Expanding the Palace of Torah

Orthodoxy and Feminism

Tamar Ross

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781684580453
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Expanding the Palace of Torah offers a broad philosophical overview of the challenges the women's revolution poses to Orthodox Judaism, as well as Orthodox Judaism's response to those challenges. Writing as an insider—herself an Orthodox Jew—Tamar Ross confronts the radical feminist critique of Judaism as a religion deeply entrenched in patriarchy. Surprisingly, very little work has been done in this area, beyond exploring the leeway for ad hoc solutions to practical problems as they arise on the halakhic?plane. In exposing the largely male-focused thrust of the rabbinic tradition and its biblical grounding, she sees this critique as posing a potential threat to the theological heart of traditional Judaism—the belief in divine revelation.This new edition brings this acclaimed and classic text back into print with a new essay by Tamar Ross which examines new developments in feminist thought since the book was first published in 2004.

PART I

The First Stage: Acknowledging the Problem

My discussion of the first level of confrontation between feminism and traditional Judaism takes note of some of the more obvious discrepancies and dissonances between two systems of thought. A few commonalities emerge (such as the lack of awareness of many adherents of each of these worldviews regarding the deeper tenets of their “faith,” as well as a similar passion for righteousness). Nevertheless, even a rudimentary survey of feminist thought, followed by an introduction to Jewish law and its theoretical underpinnings, demonstrates what appears to be an insuperable gulf between the two movements in their methods of deriving and conceptualizing notions of morality and truth. The repercussions of this gulf are starkly illustrated when examining their applications to the formal and informal status of women in the classical canons of Jewish tradition in the light of feminist sensibilities.

In the second chapter I shall turn to some of the responses of Jewish women throughout the ages to their situation. “Acknowledging the problem”—a hallmark of first-stage feminism—emerges as less of a contemporary phenomenon than is often imagined. A survey of the reasoning of traditionalists who believe that the problem can and should be resolved by preserving the tradition intact (presented at some length) shows that interest in preserving the status quo is, similarly, not solely the province of men. Nevertheless, contemporary Jewish feminists raise serious doubts about the persuasiveness and viability of this response in the current cultural context and sociological reality.

CHAPTER 1

Feminism and the Halakhic Tradition

Introducing Feminist Theory

Many people think of feminism as a political movement with a practical agenda for advancing the cause of women and guaranteeing their rights to freedom, equality, and self-expression. Some regard it less sympathetically, as a skewed view of reality promoted by bitter women who view men as their natural enemies. Neither of these conceptions is accurate or up-to-date.

For the purposes of this book, I propose to understand the concept of feminism in its broadest possible sense—as a movement for the advancement of women’s equality, viewpoints, and concerns. Such understanding may, or may not, involve egalitarianism or allegations regarding the deliberate oppression of women. Providing readers with a complete survey of feminism in accordance with this understanding is beyond the scope of this book. But I believe that before embarking on even the barest thumbnail sketch of feminism and its tenets, it is important to first dispel the notion that what we are dealing with is a monolithic ideology that can be easily stereotyped. Feminism is old, rich, and variegated enough to be spoken of as having a history with identifiable stages and trends (which are labeled in confusing and inconsistent ways). Feminism also has a future that is still developing and undetermined. Not all feminists think alike.¹

The beginnings of feminism can be traced to the industrial revolution and the move to draw labor out of the home and into the public workplace. Its initial impact was felt among married, middle-class women, the first to find themselves left at home with little productive work to do. This development led Mary Wollstonecraft to write her best-selling book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,² in 1792. In it she stressed women’s lack of equal opportunity to develop their powers of reason and thus achieve liberty and moral autonomy as independent decision-makers. The next century was witness to works such as The Subjection of Women,³ written in 1869 by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, emphasizing the need of women to achieve economic and political independence as well. At this stage, feminism was still in its infancy, making first efforts to identify the nature and extent of women’s discrimination and find ways to rectify this injustice.

