A Feminist Companion to....Genesis, Song of Songs, Ruth, Judges etc, edited by Athalya Brenner (Sheffield Academic Press)
Sharon Cohen, Reclaiming the Hammer: Toward a Feminist Midrash, Tikkun 3,2
Cohen (Tikkun 3,2) writes that in rabbinic midrash the "androcentric, antifeminist bias is unrelenting....[and] that we must somehow articulate our own relationship to the biblical legacy." (p. 93) She concludes in this same article that "our task is to affirm the fundamental pluralistic impulse in midrash by removing it from the exclusive context of a male-dominated, hierarchical rabbinic establishment.....This must be our model as we attempt to create a feminist apporach to midrash." (p. 95)Naomy Graetz, S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Tales(Professional Press, 1993)
Elana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Hebrew Bible
Tikva Frymer Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. (NY: Fawcett Columbine Books, 1992.)
Carol Meyers, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, Oxford University Press 1988.
The book compares women's roles in early Judaism and the two accounts of Genesis as paradigms for women's roles.Reading Ruth-Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story, ed. Judith A. Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer
Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, And God Remembered, a book for children of all ages that tells the story Lillith, Pharaoh's Daughter, Serach, and the Daughters of Zelophechad)
Phyllis Trible, God_and_the_Rhetoric_of_Sexuality
Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror
Savina Teubal, Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriach of Genesis. (Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1984.)
Jane Sprague Zones, ed, Taking the Fruit: Modern Women's Tales of the BibleWoman's Institute for Continuing Jewish Education, San Diego, CA, 1981 and 1989
The 1989 edition has pieces in it by Judith Plaskow, Penina Adelman, Susan Gross, Esther Tictin, Ellen Umansky and Naomy Graetz among many others."Images of Woman in the Old Testament", by Phyllis Bird, in Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. by Rosemary Ruether. (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1974.)
But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.)
There is a midrash about Rachel and Leah in the (June?) issue of Lilith Magazine that includes midrashic comment on Bilhah and Zilpah. It is a modern midrash by Zeise Wild Wolf. I highly recommend it. Susan B Zeller
Next, we discovered a most interesting midrash, brought down in the commentary called "daas zekeinim mibaalei hatosophot." They say that Osnat was not the biological daughter of Potifar. Rather, she was actually the daughter of DINAH and SHECHEM! The Midrash says that Jacob "threw her out", but he gave her an amulet around her neck. She ended up as the adopted daughter of Potifar. When the Egyptian women would line up to catch a glimpse of the good looking Joseph, Osnat was among them. Joseph spotted the amulet, knew she was descended from Jacob, and therefore married her.
So, here we have another woman in a chain of those who indulged in prohibited sexual unions, produced children, and those children ended up as progenitors of greatness. (eg, Lot's daughers -Ruth- Messiah; Tamar - Peretz - David, etc.) Dinah's daughter ending up married to Joseph.
Some of us felt that this Midrash represents an effort to "sanitize" Joseph, providing for him a Hebrew wife. Despite that, however, it does a lot of other things. Provides Dinah with a history, that puts her in a place of power. We can imagine Dinah, no longer despised, coming to Egypt and living in the palace with her daughter!
We ended our study session by considering how interesting a biography of Osnat would be: despised and thrown out by her grandfather, adopted by a couple who were both to desire her future husband! Then, meeting her mother again when she is established as a great man's wife.
