Judaism – Page 8 – Feminism and Religion

On Mikeitz: How Joseph Brings Meaning to My Hanukah Observance during This Pandemic by Ivy Helman

It is Hanukah. I have discussed the reasons I have found observing it difficult in a past blog. Namely, as an ecofeminist, I will not celebrate the violence of war or the slaughter of animals at the temple. This year presents a new challenge: how to celebrate the miracle of the oil in the midst of a global pandemic. For inspiration, I have looked at this week’s Torah portion: Mikeitz. Its Joseph tale has helped me find a meaningful practice for my Hanukah observance this year: the power of a human community’s action to preserve life.

The parshah begins with pharaoh having bad dreams. He has called on every interpreter he can think of and no one could interpret them for him. That is until he hears tale of Joseph and summons him. After hearing his dreams, Joseph satisfactorily explains the dreams’ meaning. Joseph says that there will be seven years of abundant crops followed by seven years of famine. The pharaoh believes Joseph and begins to make preparations. He appoints Joseph to oversee them.

Was Sefer Yetzirah Written by a Woman? Jill Hammer

This year, I published a book called Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah (available from Ben Yehuda Press, benyehudapress.com). Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation, is an ancient Jewish mystical work (written in approximately the sixth century CE, though scholars offer dates from as early as the 1^st century CE to as late as the 9^th century). This brief, cryptic, poetic book describes the process by which God creates the universe. God engraves letters, which are also the elements and fundamental forms of being, into the cosmos. These engraved letters act like energetic channels between the Creator and the Creation, allowing creative intention to flow from the One to the Many. The book instructs the mystical practitioner to develop awareness of this creative process and seek to embody it, thus allowing energy to flow back from the Many to the One.

This flowing between One and Many is called retzo vashov, running and returning—the constant ebb and flow between unity and multiplicity. Sefer Yetzirah says of the elements that “God’s word in them is running and returning.” This means that the divine intention moves within creation, and the elements shape themselves in response to this intention. In Sefer Yetzirah, as in most Jewish texts, the Creator takes a male pronoun. However, the elements—water, air, and fire, since the book has a three-element system rather than the more common four elements— all have female pronouns. These three elements, often identified with the Hebrew letters Aleph, Mem, and Shin, are sometimes known within the text of the book as the three mothers. And, God’s breath or spirit, the ruach elohim chayyim or breath of the living God, which gives rise to all the other elements, also take female pronouns. Not only that, but Wisdom, the feminine entity who is the sum total of all the engraved pathways between God and the world, is also feminine. We can say with certainty that the text gives the feminine unusual primacy, compared with other Jewish texts of the time. We also don’t see in this text any of the misogyny that is common in ancient texts of this time period. Continue reading “Was Sefer Yetzirah Written by a Woman? Jill Hammer”

Breathing Life into the Women of Chayei Sarah by Ivy Helman.

One of the basic tenants of feminist methodology in religion is the recovery of women’s history. There are many ways to approach such a task. In religions with sacred writings, one avenue for recovery may be reinterpreting them. This could come in the form of a critique. For example, traditional interpretations may overlook or undervalue women, who appear in the text, reaffirm sexist, patronizing, and/or misogynist viewpoints already found in the text, or develop new ones. In order to recover women’s history, feminists working with their sacred texts would then call out these interpretations for their sexism. They would correct phrasing, understanding, and even translations, when necessary.

In addition to critiquing, feminist interpretations of scripture could also be constructive. Religious feminists may highlight values, teachings, and images that affirm women’s lives. They may incorporate documented history into their interpretations as proof of expanded roles for women. That would then contextualize or negate later traditions that deny women such roles.

Continue reading “Breathing Life into the Women of Chayei Sarah by Ivy Helman.”

Write on Lilith! (Write on Eve!) by Ivy Helman

Over the past few months, I’ve been struggling to write posts. This month is no different. I am currently sitting with four different half-drafts on three semi-related topics, none of which I seem to be able to complete. I’ve gone back to each of them numerous times. I write. I erase. I rewrite. I copy bits of one into another to save for some other time. I’m left with one sentence: this week’s Torah parshah is Bereshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8). Great. Glad to know that. Now what?

When writing, I often find myself in one of two camps given the current state of the world. Either, I have so much to say that I have no clear idea where to start, so I write three pages of more or less nonsense. Or, I find myself just so inundated with information that I don’t know where my opinion begins and another’s ends. I write another 3 pages of completely different nonsense. I get fed up with both. I start praying better thoughts will just write themselves. They don’t.