The second, more practical stage of feminism as an organized movement began in the nineteenth century in Europe and North America. At this point feminism did indeed take the form of a political struggle for equal opportunities and rights for women and for the abolishment of social, legal, and economic discrimination based on gender differences. One of the primary goals was to secure women’s right to vote and to participate more fully in public affairs, as well as their freedom to own property and capital, to inherit, to keep money they earned, to attend college, to become professionally certified physicians, and to argue cases in court. This early wave of feminism in its more practical stage reached its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century and began fading out after women gained suffrage in the United States and in much of Europe after World War I.

In 1920, passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote. For nearly forty years after, the feminist movement in the United States lay dormant, resurfacing only in the 1960s. Predicated on the understanding that women need economic as well as civil rights, the “women’s liberation movement” strove to secure women opportunities equal to those of men in all areas of life. In her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique,⁴ which became one of the classics of this stage of the movement, Betty Friedan also focused attention on the deeper ways in which women are more socially disadvantaged than men. Describing the frustrations of middle-class housewives who, despite having achieved the American dream (marriage, children, a home in the suburbs) after World War II, still suffered from “the problem that has no name,” she attributed their dissatisfaction to the fact that their identities were defined in terms of their husbands. Friedan proposed interpersonal as well as political and legal solutions, recommending that women combine home and career in order to reach optimal fulfillment as human beings.

An important harbinger of the third, more theoretical stage in the history of feminism was the publication of French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s classic, The Second Sex, which was to become one of the key texts of twentieth-century feminism.⁵ First appearing in 1949, this work’s comprehensive critique of the patriarchal structure at the base of Western culture was consonant with the existentialist philosophy of de Beauvoir’s lifelong lover and intellectual partner, Jean-Paul Sartre. She built upon the notion that we, as human beings, create essential identities for ourselves only through exercising our freedom in conscious action—making choices and coming to decisions: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman . . . it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature which is described as feminine.”⁶ Though constructed culturally by a male-dominated society that views her as “Other,” woman, like man, has no inherent essence. Thus, she need not continue to be what man has made her to be; she can refuse to internalize the male view of her as object. Woman can engage in positive action in society, and can redefine or abandon her roles as wife, mother, career woman, prostitute, or any other role Western civilization has relegated to her.

De Beauvoir’s ideas were eventually developed and applied in various intellectual and social spheres, transforming feminism from a political movement to a more profound ideology. For de Beauvoir, women’s liberation essentially meant celebrating and appropriating male norms; she deplored women’s association with passivity and nature rather than cultural creativity, and rejected their reproductive functions as definition of their selfhood. For this reason, her critique—despite its striving to penetrate to the root causes of women’s discrimination—can still be regarded as “liberal” feminism, which is generally associated with the second political stage.

Since de Beauvoir’s time, the thinking generated by her more radical analysis of the sources of female oppression has passed through several transformations. Third-stage feminism today harbors an ideology marked by many differences of opinion. Uniting the thought of most third-stage feminists, however, is a new emphasis on the importance of preserving feminine uniqueness and appreciating the value of women’s ways of thinking and behaving.

Nevertheless, the debate between liberal and radical feminists continues to this day. Social vision, practical politics, and critical theory intertwine in discussions revolving around three major feminist claims: (a) gender is a social construct; (b) gender is a tool of oppression; and (c) gender influences our processing of knowledge.

Gender as a social construct. One of feminism’s primary objectives has been to challenge the widespread essentialist assumption (encapsulated in Freud’s aphorism “Anatomy is destiny”)⁷ that differences between male and female are inherent. Developing ideas that already surfaced at the first stage of the feminist critique, second-and third-stage feminists seek to counteract what one might call a naive understanding of sex. Differences between men and women do not all derive exclusively and necessarily from given “essences”: innate physiological or biological differences. Feminists argue that in speaking about the sources of difference between male and female, one must distinguish between sex (which they generally regard as a given) and gender (which they regard as an artificial cultural construct or institution learned through socialization).⁸ Biological sex differences between male and female are much less significant than the similarities. It is human civilization that imposes a cultural halo upon these differences, in order to establish far more comprehensive distinctions in life patterns, ritual, dress, mating habits, nutrition, and role stratification. Social, legal, and religious pressures are then created to enforce conformance to the mores.

