March 14: Standing Again at Sinai

Judith Plaskow, who co-founded The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and wrote the groundbreaking Jewish feminist theology, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1990), was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1947. “Jewish feminists,” she proclaimed in her book, “. . . must reclaim Torah as our own. We must render visible the presence, experience, and deeds of women erased in traditional sources. . . . We must expand the notion of Torah to encompass not just the five books of Moses and traditional Jewish learning, but women’s words, teachings, and actions hitherto unseen.” In collaboration with her partner, Martha Ackelsberg, and other pioneering Jewish feminists such as Rachel Adler, Marcia Falk, Drorah Setel, and Sue Levi Elwell, Plaskow has brought many Jewish women and men into a creative tussle with the Jewish tradition, which opened synagogue life and rabbinical seminaries to a regenerative feminist influence. Her other books include The Coming of Lilith : Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972-2003 (2005) and Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (with Carol Christ, 1980). “The conviction that personhood is shaped, nourished and sustained in community is a central assumption that Judaism and feminism share.” —Judith Plaskow