Chapter Four Standing Again at Sinai

Feminist Theologian: Judith Plaskow Image by courtesy judith plaskow

It has been 20 years since Judith Plaskow published the first-always book of Jewish-feminist theology, "Standing Once again at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective." Much nigh Jewish life and practice has inverse since then. But, Plaskow says, not enough.

In "Standing," she looked back at a watershed moment in her life as a Jew and every bit a feminist. Plaskow and her then-husband were continuing outside of Yale University's Battell Chapel, chatting before going in for Sabbath services. A congregant came out and urged her married man to come in to brand the minyan. "While I had attended services regularly for a twelvemonth and a one-half and my husband was a relative newcomer, I could stay outside all mean solar day; 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 Epitome by courtesy judith plaskow

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

Since she wrote those words, women take gained a great deal of access, even in Orthodox Judaism, where, in some progressive communities in America and State of israel, "partnership minyans" take taken concord and allow women an active role in many parts of prayer services. In New York there is even a new seminary, Yeshivat Maharat, preparation women for leadership roles in Orthodox synagogues; in Jan, however, members of a rabbinic grouping founded by rabbis Avi Weiss — who established Yeshivat Maharat — and Marc Affections, of Shearith Israel, narrowly voted downwards admitting women. Today, rabbinical school classes in the liberal movements frequently accept more than female person students than male.

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

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

Withal in other parts of organized Jewish life, sometimes it appears that piddling has changed. "How often do you go to a briefing of Jewish importance, and there is one, or maybe 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 get back and forth between feeling everything has changed and zippo has changed."

"Standing Over again at Sinai" made a huge touch on when it was first published, providing a new framework for understanding Jewish texts and conventions, and prompting new conversations virtually gender's impact on Judaism that were non then part of the mainstream.

"It is 1 of those books that anybody has read, that has become well-nigh role of the generational collective unconscious," said Conservative rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, editor of "Yentl'south Revenge: The Next Moving ridge of Jewish Feminism" (Seal Printing, 2001). Ruttenberg start read the book when she was a college student.

"It impacts the way people think virtually Judaism and its possibilities. Needless to say, it paved the style for so many other things to come, like thinking most gender identity, sexuality and places in Judaism for people who have traditionally been more on the margins. Information technology changed more than we'll ever be able to articulate," Ruttenberg said.

Yet even every bit the cosmos of new Jewish rituals has become commonplace, and the study of Jewish women'southward history mainstream, Jewish feminist theology has not flowered as a discipline.

"In that location's nowhere to go to study it. People who want to do it end upwards piecing together pieces of programs. Feminists are more than likely to become 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 report of gender and feminism has become mainstream. Indeed, Martha Ackelsberg, Plaskow'south partner of more than 25 years, teaches the subject at Smith Higher in Massachussetts.

Simply, through whatever lens, Judaism has oft viewed theology as less of import than ritual.

"I was always told that Jews don't do theology. That'south 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 Wedlock College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and ane of the few professional feminist theologians, said, "There have non been many of the states, and there are non many women to take our places."

Asked why that'south the example, Adler said, "Right now, the gender questions that were really crying out to exist answered have been answered in some ways. There's more that has to come up, but maybe it's not the fourth dimension for information technology correct now."

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

For instance, Plaskow's students don't think about the role that gender plays in their lives as a whole. "When y'all raise the issue of gender roles, information technology's a completely new concept to them," Plaskow said. At the same time, "the women can see they're not brought upwards the aforementioned ways as their brothers. My students come from relatively conservative families. Girls, for case, spend hours dressing themselves up in highly sexualized means before they go out for the weekend," while their brothers do not.

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

"A lot of the claims and insights of feminism take vanished. There isn't a historical retentivity, a communal memory," Plaskow said. "There are all these important feminist issues that continue and are non 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/