Introduction: Five Decades of Gender in Jewish Studies

Abstract

Where is gender in Jewish Studies and what does it mean? Labels send messages that result in selfselection but not always as intended by the sender. We chose gender because we assumed that it is now flexible enough to encompass methodological developments and individual preferences for feminism, women’s studies, men’s studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory. The reader of this special issue, one of several similar recent stock-takes,1 can gauge to what extent our efforts to capture such breadth have been successful. The historiography of gender-sensitive study of Judaism encapsulates an interesting and ongoing dilemma of causality for the feminist movement: how do concepts and lived experience interact, and which of these should be the target for transformation? And indeed, is there a place for advocacy in scholarship? Two early English-language pieces on Jewish religion and gender set this out, both first published in Davka; I mention this in order to signal the importance of dissemination platforms willing to support this work. In fact, Rachel Adler’s “The Jew Who Wasn’t There: Halacha and the Jewish Woman” appeared in a special issue of Davka on “The Jewish Woman” in 1971. Adler addresses halakhic scholars as change-makers; she is clear that inaction on their part should be countered with direct action: “the most learned and halachically committed among us must make halakhic decisions for the rest.”2 Davka was not an academic publication, and it could be argued that Adler’s piece does not belong in the historiography of Jewish Studies, but Jewish activism. Yet, its republication in the Brandeisbased Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review in 1973, again in a special issue on ‘The Jewish Woman,’ illustrates the embodied link between advocacy and academia in the field, a theme that recurs in the following papers. What is also a recurring, still necessary process is the corralling of gendersensitive approaches to Jewish Studies into special issues, a sign that mainstreaming has not yet been achieved. The second early work to mention is Rita Gross’ examination of gender in God language, originally published in 1976. Whether it is still essential to address this issue today or whether it is a purposeless distraction emerges as a point of contention in our later discussion of Jewish religious thought. When Gross reviewed her career in gender studies in religion, she stated: “It has taken me a long time to learn that telling the truth can exact a heavy price.”3 “The truth” here refers to the development and application of research methods that do not omit, obscure, or falsify, something she helped to pioneer. Gross expressed her surprise about the resistance to such an endeavour. I suggest that there are at least two reasons for this resistance: first the perception that feminist gender studies in Jewish Studies makes patriarchy and by extension men look bad, and second that it makes Judaism look bad because it names its patriarchal aspects. Tal Ilan finds the latter to be a major stumbling block for gender-sensitive Jewish Studies today in environments where Judaism is to be protected.4 What Harry Brod (1994) theorizes as a double-bind in the wider social context mirrors the dynamic that Ilan describes in academia: solidarity as the collective’s defence against hostility from the outside running in parallel with patriarchal oppression on the inside.