Hagar, the Divine Witness, and the New Year by Jill Hammer

The Torah reading for the first day of Rosh haShanah, the Jewish new year, is not, as one might expect, the creation of the world (Rosh haShanah was Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, 9/18-9/20). Instead, the set reading is Genesis 21, the story of how Sarah, wife of Abraham, gives birth to Isaac—a joyous occasion indeed, given that she is ninety years old. But then Sarah becomes anxious that her husband’s other wife, Hagar, also has a son, Ishmael, who could inherit from Abraham, and demands that Hagar and Ishmael be expelled from the household. This year, reading this tale, I am seeing a story that shows how when we think about success, abundance, and consequences, we include some people in our consideration but not others. In this tale, the Divine includes the perspectives of the unwitnessed even when we do not.

In Genesis 16, it is Sarah (originally called Sarai) who first arranges a sexual relationship between Hagar, an Egyptian woman enslaved to her, and her husband Avraham, who has been called by God to create a new nation. God has promised her husband Avraham a great posterity, but they do not have even one child. Sarah gives Hagar to Avraham in order to produce an heir (no consent on Hagar’s part is recorded). When Hagar becomes pregnant, the text suggests that Sarah has become “light” or “diminished” in Hagar’s eyes. In other words, Hagar no longer treats Sarah as her owner. Sarah complains to Avraham, and Abraham gives Sarah permission to do whatever she wants with Hagar. Sarah abuses Hagar, and Hagar runs away. An angel arrives while Hagar is sitting by a well, and directs Hagar to return, for she is to give birth to a child who will give rise to uncountable numbers of offspring. During this encounter, Hagar gives God a name: El Ro’I, the God who sees me. Continue reading “Hagar, the Divine Witness, and the New Year by Jill Hammer”

May Her Memory Be A Revolution by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

On the eve of the Jewish Sabbath and the start of Rosh Hashanah, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg breathed her last breath. She was 87. She fought so hard for so long. She is an American patriot, hero, champion for women’s rights, and for many she was the stalwart bastion of justice and ‘liberal’ rulings. She was a Supreme Court Justice for 27 years. Her life has been put into books, a movie, and the most notorious memes around. She became known for elaborate collars over her Justice robes. We mourn the lost of her, we celebrate her memory, and we must pull up our boots and continue the fight.

ANNA’S DANCE: A BALKAN ODYSSEY by Michele Levy – Book Review by Joyce Zonana

Toward the end of her complex odyssey, Anna finds herself alone in an ancient Istanbul synagogue, where at long last she unreservedly “name[s] herself” a Jew and experiences connection with a God that “fuse[s] both male and female” and “from that wholeness birth[s] mercy and love.” Vowing to work to “help repair [the] world”–tikkun olam–she moves forward to face her life with a “sense of wholeness” that had eluded her for so long.

202002_Zonana_Joyce How to come to terms with the most maligned or vulnerable aspect of ourselves—whether it be race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, physical ability, or any other trait—remains among the most pressing questions of our time. Should we try to “pass,” identifying with the oppressor and denying or rejecting who we are? Should we assume a militant, defiant stance, wreaking vengeance on those who have harmed us? Or can we find a way to embrace and affirm ourselves, neither denying nor reifying the pain of our individual and collective pasts? Can we love those who have harmed us?

These are among the questions faced by 23-year-old Anna Rossi, the central character in Michele Levy’s complex, lyrical new novel Anna’s Dance: A Balkan Odyssey (Black Rose Writing, $20.95), set in the turbulent summer of 1968.

Raised in the U.S. as a non-observant Jew, Anna has nevertheless been seared by anti-Semitism—both the indignities experienced by her parents, and those she has encountered herself. Her mother, a brilliant mathematician, had been denied admission to Purdue’s engineering school— “You’re a woman and a Jew”—and rejected by her Irish-American mother-in-law as a “filthy immigrant Jew.” Growing up in a Northern Virginia suburb, Anna was branded “Miss Israel” in the ninth grade and given low marks by a teacher who insisted she was “not like us.” Later, in college, a professor called her a “Jewish bitch.”

