Category: Reading Reflections

The most interesting part of this article to me is the idea of emotional labor. Haredi women are expected to perform all sorts of emotional labor, taking care of her children as well as her husband. She is also, at times, expected to work outside of the house and maintain strict boundaries among men when she must enter the public sector. This introduces another level of emotional labor, as she is expected to maintain Tzniut and emotional boundaries outside of her home as well as in it. Men, on the other hand, are not expected to perform emotional labor. While they are praised for maintaining loving relationships with their children and wives, it is not entirely expected. Additionally, they are built for the public world because of their supposed “rationality”. Thus, it seems that they are expected not to show emotions or vulnerability outside of the home. Therefore, it falls upon their wives to carry the full weight of their husbands’ vulnerability, a heavy amount of emotional labor. The labor extends to also caring for parents, leaving women with a vast amount of emotional labor to perform.

In this essay, Weisberg confronts a similar issue to that of Aryeh Cohen in “The Sage and the Other Woman,” in regards to the position of women in comparison to that of the study of Torah. However, Cohen is much more concerned in his essay about the rabbis in question and their relationship to these objects of desire, women and Torah. He defends the position of the study of Torah being above that of women. Weisberg, on the other hand, questions this hierarchy, putting the women of the Talmudic era at the center of her argument. She focuses on how gender can be studied using rabbinic texts, while recognizing that the texts are inherently male-focused but can still merit a deeper understanding through feminist study. Unlike Cohen, Weisberg argues on the side of women, searching through multiple stories rather than one to give a wider perspective on the issue of Talmudic gender. Additionally, Weisberg goes further by asking about the study of Torah performed by women, whether that happened at all or was even allowed.

Both of these readings point to how women have been historically left out of the Jewish experience, from as far back as at least Sinai. Plaskow focuses on this story of Sinai, and how it is only part of the Jewish story. Therefore, women have the liberty to expand and retell this story and others, including themselves in this history. Cohen’s essay acknowledges a similar issue of Jewish literature speaking only to men, and not to women, using Talmudic analogies as her example. There are centuries between the two stories of Moses at Sinai and the widow confronting the Sages, and yet little changed at that point in terms of the principle audience of Jewish law and literature; it was all directed at men. I was surprised at how Cohen did not explicitly bring up the lack of acknowledgment of a female audience in the way that Plaskow did.

I appreciate Plaskow’s conscious decision to reconsider her myth and her experiences from a Jewish perspective, using Judaism-based language. To have begun her journey with Protestant-themed terms like mission, conversion, and grace makes sense within an American context, where Protestantism is the most prevalent religion. I think it was important for her to deliberately reexamine her own story in order to see the aspects of Judaism reflected in it. Plaskow herself mentions the importance of community, togetherness, and sisterhood within women’s movements, and how helpful it is for women to see their own experiences reflected in others. Thus, for her to share a deliberately Jewish perspective of women’s experiences is helpful for all women, but particularly for Jewish women, looking to better understand the world that they live in and their own feelings toward it. The language of tikkun olam and midrash is familiar to many Jewish women, and Plaskow’s use of these terms helps them relate their new experiences with the women’s movement to something that they already know and understand, making them more comfortable with the feminist ideas that Plaskow and the women’s movement are presenting.

