Bonna Devora Haberman

Areas of Expertise

Jewish Gender Studies; Textual Activism

Email: haberman@brandeis.edu

Current Project

On leave for the 2008-2009 Academic Year.

Biography

Bonna D. Haberman is a lecturer and researcher at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Having grown up in Canada, studied there, in the USA and England, she has been fusing ethics and passion for social change with feminist hermeneutics of Jewish texts and culture. She returned to Israel in 2004 with her spouse and five children, having taught at Harvard University and at Brandeis University where she founded and directed the Mistabra Institute for Jewish Textual Activism. She is currently locating Mistabra in Jerusalem; participants engage in rigorous study and performance arts to address difficult problems in text and society with creative strategies.

Current topics of her research, teaching, activism, and performance are feminist Zionisms; de-commodification of Jewish marriage–personal and meta-narratives of cultural intimacy and resistance; and trafficking of women into prostitution - an extreme instance of gender-based oppression.

Portions of Bonna’s manuscript, Spirit Matters: A Text-based Approach to Zionism in Crisis are available for download from the Jewish Agency website. She is completing, Beyond the Wall: From Text to Action, a Jewish feminist liberation theology. Bonna initiated an Israeli movement for women’s public participation and leadership, “Women of the Wall”.

Education

Ph.D. Ed., University of London

Ph.D., University of London

Representative Publications

Haberman, Bonna D. “Divorcing Ba’al - An Exposé of the Sex of Ownership in Jewish Marriage,” edited by Danya Ruttenberg, On Judaism and Sex. New York: New York University Press, forthcoming.

Haberman, Bonna D. “Israel, A Palace in Space: A Gendered Re-Vision of Territoriality.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues, 6 (2003): 165-181.

Links

Curriculum Vitae