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Friday January 11, 2008

A Torah of one’s own

At long last, women’s voices heard

by dan pine
staff writer

Related story: What about the men?

On Mount Sinai, God commanded Moses to do many things. Running a focus group to see if the Israelites liked the Torah was not one of them.

Yet fast-forward some 4,000 years, and Tamara Cohn Eskenazi found herself doing exactly that.

Eskenazi edited “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary,” newly published by the Women of Reform Judaism and the URJ Press. The book is a 1,350-page compendium of the five books of Moses (in English and the Masoretic Hebrew text) along with extensive commentary, footnotes, parshah introductions and poetry, all of it written by women.

There’s even a delicate leaf-and-vine border design, adding an extra feminine touch.

As a Bible professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, Eskenazi was an obvious choice to oversee the project. But even she needed assurance that this special edition of the Torah would pass muster with readers.

In a preview of the commentary, hundreds of congregations, Sisterhoods and Torah study groups — more than 12,000 participants — took part in a nationwide test. Draft copies of Parashat Chayei Sarah went out to them, along with study guides.

Eskenazi received plenty of positive feedback. One member of a synagogue Sisterhood, who had worked with the text, told her “For the first time I felt included in the conversation.” Recalls Eskenazi: “For me this was such a precise statement of what we intended.”

Inclusion. That much-bandied term did not always apply to women when it came to Torah and Torah study. Even 20 years ago, according to Eskenazi, “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary” would not have been possible.

“There were not many women in [Bible studies] at that point, which is why this is so exciting,” she says. “We have so many qualified scholars.”

Here’s an abbreviated user’s guide to “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary.”

Each Torah portion features a central commentary, written by a Bible scholar and focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on issues related to women. It’s followed by a second commentary that further elucidates or challenges the first commentary. An additional essay comes next, typically linking the portion with contemporary social or theological concerns. Then the whole section wraps up with “Voices,” usually poetry, artful prose or a modern midrash intended to shed more light on the deeper meaning of the parshah.

In many ways, especially in terms of layout, the new commentary closely resembles other user-friendly Torahs like the Reform movement’s Gunther Plaut edition, or the Conservative movement’s Etz Hayim. The women’s commentary focuses more on the women of the Bible than

previous volumes.

Whereas most toss in, say, four or five lines of commentary on the little-known daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27), the new one devotes four pages.

Creating the book proved to be the ultimate sisterhood. More than 100 women theologians, historians, sociologists, scholars, anthropologists, poets, rabbis and cantors from around the world contributed. Some of them hail from the Bay Area, including Rabbi Janet Marder of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills; Rabbi Noa Kushner of Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael; and Rabbi Deborah Karlin-Neumann of Hillel of Stanford.

Each wrote commentaries on particular Torah portions.

“Their inclusion is an excellent example of what we were hoping for throughout the commentary,” Eskenazi adds. “[Marder] is clearly a major and profound figure in the rabbinate. [Kushner] represents the younger generation who will move into similar positions as time goes on.”

Marder contributed a commentary on Leviticus 1:1-5:26, known as Parashat Vayikra. It’s a lengthy instruction manual for the Israelite priests, complete with details on the slaughter and dismemberment of sacrificial animals in the Tabernacle. Marder’s take on the portion? All that blood and violence directed against animals is a way of creatively channeling natural male aggression.

“They turn from uncontrolled aggression to the discipline of ritual slaughter,” she writes, “hedged about with myriad laws and regulations. [The priests] become … feminized men who dress in skirts and busy themselves with the domestic work of cooking and cleaning in God’s holy dwelling.”

Marder happily participated in the project. “I think it’s a wonderful concept,” she says of the new commentary. “There has been a rather narrow range of conventional response to Torah. But the more minds, the more creative efforts to understanding Torah, the better.”

Kushner felt similarly honored to take part. The purpose of the commentary was “to give voice to a historically unspoken group,” she says. “It’s about shining a light on this group of scholars, and given the project and who the scholars are, you’re going to hear certain topics and refrains in a more articulate way.”

