Not available to order
Publication date:
16 July 2012Length of book:
262 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739167861
This engaging feminist approach to Judaism blends the interpretation of primary Jewish sources with contemporary social change. Bonna Devora Haberman shares her first-hand account of the “Women of the Wall” and a feminist approach to traditional Judaism, while interacting with ancient Jewish texts. In a rich network of sources, seaming together scholarship with activism, Haberman analyzes the sacred, with attention to power and gender. While much religious and national culture focuses on death and sacrifice, Haberman proposes an alternative model for a Jewish theology of liberation: birth—no less universal than death. Life-giving rather than life-taking is the nucleus of this work, reformulating performances of gender in a realm of exaggerated sexual difference. Using her experiences with the “Women of the Wall” movement interwoven in scripture, Haberman contributes toward liberating religious culture from its gender oppressions, and rendering religion a liberating force in society.
Bonna Haberman has constructed an impressive theology of Israeli feminism. It reinterprets many of the texts frequently cited by zealots and chronicles the struggles of Women of the Wall for equal access to the holy site. It upholds the difference of women from men as well as their right to equality before the law.