We speculated that, following good rabbinic tradition, the Mashiach may very well be born of another illicit union - that of an agunah, who remarries without a get, and produces a mamzer. Surely such a mamzer might ultimately become mashiach! Rivka Haut and the Women's Chumash Learning Group
In an article I first wrote about 1986 for the First Jerusalem International Conference on Women and Judaism (there unfortunately never was a second one) I felt that those rabbis who thought positively about Dinah, or who had second thoughts about condemning her had to do some closure on her. So they filled in the gaps, the silence in the biblical text by accounting for her whereabouts and destiny after the rape. What Rivka describes as meeting up with her mother etc. i.e. a prototype 'happy ending'. Incidentally there are some rabbis who see Dinah as turning up as Job's wife (Genesis Rabbah 57.4) and even as being bethrothed to her own brother Simeon (Gen. R 80.11) But unfortunately most of the midrash blames the victim: Dinah brought it upon herself by "going out" (see Eccl. R. 10.8; Gen R. 80.1).Naomi Graetz
Regarding Osnat as Dinah's daughter, you can find "non-Jewish" sources for this in a first century B.C.E-second century C.E. text entitled "Joseph and Aseneth." In the version of the "Index to Pseudepigrapha" which I was using (Charlesworth), there is also a reference to an article by "V. Aptowitzer" entitled "Aseneth, the Wife of Joseph: A Haggadic Literary-Historical Study," in HUCA I (1924) and to Ginzberg's "Legends of the Jews." The theory is that the idea of Osnat being the daughter of Dinah was part of the Jewish oral tradition and eventually became woven, in part, into this pseudepigraphal document. Great stuff. Jennifer G. Bayer
The Serach story is retold by Rabbi Sandy Sasso, in her book, "And God Remembered", along with 3 other stories of women - Lillith, Pharaoh's Daughter and the Daughters of Zelophechad.
The question was asked: According to him who says that it means 'her hand,' why does it not explicityly say 'her hand'? This does not refute him. The word 'amatah' is used on purpose because her arms were prolonged. . . . . The rabbis say that Pharaoh's daughter was perous and went down to bathe, but as soon as she touched the ark she became healed. For this reason did she take pity upon Moses and loved him with an exceeding love."
I like the idea that our arms can be prolonged, that our reach to do good is longer than we think.Carolyn Austin
Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels. And Miriam chanted for them:
Sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea
There's a history of rabbinic midrash that suggests that "prophet" doesn't really mean prophet, but there's a history of feminist midrash that says that it does. Specifically, if Deborah is the prophet of war, and Jeremiah is the prophet of exile, Miriam is the prophet of water. Almost from the first moment we see her, she's next to the water, watching her brother's cradle to safety along the Nile. She knows the power of water to bring life and death. So it's appropriate that here in her Song of the Sea she sings of God's use of the waterpower. As the very next lines show (Ex 15.22-27), Moses himself doesn't know so much about water, but brings the people to a place of bitter waters, Marah, which precipitates the first stirrings of rebellion. He must appeal to God for help, who exacts a promise from the people to obey God's statutes in return for leading them to fresh water. In the desert, water is politics.
Tradition has it that Miriam secured the Israelites against future such occurences by her magic well of water. I prefer to think of it this way: her brother, Moses, is good at the flashy miracle--raise the rod, etc.--but Miriam's unique ability is to listen attentively and patiently to the earth's processes and find the sources of life deep in the aquifers below. When Moses wants to turn back a rebellion by Korach, God helps him by opening up the ground--but that sort of Madison Avenue miracle won't work when it comes to the waterpower: the sources would be clogged by the violence of the collapsing earth. Moses doesn't want to speak to the rock to get water, even after God promises him 3 separate times that speaking to it will produce water. Instead, he beats it with his rod--the rod that turns the Nile to blood, the rod of war, the rod of a certain kind of masculine authority.
Miriam knows the secret of speaking to the rock; she knows the secret of dialogue rather than the exercise of autocratic authority. Moses' impatience and reliance on divine authority and power is vital to the success of his mission. Community-organizer, institution-builder, mover of a slave people to freedom--with a little coercion when necessary. Miriam's power of dialogue is no less vital to the success of her mission: that is, to get close to the pure sources of life.
It's no wonder that the people will not stir from Hazeroth until Miriam, punished by God for questioning Moses' authority, is readmitted to camp: the sources of life might dry up if not for her! (Num. 11). Neither is it any wonder that when Miriam dies in Kadesh (Num. 20) that the Torah reports: "Miriam died there and was buried there. The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron." In this second water-related political crisis in the community, neither the political leader (Moses) nor the priestly leader (Aaron) knows how to respond appropriately. It's in this crisis that Moses disobeys God, raises the rod, and disregards the command to speak to the rock--for which he is condemned never to enter the Land.
Miriam is indeed a prophet: the prophet who knows that the process by which one gets near to the "fountain of living waters" is as important as the nearness itself. She models a type of relationship that is based on listening and respect. For sometimes, though one has the best intentions, the very impatience by which one attempts to construct holy relationships can poison one's own life, and produce such bitterness that it poisons the lives of subsequent generations.
