewish life and practice has changed since and then. But, Plaskow says, not plenty.

In "Continuing," she looked dorsum at a watershed moment in her life equally a Jew and as a feminist. Plaskow and her and so-husband were continuing exterior of Yale University's Battell Chapel, chatting before going in for Sabbath services. A congregant came out and urged her hubby to come in to brand the minyan. "While I had attended services regularly for a year and a half and my husband was a relative newcomer, I could stay outside all 24-hour interval; my purpose was irrelevant for the purpose for which we had gathered," Plaskow wrote. It was "an enormously important click moment."

Feminist Theologian: Judith Plaskow Image by courtesy judith plaskow

Later in "Standing" she noted, "Excluded from prayer and report, women are excluded from the center and soul of traditional Judaism."

Since she wrote those words, women have gained a great bargain of admission, fifty-fifty in Orthodox Judaism, where, in some progressive communities in America and Israel, "partnership minyans" have taken hold and allow women an active office in many parts of prayer services. In New York there is even a new seminary, Yeshivat Maharat, training women for leadership roles in Orthodox synagogues; in January, however, members of a rabbinic group founded by rabbis Avi Weiss — who established Yeshivat Maharat — and Marc Affections, of Shearith State of israel, narrowly voted downwards admitting women. Today, rabbinical schoolhouse classes in the liberal movements frequently have more than female students than male.

In "Standing Again at Sinai," Plaskow wrote of the claiming facing those involved with Jewish religious life: "This world of women's experience is part of the Jewish world, function of the fuller Torah we need to recover."

Her work, in part, enabled the changes in scholarship and liturgy that have fabricated the Torah fuller today than two decades agone. There is a flowering of women's Torah exegesis, like "The Torah: A Women'south Commentary," published by the Reform move, and new prayer books put out recently past the Conservative and Reconstructionist movements that include, reverberate and value women's perspectives. New Jewish rituals propelled by feminism and egalitarianism, like women'southward Seders and welcoming ceremonies for babe girls, have become mainstream.

Even so in other parts of organized Jewish life, sometimes information technology appears that little has changed. "How often practise you get to a conference of Jewish importance, and there is one, or perchance no woman speaking?" said Plaskow, a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where she has worked for the past 32 years. "I go back and along between feeling everything has changed and nothing has inverse."

"Standing Once more at Sinai" made a huge affect when it was get-go published, providing a new framework for understanding Jewish texts and conventions, and prompting new conversations well-nigh gender's impact on Judaism that were not then part of the mainstream.

"It is one of those books that everyone has read, that has get almost part of the generational collective unconscious," said Conservative rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, editor of "Yentl'due south Revenge: The Next Moving ridge of Jewish Feminism" (Seal Press, 2001). Ruttenberg first read the volume when she was a college student.

"Information technology impacts the way people think about Judaism and its possibilities. Needless to say, it paved the mode for and then many other things to come up, like thinking about gender identity, sexuality and places in Judaism for people who have traditionally been more on the margins. It inverse more than than we'll always exist able to articulate," Ruttenberg said.

Nevertheless even as the creation of new Jewish rituals has become commonplace, and the report of Jewish women's history mainstream, Jewish feminist theology has non flowered as a subject area.

"There's nowhere to go to written report information technology. People who want to do it end up piecing together pieces of programs. Feminists are more than likely to go into Jewish history or other areas. It's turned out not to really have blossomed in the way that I had hoped information technology would," Plaskow said.

At the same time, the study of gender and feminism has become mainstream. Indeed, Martha Ackelsberg, Plaskow'southward partner of more than 25 years, teaches the subject at Smith Higher in Massachussetts.

Only, through whatsoever lens, Judaism has often viewed theology every bit less important than ritual.

"I was always told that Jews don't do theology. That's turned out to be pretty much true of Jewish feminists," Plaskow said.

Rachel Adler, a professor of modern Jewish thought and Judaism and gender at the Los Angeles campus of the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Organized religion, and one of the few professional feminist theologians, said, "At that place have non been many of us, and there are non many women to take our places."

Asked why that'south the case, Adler said, "Right now, the gender questions that were really crying out to be answered accept been answered in some ways. There'south more than that has to come, simply maybe it's not the time for it correct at present."

While the Jewish gender questions that Plaskow and Adler wanted to address may accept been answered, those in the larger cultural context often aren't.

For instance, Plaskow'southward students don't think most the role that gender plays in their lives as a whole. "When yous raise the effect of gender roles, it's a completely new concept to them," Plaskow said. At the same fourth dimension, "the women can see they're not brought upward the aforementioned ways as their brothers. My students come from relatively conservative families. Girls, for example, spend hours dressing themselves up in highly sexualized ways before they go out for the weekend," while their brothers practise non.

There remains much more work for feminist theory and perspective within Jewish life and in general, she said.

"A lot of the claims and insights of feminism have vanished. There isn't a historical memory, a communal memory," Plaskow said. "There are all these of import feminist issues that keep and are not really being discussed."

Debra Nussbaum Cohen is a contributing editor to the Forward and the author of "Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways To Welcome Baby Girls Into the Covenant"(Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001)

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Source: https://forward.com/culture/134754/judith-plaskow-is-still-standing-twenty-years-on/

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