The Aryeh Kaplan Reader: Collected Essays from the Noted Writer and Thinker Book

From the moment I started reading Susannah Heschel's introduction to this collection of essays on Jewish feminism I was hooked. The feeling she describes of being an outcast in her own community because of her gender is extremely similar to my own experience in the Orthodox Synagogue I've been a part of since I was 2 years old. Despite the years and years that I've spent in the community, I still don't feel as welcome or as included in the service as a random male stranger might feel if he walked in off the street. In Simchat Torah celebrations, for example, this stranger would be able to dance with the Torah and participate fully in the celebrations while Heschel and I would have to look on from the sidelines. Heschel asks, in this foreword, "Who defines Judaism?" Traditionally the answer to that question would be male scholars and rabbis but the rest of this book represents a step towards changing that. Jewish women today ("Third-wave Jewish feminists") have the power to shape their own definition of what it means to be Jewish and they can choose to live their lives in their own way without giving up their religion. The women whose essays are collected in this book come from a broad range of perspectives: from a riot grrl to an environmentalist, from a Jewish/Pagan witchcraft practitioner to a self-proclaimed "sexy rabbi." I don't personally agree with every single one of their views on Jewish law and identity. I don't think they would all agree with each other's views either. But they are all working towards the same purpose: to redefine Judaism from a female perspective in order to make it fit the lives and identities of modern women. Yiskah (Jessica) Rosenfeld's essay "You Take Lillith, I'll Take Eve" was particularly interesting for me because it went straight to the text of the Torah to transform how we perceive one of the fundamental stories in Judaism, and the one that has the most influence over the Jewish view of femininity. Rosenfeld goes through every step of the story of Eve's creation and decision-making process, referencing midrash, feminist theory and her own reasoning, to "reclaim" her from the condemning, sexist, traditional interpretations of the character. Her portrays Eve as "comple[x], str[ong] and courage[ous]" instead. By reclaiming Eve ("our mother") we are reclaiming "a lost part of ourselves," which is what all the best essays in this collection do in some way or another.