In Search of Identity and Spirituality in the Fiction of American Jewish Female Authors at the Turn of the 21st Century. Dorota Mihulka
to bar mitzvah for boys). Finally, calls for equal access have also ←66 | 67→included calls for women’s ordination as rabbis and their investiture as cantors (Umansky, 1999: 183).
The articulation of an “equal access” platform by Jewish feminists from both groups mirrored the goals of American feminism which in its first stage in the late 1960s lay an emphasis on the identification of women’s oppression and exclusion from power, and on the development of various strategies helping to secure self-empowerment and political change for women. The primary goal of American feminism was for women to participate in the material wealth and to enjoy the social status previously available to white men in the American society. Similarly, Jewish feminism sought equality as well as equity for women in Jewish communal life and in the synagogue.
In the late 1970s American feminism, which entered its second stage, began to highlight some of women’s differences from men as positive attributes. This emphasis on the woman-centered perspective was not intended, as Hester Eisenstein remarks, “to minimize the polarizing between masculine and feminine,” but rather “to isolate and to define those aspects of female experience that were potential sources of strength and power for women” (1984: xii). Just as American feminists began to celebrate women’s culture, so Jewish feminists began in the early 1980s to focus their energies on the creation of a ‘feminist Judaism’ in which its three important elements, that is God, Torah, and Israel would be re-conceptualized. According to Umansky, the third, more recent definition of Jewish feminism asserts that “to be a Jewish feminist is to integrate women’s experiences into Jewish life, thus working toward the transformation of Judaism itself” (1999: 185–186). A similar sentiment is expressed by theologian Judith Plaskow who views feminism as demanding a new:
[…] understanding of Israel that includes the whole of Israel and thus allows women to speak and name our experience for ourselves. It demands we replace a normative male voice with a chorus of divergent voices, describing Jewish reality in different accents and tones. Feminism impels us to rethink issues of community and diversity […]. Feminism demands new ways of talking about God that reflect and grow out of the redefinition of Jewish humanity. (1991: 9–10)
As a consequence, such feminists began to articulate the need for women’s creation of liturgy that would reflect the ways in which women named, and experienced, God. As Plaskow notes of feminist reinterpretation of rituals, or creating new liturgy, “women are seeking to transform Jewish ritual so that it acknowledges [their] existence and experience. In the ritual moment, women’s history is made present” (1986: 33).
Comparing the three definitions of Jewish feminism offered by Umansky, it must be stated that the first two definitions referring to ‘equal access’ do not comprise all the aspects of Jewish women’s life that require transformation. On the one hand, equal access enables women to participate more fully in the Jewish community but, on the other hand, it does not necessarily reflect the values and experiences of men as well as women nor does it view the values and experiences ←67 | 68→of both groups as equally important. Although Jewish women may achieve equal access to rituals and liturgies created by and for men, it does not mean that the androcentric nature of those rituals and liturgies will be addressed and remedied. As Judith Plaskow (1990), Rachel Adler (1998), Ellen M. Umansky (1999), and other Jewish feminists – representatives of “Jewish feminism as transformation” – have argued, the ‘otherness’ of women, evident in Jewish liturgies and sacred texts, cannot be resolved simply through equal access or gradual and partial change of Halakhah. They have advocated the transformation of the very nature of Halakhah, and the creation of non-hierarchical images of God that reflect the theological conviction that, “[…] it is our obligation, as covenantal partners, to work with God in repairing the world and to bear responsibility for our actions” (Umansky, 1999: 186–187) (see also Section 1.3.2 in this chapter).
The relationship between Jewish women and American feminism has been complex from the very beginning. Notwithstanding the energetic contributions of individual Jewish women and Jewish women’s groups, not all Jewish women’s organizations were actively interested in and approved of the goals of equality or enhanced political rights for women. Nor did American feminists recognize the legitimacy of Jewish identity and the major contributions that Jewish women made to their mutual cause. Moreover, feminists from the general feminist movement rarely got involved in defense of Jews when they were attacked in the United States or abroad; in fact, women’s rights supporters and their allies themselves frequently expressed anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, or anti-Zionist views. Despite American feminists’ failures to publicly support or acknowledge Jewish issues, Joyce Antler emphatically asserts that “Jewish women have been among the most passionate supporters of feminist goals throughout the long and continuing struggle for women’s rights” (“American Feminism,” 1998: 408).
It is worth noting that many of the leaders and thinkers of the second-wave American feminism were of Jewish descent – they were well-educated, largely secular Jewish women, liberal in their political and cultural orientation. Apart from Betty Friedan (Bettye Goldstein), a cursory list of feminists who were Jews encompasses figures as influential and varied as Bella Abzug, Phyllis Chesler, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Vivian Gornick, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, Shulamith Firestone, Andrea Dworkin, Adrienne Rich, Esther Broner, Nancy Chodorow, Susan Gubar, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, and Judith Plaskow who played prominent roles in spearheading women’s rights in the 1960s and early 1970s, and in the following decades were active in various spheres of American (Jewish) public and/or religious life making use of their feminist insights and experience (Jacobson, 2006: 253, 437).
Despite the fact that these feminists were of Jewish origin, most did not deal specifically with Judaism or with the Jewish community nor did they link their feminism to their religious or ethnic identification, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s. The avoidance of Judaism as well as Christianity, regarded as patriarchal religions, a source of oppression and hence irrelevant to women’s lives, was a characteristic feature of the American ideological and political atmosphere of ←68 | 69→that period.34 Within American feminism it was proclaimed that gender surpassed all other aspects of identity, as a result of which all women were united, despite their differences of class, race, and ethnicity. Although many working-class and women-of-color feminists quickly took issue with a feminist program that paid no attention to their numerous allegiances and their solidarity with men of their own groups, “Jewish women within the American feminist movement,” as Paula Hyman notices, “tended initially not to assert a Jewish dimension to their feminism or to bring the issue of gender equality to the Jewish community” (2003: 299).
However, some Jewish women for whom Jewishness was fundamental to their identity felt that they could not define themselves solely through their feminist ideology and affiliations, following Mary Daly’s advice. As Judith Plaskow declares in the Introduction to her Standing Again at Sinai (1990) – the first methodical feminist Jewish theology – “the move toward embracing a whole Jewish/feminist identity did not grow out of my conviction that Judaism is ‘redeemable,’ but out of my sense that sundering Judaism and feminism would mean sundering my being” (1991: xiii). Plaskow’s statement clearly indicates that Jewish feminists were not willing to turn their back on the Jewish past and (deeply patriarchal) tradition, giving priority to their own feminist experience, but rather create ‘a new extended identity’ that would embrace different, frequently conflicting, yet equally important, aspects of their female identity. To make a feminist Judaism a reality, Jewish feminists believed that Judaism would be required to transform its patriarchal nature thoroughly. Implementing their newly acquired feminist analysis to their condition as American Jews, Jewish feminists realized that female inferiority was a cultural construct, because of which Jewish women suffered the inequalities in Jewish law, in the synagogue, and in Jewish communal institutions. Their collective goal, however, was not only the attainment of equal rights for Jewish women in religious or societal structures, but also the transformation of Judaism in such a way that it would become a religion including all Jews – women and men. Thus, as feminist Ellen M. Umansky concludes, specifically Jewish feminism emerged “as a means of asserting both Jewish visibility within the feminist movement and ←69 | 70→feminist consciousness within the U.S. Jewish community” (1988: 352; italics