Feminism
The Voice That Speaks in My SoulFriday, March 8, 2013 by Susan Taubes | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Echoing Kafka in this 1949 letter of protest to a domineering male, Susan Taubes writes: "I can no more keep to the laws of the Bible than I can cross myself or take the sacrament."
Editors' Picks
“The Feminist Time Forgot” Susan Faludi, New Yorker. Shulamith Firestone rejected her Orthodox upbringing and authoritarian father to become one of the leaders of late 1960s radical feminism. But her father's death reduced her to insanity.
The Problem with Gay Marriage Gilles Bernheim, First Things. "All the affection in the world will not suffice to produce the basic psychological structures that address the child’s need to know where he comes from."
The Science of Muddling Through Gil Student, Torah Musings. Drawing on Burke, Chaim Navon argues that women will gradually assume larger roles in Orthodox Judaism—and that those who demand sudden change risk doing more harm than good.
Can A Woman Wear A Tallit? Michael J. Broyde, Torah Musings. Jewish tradition offers little precedent for a woman’s wearing tallit. But the idea that wearing one is an act of rebellion is even less well founded.
A New Paradigm Zev Farber, Jewish Journal. Instead of forbidding women to perform Jewish rituals unless halakhah expressly allows it, they should be permitted to participate unless halakhah expressly forbids it.
A Newer New Paradigm Joshua Maroof, Vesom Sechel. A focus on expanding women’s role in rituals takes us in precisely the wrong direction: We should be looking beyond rituals to the fulfillment of more fundamental mitzvot.
The Futurist George Dvorsky, io9. “Pregnancy is barbaric,” wrote Shulamith Firestone (italics hers, indignation ours). But she was as much da Vinci as de Beauvoir, predicting artificial wombs, donor-sperm banks, even computer schooling.
Cherchez l'homme Margot Lurie, Tablet. Simone de Beauvoir's affair with the American Jewish novelist Nelson Algren gave her everything she never got from Sartre.