Jewish Marginalization of Women
The overarching theme of the text is the historical systemic process of marginalizing the role of women in Judaism. This premise sets up the driving argument of the text which seeks to explain the origin and foundation of this process. The author lays out a strategic template by which the proposes her theory that this situating of women as second-class citizens within the religion is not traceable to Jewish law set in motion by the ancient elders, but rather a collectively intensifying ideology of patriarchal preference for male dominion by the writers of the religious texts which define and interpret Jewish religious beliefs and rituals.
The Image of God
At every step along the way from the development of ancient laws to the enactment of rituals in modern day services, the image of God has been defined as male despite the explicit understanding of God as an entity exiting beyond shape and form and, thus, sex and gender. The problem of overcoming the marginalization thus becomes an existential crisis of sorts. If men exist in the image of God then by definition that means women do not. The adoption of this perspective into the fundamental DNA of the religion has had the long-term effect of distancing women from men on a superior level. In other words, by virtue of the associational proximity to God, women occupy a lower sphere serves to situate their primal inferiority.
A Call for Feminist Theology
The problem of marginalization of women within Judaism is identified as an epistemological problem rather than ontological one. The difference is between knowing something to be true and the processes which led to knowing something to true. The application in this sense that is Jewish tradition has long held closely to theories and beliefs that have been fundamentally skewed and obscured as a result of failure of theology which is the discipline of studying those beliefs. To alter existing conditions of patriarchal misassumptions encoded into sacred texts, therefore, requires a concerted effort to reinterpret those texts. Thus, one of the one motivating themes of the text is the author’s issuance of a call to arms to feminists to come together to research, re-interpret and publish theological analysis that fills in the most obvious gaps in the long history of Jewish philosophy: the feminist perspective. It is within this theme which the book has had its most substantive impact as since its publication thousands of papers have been published in response to is clarion call.
