Judith Plaskow

American theologian

Judith Plaskow (born March 14, 1947) is an American theologian, author, and activist known for being the first Jewish feminist theologian. After earning her doctorate at Yale University, she taught at Manhattan College for thirty two years before becoming a professor emerita. She was one of the creators of the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion and was its editor for the first ten years. She also helped to create B'not Esh, a Jewish feminist group that heavily inspired her writing, and a feminist section of the American Academy of Religion, an organization of which she was president in 1998. Plaskow's work has been critical in developing Jewish feminist theology. Her most significant work, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective, argued that the absence of female perspectives in Jewish history has had a negative impact on the religion and she urged Jewish feminists to reclaim their place in the Torah and in Jewish thought. It is one of the first Jewish feminist theological texts ever written and is considered by some to be one of the most important Jewish texts of the 20th century. and became the namesake of the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith. From a young age, she viewed ethics and activism as integral to Judaism, which influenced her contributions to feminist ethics. She came out as a lesbian in the 1980s and though sexuality was always a focus of hers, her article in "Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish," was her most formal and popular discussion of being a Jewish lesbian. She got her first chance to teach a Jewish feminism and theology class at the first National Havurah Summer Institute in 1980. This opportunity was a personal breakthrough for Plaskow; she finally felt all of the aspects of her identity falling into alignment after feeling so much tension between them. After her first class, she was inspired to write "The Right Question is Theological," partly in response to Cynthia Ozick's article, "Notes Towards Finding the Right Question." Plaskow's article was published in 1982 and it laid down her feminist criticisms of key concepts in Judaism like the Torah, God, and Israel, using feminist midrash to argue that halakhah should be taken as secondary to theology. Making this history visible is essential to developing feminist midrash in her eyes. "The Coming of Lilith" (1972) continued the Jewish feminist tradition of examining female archetypes in the Bible like Queen Esther and Lilith. Lilith was Adam's original mate and was created as equal to him. Lilith fled Eden when she was denied sexual equality, was replaced by submissive Eve, and became a she demon who fed on infant boys. Plaskow imagines Lilith as waiting for Eve to come find her outside the walls of Eden and after Eve arrives and they've bonded, they'll rebuild the world together, which Adam and God fear. Plaskow's work helped turn Lilith from the prototypical example of what a woman shouldn't be to an empowered figurehead for women's liberation.

Plaskow married rabbinics scholar Robert Goldenberg in 1967. They worked together at New York University, Concordia University, and Wichita State University. Their son, Alexander Goldenberg, was born in 1977. When she came out as a lesbian in 1984, she separated from Goldenberg. Her lesbianism was an open secret in her social circles after she came out, but she didn't explicitly connect herself to lesbianism in academia immediately. Standing Again at Sinai's discussion of sexuality doesn't probe the author's lesbianism but she does use "our" when talking about homosexual identities. It was only when she published "Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish" that she labeled herself and it was read as a "lesbian treatise," even though much of the writing was taken from Standing Again at Sinai. As a trailblazer, her path was not without obstacles. In Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, she recalls how her professors discouraged her and Christ from pursuing feminist theology. One professor dismissed Christ's feminist theology essay in favour of discussing her male classmates' essays because he didn't think Christ's topic was important. Their proposal to study historical attitudes towards women in Christianity for their theses was angrily rejected by a professor. Plaskow acknowledges Standing Again at Sinai as her most influential work, but states that her greatest contribution to Jewish feminist theology is her methodology. She has continuously insisted that it isn't enough to put women in traditionally male roles, rather we must re imagine and rebuild the system from the ground up. Additionally, her assertion that women's perspectives have been ignored in Jewish history and that Jewish feminists are called to reclaim the female perspective has inspired a wealth of scholarship. This is similar to the consciousness raising efforts promoted by feminists and Civil Rights activists since the late 1960s. Her understanding of sisterhood is reflected in her interpretation of Lilith, which emphasizes the value of a sisterhood between her and Eve. enacted then against the Persians and now against Palestinians. Klein argues that the Israeli link is unnecessary and partially inaccurate, in both cases arguing that Jews were resisting aggression, not carrying out genocides. She says it's important that Plaskow and other feminists be careful not to fall back on anti Judaism readings of Hebrew texts in trying to analyze their patriarchal nature.

J. Plaskow, Sex, Sin, and Grace. University Press of America, 1979. J. Plaskow, Weaving the Visions : New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. HarperSanFrancosco, 1980. J. Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. J. Plaskow, The Coming of Lilith : Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972 2003. Beacon Press, 2005
J. Plaskow; C. P. Christ, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Fortress Press, 2016.