Kushner was asked to write about Parashat Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38), which tells of the completion and consecration of the Tabernacle. Like Marder, she understood the mission statement put forth by Eskenazi and her colleagues, but was given complete freedom to expound on the portion as she saw fit.

In Kushner’s contemporary reflection, she describes a holy dwelling, constructed of the same materials and by the same processes with which the Israelites built the Golden Calf. Yet in this structure, blessed as it is, God does indeed dwell.

“The Israelites,” she writes, “see God’s presence in the world around us. Seeking God’s presence is not idolatrous; it is only idolatry when we ‘know’ in advance what we will see, when our expectations restrain us.”

The word “woman” does not appear even once in Kushner’s commentary. Which only underscores the editors’ point: “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary” may have been compiled and composed by women, but it is not a feminist tract per se.

“It is a feminist commentary in that we give priority to women in the text,” Eskenazi says, “and limit contributors to women. It is also ‘feminist,’ as well as Jewish, in being a collaborative project. But we deliberately did not only invite contributors who call themselves feminist. We did not want to set the terms through which women should express their knowledge, ideas and insights.”

As for paying closer attention to the women of the Torah, Eskenazi was the first to step up with her introduction to Beresheet, or Genesis, the Bible’s opening book. She writes:

“Beginning with daring Eve, resourceful women are central to the book of Genesis. Women are key, not merely because they give birth, but because they shape their family’s destiny; there would be no ‘Israel’ without the matriarchs. Their stories belie any claim that Genesis privileges males at the expense of females.”

Though she grew up in a secular home, Eskenazi says the Torah was never far from her. “I grew up in Israel, so the Bible was always part of my identity and culture,” she recalls. “Bible is taught as part of our natural heritage. We start with Bible early, not as a religious document, but the way the Greeks learn Iliad and Brits learn Shakespeare.”

Eskenazi came to America as a young woman, married and raised a family. It was only after her children were grown that she returned to college, aiming for advanced degrees in — of all things — Bible studies. “My interest was rekindled by a terrific teacher, who happened to be an Episcopalian priest in Denver,” she remembers. “I found myself haunted and enchanted.”

She earned a doctorate at the University of Denver, where she later served on the faculty. In 1990, she went on to become the first woman appointed to the rabbinical faculty of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, an old boys’ club if there ever was one — but not because women weren’t allowed in.

“The reason there were no other woman at the faculty is not because there was no interest. There were no openings,” she explained.

The idea for the women’s commentary arose more than 15 years ago when Cantor Sarah Sager of Beachwood, Ohio proposed it at a convention of synagogue Sisterhoods. A year later, she brought up the idea again at a national assembly of the Women of Reform Judaism. Both fundraising and the search for a team of editors began soon after.

Eskenazi’s associate editor, Rabbi Andrea Weiss, is an assistant professor at HUC-JIR in New York and a former student of Eskenazi’s. Together the two undertook the painstaking conversation on creating the volume, including who should contribute and what should be the editorial direction.

Other Bay Area figures who contributed to the commentary include Berkeley-based poet and translator Marcia Falk, Cantor Linda Hirschhorn of San Leandro’s Temple Beth Sholom, and Mills College professor and poet Chana Bloch. Each contributed verse to the “Voices” sections.

Jewish women are not the only ones applauding the new commentary. Eskenazi has received positive feedback from Christian quarters, including a Catholic university in Oregon. “They wanted to have a celebration around the commentary,” Eskenazi says, adding she was told by one professor there, “‘My students and I desperately need this.’”

Eskenazi expects some scholars will question some of the book’s theological interpolations. But that’s to be expected with any Bible commentary.

As for ideological opposition to the concept of a women’s commentary, Eskenazi says, “The one thing we keep being asked is: Do we really need a women’s commentary in this day and age of egalitarianism and inclusivity? What is very vivid to me is that no woman asks that question.”

Meanwhile, as the commentary makes its way into synagogues, classrooms and study groups, contributors feel they’ve taken part in something historic. “Trying to connect people to Torah was front and center,” Kushner says. “Any group that wants to, can.”

As for any lingering questions about whether the new commentary has the intellectual heft of similar volumes of the past, she offers one simple tip:

“It’s not Torah lite,” she says. “It’s Torah.”

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