In our house on Pesach, we have two extra cups of liquid: a cup of wine for Elijah, and for Miriam, a cup of water.
Michael Galchinsky
Miriam is most definately seen as a prophet. She happens, too, to be one of the few female leaders--and prophets--who was NOT a mother, at least her being a mother is never mentioned in the text. Deborah is the other one.
Which is why it is so interesting that Miriam (in the midrash B.T. Sotah 12a and Exodus Rabbah 1:17) founded a royal family, with David descending from her. The genealogy is a bit complex, but essentially, Miriam marries Caleb, who begets Hur, who has Uri who begets Bezalel, leading ultimately to King David. Many problems are solved by this marriage...Miriam is not an anomalous, unmarried spinster any more; rather she is a happily married mother and wife whose offspring bring fame and glory to her. (From an article I wrote in Judaism - Spring, 91 "Miriam: Guilty or Not Guilty?" p. 187) Naomi Graetz
I like the idea that our arms can be prolonged, that our reach to do good is longer than we think.
No, I know of no formal ritual that women have been doing to mourn Yiftach (Jepthah's) daughter, however there are several Jewish feminists groups that meet on MEMORIAL Day weekend- a four day event- to discuss and ponder, wrestle with Jewish feminism...ie. ritual, mourning the loss of our names, history, etc. The groups that I know of are B'not Aish, Achayot or, Bat Kol..there may be others. Geela Rayzel
PS I have a Bat Yiftach song.
In our new study group in St. John's we are going to focus on Yiftach's daughter for the March meeting. Does anyone know off hand any good source to use? The Israeli teacher found two sources: Peggy Day, ed. Gender & Differences in Ancient Israel (Peggy L. Day, From the chld is born the woman: The story of Jephthah's daughter). She also found a short selection from Murder & Difference: Gender, Genre & Scholarship on Sisera's Death by Mieke Bal. Ann
I think the text is "ambiguous" possibly because it is a story borrowed from an earlier culture (the same source as for Iphegenia, perhaps -if I am remembering the person right) and those who included it in the text were perhaps squeamish about including the burnt offering story's details because they weren't the details of a Jewish altar sacrifice, not because it didn't happen.Alana
One thing the Bible is certainly not squeamish about is telling stories about improper people offering improper altar sacrifices at improper times or places or to improper gods. Just last week we read the Torah portion Ki Tissa with the Golden Calf story; in a few more weeks we read about Aaron's two sons, Nadav and Avihu who offer "strange fire" on the altar (Leviticus ch. 8); the books of Judges and Kings are full of stories of altars to strange gods in unauthorized locations....I could go on and on.
So I don't think this particualr plot element would inhibit Biblical authors. - --Rebecca Jacobs
Hannah has long been an example for the women involved in Orthodox women's prayer groups. In that same daf (page) of talmud Berachot that contains the midrash about Hannah and her argument with God, there is a story about her and her argument with Eli the High Priest.
Talk about Jewish women being loud and pushy! There was Hannah, just accused of praying while drunk, turning around and accusing Eli, the highest religious authority of her day, of not being a man of God.
According to the talmud, Hannah told Eli that she was not drunk, she was praying. The fact that he was unable to recognise sincere prayer proves that the spirit of God was not in him. Women's prayer groups, from their inception, have studied this page of talmud and have gained strength from it, for we too have been accused by our rabbis of be ing insincere in our prayers. However, unlike Eli, our rabbis have yet to acknowledge their error. Rivka Haut
I find much to cherish in the image of Hannah, even though by 20th century feminist standards she might not quite measure up. Here was a woman who prayed to Hashem and believed it was perfectly natural and right for her to do so. She stood up to the power of that place, namely the priest, when he tried to chastize her. She spoke her mind, made a vow (when the Torah restricts the power of women to make and keep vows), made plans for her son, and carried out those plans and vows. Shulamit Levine
Hosea's portrayal of Israel as a sinning woman returning abjectly to the open arms of her husband who graciously accepts her--after her great suffering and providing she repents--has limited the potention of the relationship....We have a right to be suspicious and cautious about renewing the relationship under the old contract. Unless there be a new relationship, one of parnership, we will revert to the old master/slave relationship....shuvah must be mutual' (Graetz, pp. 37,38,42)" (p. 86)
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