At the end of her introduction, Fuchs summarizes the definitions that she has been examining across the seven anthologies which she is reviewing: ” ‘Gender’ is understood as an inevitable dichotomy between the sexes, rather than as a historical, social, and cultural institution. ‘Jewish Women’ is understood as a coherent sameness, rather than as a reference which is contingent on historical and cultural context,” (22). The argument she is making is that past attempts at studying “women” or “gender” within the field of Jewish Studies has flattened these terms into something that conveniently fit into their worldview, rather than critically examine them. Gender is seen as the traditional binary of male and female, and Jewish women are represented by white, middle-class wives and mothers. These definitions ignore anything outside of a heteronormative binary and ignore other classes, races, cultures, and roles which Jewish women take part in. Her criticisms are not unfounded, but I don’t quite understand why Fuchs is choosing to introduce her own book by reviewing and critiquing several others. She lays out her argument that a thorough examination of gender and women in Jewish Studies has yet to be done, yet she spends much of her time repeating that fact. To point to an example, on page 13 she writes “This claim to innovation ignores previous anthologies and monographs on ‘women’ and ‘gender’ in various Jewish Studies subdisciplines. This anthology displays not only a lack of awareness of feminist theories of gender and women, but of preceding monographs and anthologies in Jewish Studies.” These sentences are a blatant rewording of one another, making it more difficult than necessary for readers to understand Fuch’s point in introducing her book.

I feel like I may have learned about it before, but I was taken aback in reading Genesis chapter 2 by the things that were re-“created”. For example, in chapter 1, verse 12, it says that “the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind.” However, in chapter 2, verse 5, it is written that “no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted.” And this was after the seventh day, on which God rested. Additionally, though both male and female were created on day six, according to verse 27 of chapter 1, chapter 2 commences with the story of Adam and Eve after the seventh day was finished. What is the explanation for the creation of both trees and man to be told as happening during the first six days, as well as afterwards? How are these two stories reconciled?

As for the segment from Proverbs, the woman described here seems to have an agency and independence not afforded to most women in the popularized stories of the Bible. She is able to conduct her own business, buying a field, selling garments, earning and spending her own resources. Is this meant to be an idealized vision of what a wife can be? Who is this description coming from, and who is it being told to? Is this image being pitched to men, as the ideal wife, or to women, as the ideal role for themselves?

Some notable quotes from a section of this introductory chapter:

“While Women’s Studies began to define itself as a critique of accepted knowledge, Jewish Women’s Studies insists that it seeks to corroborate, expand, and contribute to accepted knowledge. The anthologies I will review in this introduction, and in specific disciplines throughout this book, exemplify this tendency to reassure scholars of Jewish Studies that the new knowledge is intended to support, promote, and revalorize various subfields in Jewish Studies.” p.3

“Drawing on this approach, gender would be understood not as a property of bodies, as a preexistent condition of human beings, but the set of effects produced in bodies, behaviors, and social relations.” p.9

“Scott argues that historians must describe the deviations from the purported stable ideologies of gender, rather than reproduce examples of conformity with the reigning ideology of a particular period or context.” p.10

#3 – While of course, historians are inclined to generalize a period in order to summarize said period concisely, for to include every detail and event would result in a surplus of unnecessary and confusing information. However, it is important to draw attention to notable deviations from the norm. These deviations often shed light on aspects of the norm that might otherwise go unnoticed. Additionally, they can be looked at as inspiration and influence for future changes.

I’ve pulled a few quotes from this essay that caught my eye, and explored one a little deeper:

“I mean to call this endeavor feminist studies of religion, not feminist studies in religion, to re-emphasize feminist scholarship on non-Christian topics, to stress feminist work that is critical of religious authorities in a wide variety of ways, and in order to raise questions about the absence from this forum of feminist scholars of religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, as well as those feminist scholars who treat Christianity not theologically but as a historicized religion that demands critical attention.”

“What are Jewish feminists to do when many of us use the terms gender, sex, sexuality, construction, and culture in very different ways?”

“It risks adopting a metaphor without inquiring critically into the power relations in which it was produced, or to which it may contribute and without considering the complexities of masculinist gender culture.”

#2 – I don’t understand why only one paragraph in this article was devoted specifically to Jewish feminist studies. The author does not return to this topic, nor does she give the same treatment to feminist studies of another religion. It seems entirely out of place in the article. This quote particularly raises questions for me, because I want elaboration from it. What different ways are these terms used in regards to Jewish feminism? What challenges do these different definitions bring up? This quote and the paragraph as a whole require much more elaboration in general.