Reviews for Philosophical and Theological Writings

The average rating for Philosophical and Theological Writings based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-12 00:00:00 Rhonda Smith Powerful original essays by the most incisive 20th century Jewish social and religious thinker. Highly readable translation with superior notes and introductory sections.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-23 00:00:00 Erick Schwartz An incredibly rigorous introduction to the main issues of feminist Jewish theology. Many of the topics discussed in this book, such as the possibilities for creating more inclusive Jewish communities and language for God, are by necessity speculative and inconclusive, but her explanations of the multi-faceted origins of the patriarchical nature of Judaism are incredibly thorough and clear-headed. Plaskow defends her argument that Judaism can and should be reformed and that reforms to Jewish memory, Jewish community and Jewish language for God are interconnected and mutually reinforcing well, and she has included some interesting information to back up her points. I found the references to Biblical and archaeological scholarship suggesting that the Jewish people have historically embraced polytheism particularly interesting, as they reinforced some of my earlier suspicions from reading Exodus and Deuteronomy that the authors of the Torah were rather ambivalent on the question of whether other gods simply do not exist or whether the Jewish god is simply the the most powerful deity, the 'chief deity in the ancient pantheon [...] elevated to the deity', as Plaskow writes in this book. Some of her descriptions of how oppressions interlink and how the liberation of white, middle-class women must not come at the expense of other groups of women are pretty familiar territory for those who are familiar with feminist theory. Plaskow does not seem to have anything groundbreaking to say about racism or LGBT issues, the latter of which is dealt with very briefly in this book. However, the book is so short that these unoriginal passages do not bore the reader too much, and their inclusion is necessary for a thorough and complete explanation of Plaskow's arguments. I particularly liked how Plaskow added [sic] after writers she quotes refer to God as 'he' or use 'he' or 'man' to refer to the whole of humanity.