Within this feminist claim, there is still considerable debate regarding how and to what extent gender differences are socially constructed. At one end of the scale are the cultural (or gender) feminists, who still entertain a mild form of essentialism in regarding gender as a psychological or moral orientation that stems necessarily from a few sexual differences. Psychoanalytic feminist Nancy Chodorow,⁹ for example, who grounds gender distinction on the differing early childhood experiences of little boys and girls, looks at the fact that mothers are generally the primary caregivers; boys must tear themselves away in order to achieve an independent sense of self, while girls can continue their sense of relationship and natural connectedness.

Alongside the cultural feminists are the Marxist (or political) feminists. Attributing a materialist basis to all social institutions, such feminists view gender distinctions more as a function of women’s inferior social position, in which sex is only one determinant, alongside class, race, ethnicity, age, and other circumstantial factors.¹⁰ These feminists point to the influence upon female gender identity of relegating woman to the home and keeping her out of the public domain.

As opposed to any variety of essentialism, the other end of the scale is represented by the entirely open-ended extreme of descriptive postmodernism. Feminists belonging to this camp regard our descriptions of both gender and sex as entirely determined by culture.¹¹ Only the linking of gender to reproduction leads us to conceive of merely two types of persons—man and woman—and to define these two categories as rigid and exclusionary. As Jane Flax, a political theorist and psychotherapist who writes on feminist theory, remarks:

The actual content of being a man or woman and the rigidity of the categories themselves are highly variable across culture and time. . . . Everyone will agree that there are anatomical differences between men and women. . . . However, the mere existence of such anatomical differentiation is a descriptive fact. . . . There are many other aspects of our embodiedness that seem equally remarkable and interesting, for example, the incredible complexity of the structure and functioning of our brains, the extreme and relatively prolonged physical helplessness of the human neonate as compared to that of other (even related) species, or the fact that every one of us will die. It is also the case that physically male and female humans resemble each other in many more ways than we differ. Our similarities are even more striking if we compare humans to, say, toads or trees. So why ought the anatomical differences between male and female humans assume such significance in our sense of ourselves as persons? Why ought such complex human social meanings and structures be based on or justified by a relatively narrow range of anatomical differences?¹²

Flax implies that definitions of gender are capable of going in any direction. Beards or breasts and menstrual cycles do not on their own establish masculinity or femininity, and gender differences do not proceed automatically from sexual ones. Culture, not biology, is destiny.¹³

Gender as a tool of oppression. If gender differences are merely the result of culture, they are given to change. But feminists identified with all stages have regarded the exaggerated emphasis upon establishing gender differences as more than a matter of social expediency. Pointing to the political functions of emphasizing these differences, they link this process to a cultural history of oppression. As Wollstonecraft put it two centuries ago: “To account for and excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at obtaining a very different character.”¹⁴

Theoretically, perhaps, men and women could be different but equal. However, one similarity between all gender distinctions remains striking: one gender is usually the touchstone, the normal, the dominant, while the other is regarded as different, deviant, and subordinate. In most societies role differentiation in actual practice translates into differences in value, power, and prestige and the creation of unequal classes. “In Western society, ‘man’ is A, ‘wo-man’ is Not-A.”¹⁵ As anthropologist Margaret Mead noted, there are cultures in which men weave and women fish, and cultures in which women weave and men fish. But in either case, the work that women perform is valued less.¹⁶ Male dominance does not relate only to the political and social sphere. It also spills over into the home and family, because “the personal is the political.”¹⁷

Even in modern society, despite women entering the public arena, gender differentiation continues to construct women as a group to be the subordinates of men as a group and to protect male hegemony. The attributes ascribed to males (dominance, assertion, rationality, straightforwardness, interest in objective rules) and females (submissiveness, passivity, emotionalism, deviousness, interest in subjective relationships) may be the result of gender differentiation and the hierarchy of power it dictates, rather than its cause.¹⁸ Most people, however, voluntarily go along with their societies’ gender prescriptions, because these norms and expectations get built into their sense of worth and identity as human beings.

Most third-stage feminists challenge the project of liberal feminism, which, they charge, strives to solve the problem of women’s oppression by eliminating gender differences entirely and converting women into “honorary men.” This, they argue, would constitute a genuine loss for both men and women, forfeiting valuable qualities associated with the feminine gender. Thus, one camp, the radical-libertarian feminists, advocates the creation ...