Continue reading “ANNA’S DANCE: A BALKAN ODYSSEY by Michele Levy – Book Review by Joyce Zonana”

Judaism or Christianity: Which Tradition Is More Open to Feminist Change? by Carol P. Christ

Jill Hammer’s recent post on midrash surrounding the Biblical figure of Eve (Hava in Hebrew) sparked me to muse again about the fact that, despite its patriarchal roots and overlay, Judaism is a much more flexible tradition than Christianity and, therefore, much more open to feminist change.

Part of this is due to the fact that Judaism is midrashic while Christianity has been and remains a doctrinal tradition. Midrash is a form of Biblical interpretation that includes retelling the story to fill in the blanks and to answer contemporary questions left unanswered in the original text. Jews consider the Torah (the 5 books of Moses) to be the “Word of God” though opinions vary as to what this means. In the rabbinical tradition, the Torah is interpreted through the Talmud which is an extensive collection of discussions and disputes that draw on Biblical texts in relation to contemporary (to the rabbis) questions. Midrash included in the Mishnah (a collection of teachings that preceded the Talmud) and the Talmud are considered part of the “oral Torah.” which is also “the Word of God.”

The Talmud is considered to be authoritative, but it includes conflicting interpretations that were never resolved into a single definitive view. Though different Jewish groups have declared certain views to be normative, other groups have disagreed. There is no central authority (such as a Pope or council) to resolve these disputes. Though some Jewish groups disagree strongly with the beliefs or practices of others, in Judaism as a whole an attitude of “live and let live” leads to inclusion rather than exclusion. Indeed. The Talmud records that in the midst of a particularly vehement dispute between two rabbis, a voice intervened, stating: “These and these are the words of the Living God.” (Quoted by Judith Plaskow in Goddess and God in the World.) Continue reading “Judaism or Christianity: Which Tradition Is More Open to Feminist Change? by Carol P. Christ”

Post-Hysterectomy Reflections: Not All Women Bleed by Ivy Helman

Around the age of 8, or maybe 10, I learned my aunt had had a hysterectomy. I remember visiting her house either shortly before or after the operation. I can’t remember which, and it doesn’t really matter. At the time, I don’t think I even knew what a uterus was or that I too had one.

Just like me, she had suffered from uterine fibroids. This year, at the end of May, after nearly two years of various treatments including a failed myomectomy and ineffective prescription medication, I followed in her footsteps. It was really the only option for me, although it was not an easy decision. After surgery, there was the usual post-op pain and restrictions, but luckily my body has been healing well.

Since the surgery, and as I prepare to teach “Gender and Religion” again in the fall, I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had with a student the first time I offered the class at Charles University. We were about to begin discussing the article, “Why Women Need a Feminist Spirituality,” by Judith G. Martin, when a student pressed me on why we weren’t acknowledging that not all women bleed. What he really wanted was to make sure that in our category of women, we were including transwomen. Continue reading “Post-Hysterectomy Reflections: Not All Women Bleed by Ivy Helman”

Eve, Revisited by Jill Hammer

About six months ago I was hired to write a curriculum for a Jewish organization on biblical women in ancient and contemporary midrash. Midrash—the ancient process of creative interpretation of sacred text that began two thousand years ago and continues to this day—has been one of my fields of expertise, and women in midrash is a particular specialty. I knew the first lesson I wrote would be on Eve (Chava in Hebrew), the first woman of Genesis. Yet as I began to write lessons, I started with Sarah and Hagar, then proceeded to Rebekah and Lot’s wife, Rachel and Leah, even Asnat (Joseph’s wife) and Naamah (Noah’s wife). It became clear over the months that I was avoiding Eve. Whenever I began to think about beginning “her” lesson, I grew anxious and immediately began to think of something else. Only when I had already written six of my ten lessons did I finally, reluctantly, begin to research ancient legends and modern feminist poems on the first foremother of the Bible.

Why was I avoiding Eve? In part, because she seemed like such a huge topic. Generations of Jews (and, of course, Christians) have had a great deal to say about Eve, her creation, the fruit of knowledge, the serpent, Eve’s relationship with Adam, and more. How would I encapsulate it all? And then there was Lilith, Eve’s alter ego, and all of the legends about her. Choosing a handful of midrashim out of this vast corpus seemed impossible. Plus, there was a whole literature about the relationship between Eve and ancient Near Eastern myth I wanted to allude to—Eve as a kind of human version of the Goddess with her Tree. How to choose what to put in and what to leave out? Continue reading “Eve, Revisited by Jill Hammer”