Feminism and Jewish Thought - Einzelansicht

Gemeinsam mit Prof. Karma Ben Johanan (HU Berlin)

This seminar will take place on Zoom, please write us an email for further information.

The Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz observed that “the greatest revolution in human history, occurred when the spiritual and social culture ceased being men-culture and became human-culture.” This seminar offers an overview of feminist thought and its discontents in Jewish tradition. Beginning with early examples of Jewish feminism in the Bible and in rabbinic literature the course will engage with the experience of women and with feminist philosophy and theology from 19th century Europe to the present. Its main focus will be on German-Jewish, US American and Israeli figures and movements in feminism. The course will be divided into the following units: 

1. Female power in Biblical and rabbinic sources: classical and contemporary readings (e.g. Lilith, Miriam, Esther, Bruria)
2. Women and Jewish modernization: from salon culture to early women movements (e.g. Henriette Hertz, Rahel Varnhagen, Fanny Lewald, Bertha Pappenheim)
3. Women intellectuals and revolutionaries (e.g. Rosa Luxemburg, Margarete Susmann, Hannah Arendt)
4.  Feminism as a movement: Post war voices (e.g. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem)
5. The emergence Jewish Feminism Theology (e.g. Judith Plaskow, Rita Gross, Rachel Adler)
6. Jewish Feminism in Israel (e.g. Nahama Leibowitz, Chana Safrai, Rachel Elior, Women of the wall)
7. Jewish Feminist theology today (e.g. Blu Greenberg, Vanessa Ochs, Ellen M. Umansky)

Recommended Literature 

Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco: Harper, 1990).

Vannessa L. Ochs, Sarah Laught: Modern Lessons from the wisdom and Stories of Biblical Women (Philadelphia: JPS, 2011).

Kalpana Misra and Melanie S. Rich (eds.), Jewish Feminism in Israel: Some Contemporary Perspectives (Hannover: Brandise University Press, 2003). 

Susannah Heschel (ed.), On Being A Jewish Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken Books, 1983).

Marion Kaplan,The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany, The Campaigns of the Jüdischer Frauenbund, 1904 – 1938, (Connecticut: Grasswoodd, 1979).