Gender and Jewish Education: A Leap of Faith
Judith Rosenbaum, PhD
CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive
June 2023
In a recent essay written for the Jewish Women’s Archive’s (JWA) teen Rising Voices Fellowship, Miriam Niestat reflected on an intense conversation she had with peers about Jewish feminism. One young woman posed a challenge: “Either the Jews have to learn feminism or the feminists will leave Judaism.” Miriam took this ultimatum seriously but responded from her own experience with an alternative model that bridges the implied gap between Judaism and feminism: “My Judaism is about learning feminism and encouraging it around me. My Judaism is about involving myself in Jewish spaces that enable, support, and even inspire feminism. My Judaism is about advocating for others to be able to use their voices to find their Judaism. Our Judaism is about changing the systems that hold others back from practicing the meaningful rituals that contribute to their Judaism.”1
In ten years of the Rising Voices Fellowship, I’ve learned time and again how powerful it is for our teen leaders to encounter an integrated approach to Jewish history, Judaism, and feminism, with women and gender at the center. From the secular Jew who finds an entry point into Jewish conversation through feminism to the Orthodox young woman who discovers an expanded palette of Jewish role models through a feminist lens, our Fellows feel more connected Jewishly and stronger in their ability to engage as Jews in the world.
The responses and insights of our Rising Voices Fellows have confirmed that, in order to integrate gender studies into Jewish education more effectively, we must teach ideas from contemporary gender studies not as foreign approaches grafted onto Jewish texts or conversations but rather as natively Jewish questions and concerns. Feminist topics and concepts—such as intersectionality, challenges to the gender binary, revaluation of labor and caregiving—should be framed as Jewish questions and problems, central to the Jewish project because they are central to Jews and speak to central Jewish issues, such as belonging, communal obligation, covenantal relationships, and human dignity.
One way that JWA does this is by teaching a broad array of Jewish texts beyond the classical and Jewish history beyond the traditional (male, Ashkenormative) narrative to highlight intersectional identities, LGBTQ stories, and categories that reveal that our contemporary experiences, questions, and identities have historical antecedents. We teach primary sources by Jewish women—such as letters, diaries, articles, speeches, and photographs—as Jewish texts that illuminate the Jewish experience and deserve the attention of Jewish text study. We highlight thinkers who frame their questions in Jewish contexts and language in unexpected ways. For example, anarchist Emma Goldman2, often rejected from the Jewish pantheon as “anti-Jewish,” named as her role model the biblical Judith, drawing on a Jewish source as the root of her social justice activism (and to explain her anarchist rejection of religious parochialism). We introduce them to contemporary leaders, such as Rabbi Minna Bromberg3, who defines the mission of her organization, Fat Torah4, with the Jewish images of “smashing the idolatry of fatphobia and leading ourselves from Narrowness to Freedom.” And we lift up the voices of emerging leaders, encouraging them to explore their own identity formation through Jewish frameworks and terms. Rising Voices Fellow Rosie Yanowitch, for example, uses the Jewish statement of “Hineni”—which she defines as incorporating a sense of power, intention, and responsibility—to describe her own Jewish feminist awakening in response to witnessing her mother come through a difficult divorce.5
This process requires (at least) three leaps of faith:
The first leap of faith is that we can and will find Jewish sources that speak to the issues of our time, such as those raised by gender studies. If we believe in the relevance and sacred depth of our tradition, we must believe that as Jewish experiences and perspectives evolve, we will find Jewish ethical responses to our most urgent questions.
The second leap is to trust young people to be our guides in this process. It is, I believe, easier and more organic for them to think outside of binaries and to recognize different sources of authority. We must empower them to speak up about their perspectives and encourage them to lead us from their own intuitive understandings of Jewish authenticity.
Finally, we must believe that authenticity is not static but rather evolving, and quickly. As pioneering Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow6 has taught, it only takes one generation for something that once felt grafted on and foreign to feel authentic and internal. We can see this in our own time in the acceptance (in many places) of women in the rabbinate. Historical examples abound: Maimonides’ books were burned in his time; Zionism was once a fringe Jewish ideology.
We witness this evolution of authenticity in an essay by Rising Voices Fellow Liana Smolover-Bord on the theology of Judith Plaskow herself. In her piece entitled “A Jewish Feminist and a Feminist Jew,” Liana writes: “When I make space for my Judaism and feminism to support each other, I am a better Jew, a better feminist, and a stronger advocate (not to mention, a more authentic version of myself).”7 Because she encountered Plaskow as a Jewish thinker and her work as a Jewish text, Liana reads Plaskow not as a challenge to Judaism but as an authoritative voice on Judaism, a prooftext for her own Jewish feminist self-conception.
Young people tell us that this work matters to them, emerges from their Jewish selves, and is essential to their Jewish education. If we listen to them, we learn that the “challenge” of gender and Jewish education is an organic and exciting opportunity. As Rising Voices Fellow Miriam Stodolsky writes in an essay called “Imagining Feminist Torah Commentary for Everyone,” “I want to be part of communities where we can discuss topics like Zionism’s impact on Jewish masculinity, the connection between beauty standards and Jewish assimilation, and the Talmud’s understanding of gender. Even more, I want those discussions to have a concrete impact on the world: changing how our Jewish institutions work, contributing to feminist thought, and everything in between.”8 So do I, Miriam, and I encourage you to lead the way.
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¹ Niestat, M. (2023, June 19). A Conversation on the Future of Jewish Feminism. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/conversation-future-jewish-feminism.
² Falk, C. (2023, June 19). Emma Goldman. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldman-emma.
³ Jewish Women's Archive. (2023, July 6). Episode 86: Fat Torah with Minna Bromberg. Can We Talk? Podcast. https://jwa.org/podcasts/canwetalk/episode-86-fat-torah-minna-bromberg.
⁴ Bromberg, M. (n.d.). Fat Torah: bringing fat liberation to Jewish communal life. Fat Torah, Haken Institute. https://www.fattorah.org.
⁵ Yanowitch, R. (2022, November 28). Finding My Hineni. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/finding-my-hineni.
⁶ Adler, R. (2021, June 23). Judith Plaskow. Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/plaskow-judith.
⁷ Smolover-Bord, L. (2020, October 30). A Jewish Feminist and a Feminist Jew. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/jewish-feminist-and-feminist-jew.
⁸ Stodolsky, M. (2022, October 14). Imagining Feminist Torah Commentary For Everyone. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/blog/risingvoices/imagining-feminist-torah-commentary-everyone.