WATER is deeply grateful to Judith Plaskow for this
teleconference. We wish her and her co-author Carol P. Christ well on the
completion of what we are sure will be a “big book” in feminist studies in
religion. We at WATER are privileged to have had this preview of an important
work.
What follows are the introduction of Dr. Plaskow by Mary
E. Hunt, a summary of Judith’s remarks, and notes from the discussion period
that followed.
Introduction by
Mary E. Hunt:
Dr. Judith Plaskow is Professor Emerita of Religious
Studies at Manhattan College and also the Sally Priesand Visiting Professor of
Jewish Women’s Studies at Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in
New York. She is a Jewish feminist theologian who has been teaching, writing,
and speaking about Jewish feminism and feminist studies in religion for over
forty years. She is without question the leading voice of Jewish feminists in
religion, a trusted and respected justice-seeker.
Judith was the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. She retired from the editorship after
serving for 10 years. Now, in her retirement, Judith is back on board as
co-editor with Melanie DeBaufre-Johnson.
She was an early co-chair of the Women and Religion
Group of the American Academy of Religion from 1972–1974. She was a co-founder
of the Jewish feminist group B’not Esh (1981) of which she is a longtime member.
She has served on the board of the American Academy of Religion and as its
president in 1998. She models academic activism.
Dr. Plaskow is author or editor of several signal
works in feminist theology including Standing
Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective and The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism,
Judaism, and Sexual Ethics 1972-2003 (2005). She and Carol P. Christ edited
two early, now classic anthologies Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist
Reader in Religion (1979) and Weaving
the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (1989) which were hugely
important in the development of the field.
Judith is currently at work on a
book with Carol P. Christ, tentatively entitled Goddess and God After Feminism. If one were to sum up her work in
two words one would say that she is collaborative and courageous. Almost all of
her publications are jointly authored or edited; virtually all of her writing
exhibits an intellectual and moral courage that others of us seek to emulate.
Summary of Judith’s
opening remarks:
1. Judith is working with her friend and collaborator, Carol
P. Christ, to make public their longtime conversations about God. The working
title, Goddess and God After Feminism,
is not meant to suggest that feminism is over but that feminism represents a
watershed event that has shaped both women’s self understandings and their
respective understandings of the divine. Think of life “Before Feminism” and “After
Feminism.” The book begins with both women offering their spiritual
autobiographies as starting points for a feminist approach to narrative
theology.
2. Judith describes her life as a Jew in America, part of a
community in which it is more embarrassing to talk about God in polite company than
to talk about sex or money. To say that one believes in God is awkward. The
rabbinate is a profession, not “a calling” like the Christian ministry. Thus, having
been born a theologian, she felt different from an early age. She recalled
early experiences of relating to God when she was celebrating the High Holy
Days, of imagining that God might be a woman, something that was incompatible
with her religious training. She read The
Diary of Anne Frank as a young person and struggled with the Holocaust;
then in college she looked at the work of Elie Wiesel (Night, Dawn, The Accident, etc.) and Camus’ The Plague, all of which led to
reflections on the divine, covenant, and the like. As a graduate student at
Yale University, Judith focused on the problem of evil in her doctoral
comprehensive exams. When she finished her graduate education in religious
studies, she thought of God as someone with whom one could be angry, since God
either could not or would not prevent evil.
3. In 1968, Yale was a relentlessly patriarchal place with
the atmosphere of a male club. As the only women in contemporary theology in their
doctoral program Judith and Carol were under constant surveillance. Their
femaleness was an underlying issue all the time. They were harassed sexually before there was
such a concept. In 1969, they became involved in the newly emerging Yale
Women’s Alliance, an organization of graduate women at Yale. They were living
“the personal is political” as well as Mary Daly’s sense of women’s “experience
of nothingness.” Eventually they realized that the misogynist comments of every
theologian they were studying were not verbal asides or individual opinions but
views interwoven with their fundamental understandings of God and humanity.
4. In 1972, Judith was part of the exciting “Women Exploring
Theology” conference at Grailville in Ohio. Sixty women convened to express
pain and anger but also to initiate new modes of thinking and acting as
religious women. Formative friendships emerged from the event as women felt the
power of working together. Judith was in the “Bible and Theology” sub-group
that focused on consciousness-raising as a religious experience. It was there
that she wrote her famed “Coming of Lilith” myth. Initially without her
knowledge, her experiences in the Yale Women’s Alliance, at Grailville, and in
other feminist groups were ultimately to transform her understanding of God. To
use Nelle Morton’s words, “something was bubbling up from under.”
Questions and Discussion:
1. The first questioner asks what young women are asking
about God now compared with what Judith and Carol were asking at Yale?
Judith replied that she has taught mostly undergraduates so
she is not sure about graduate students. However, she affirmed that many
students are advised not to ask feminist questions until they have gotten
tenure. In a shrinking job market asking feminist questions can have negative
consequences.
2. One colleague used Judith’s work with undergraduates who
loved to rewrite prayers
that connect with their lives yet are resistant to looking
critically at God-language or religiosity that reflects male privilege. She
asked why female God-language has not taken hold.
Judith answered that in part it seems to be because female
language does not go far enough. But also, as Carol Christ has observed, using
female language means that God has less power since ultimate power has been
thought of as male.
3. Another woman suggested that many women do not understand
their own sexism and language is a tool that expresses sexism and reinforces
existing power structures.
Judith recommended Katha Pollitt piece in The Nation (This article appeared in the
September 17, 2012 edition)—how can women support a political party that hates them
(“Women
Who Love Republicans Who Hate Them”). The power of women is not just the
power to give life, as is often argued, but also the power of intellect/imagination.
4. A theologian asked Judith if she had been able to find in
this “God after feminism” the numinous experience Judith described as a little
girl in temple.
Judith talked about the radical changes in her own views.
Whereas she used to hold God personally responsible for evil, she now
understands God as creative energy that animates and sustains the universe. She
experiences God’s presence in community and in nature.
5. One participant thanked Judith for reminding us how
significant it is to complete one’s spiritual autobiography, how it can be a
source of freeing women.
Judith observed what an interesting process it was and how
it functioned as an exciting way into the book. She said she had intended to
end the exercise at the point at which she completed her doctorate at Yale, but
she found the process so compelling that she kept going to the present. The
writing resulted in a clarity that she had not had before. On issues where she
had previously not understood Judith, Carol, though she does not necessarily
agree, can see some things more clearly now. This is not memoir so much as it
is narrative theology.
6. A colleague observed that because there are still so many
male professors in religious studies many females look to the authority of the
“Doktorvatar.” As a seminary professor she wondered about the phrase “feminine
divine” rather than female language for God.
Judith pointed out that such feminine language, instead of
breaking through stereotypes, ends up reifying them (e.g. masculine God as
king, warrior, and powerful; feminine God as loving and nurturing).
7. A rabbi mentioned that she often hears people ask, “Why
can’t God be feminine?” and “Why can’t we use female language?” which would
never have been the case decades ago.
Judith distinguished between “feminine” and “female” in that “female” has the full range of human characteristics while “feminine” tends toward stereotypes of protection, nurture etc.
8. A Buddhist colleague reported that she was not so tied up
with language about God but that in meditation one often looks at a sitting
male Buddha. How different it is, she observed, to sit with a sitting female
Buddha.
Judith told of her recent experience of visiting churches in
Cordoba, Spain where she saw the power of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In some
Spanish churches Mary is bigger and more prominent than the crucifix.
9. Another question arose about the nature of narrative
theology, how it relates to larger theological projects, and its limitations.
Judith described it as developing a coherent understanding
of God through telling one’s own story that makes the understanding concrete.
It includes experiences and textures of those experiences. An idea of God that may
sound boring if it is baldly stated may make sense if it is enfleshed in the concrete
circumstances in life. There is the freedom in Judaism to do this because
practice is more important than belief. The limits of narrative theology are
that it emerges from personal experience; it does not lay a foundation for community
and communal practice.
Please join us on
Wednesday, October 10, 2012, at 1pm (EDT) to talk with
Melissa Browning on the subject of "HIV/AIDS and Christian Marriage in
East Africa," as she shares her recent work. Email the words
"Browning Registration" to waterstaff@waterwomensalliance.org
by October 9th, and you will receive dial-in information.
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