The Time and Space of Feminism: Women Renarrating Jewish Authority and Leadership

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

In GENDER AND RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP (2019), Rabbi Denise Eger highlights the transformative power of female leadership and calls upon “religious women [to] write alternative narratives of the future” (3). This panel examines three examples of such alternative narratives. The papers focus on the subversive use of time and space as a means to create new opportunities for women’s voices and authority. Panelists are particularly interested in how women have invoked and subverted traditional, masculine forms of Jewish authority in order to highlight the unique and important contribution women make as community leaders.

The first paper on the panel focuses on space as a means to rethink Jewish authority. In it, Jodi Eichler-Levine examines marginalia as a space of subversion in the manuscripts of Emily Solis-Cohen, an important Jewish American historian and philanthropist. Just as Solis-Cohen’s work often carved out “feminine” spaces in philanthropy, here we see her reclaiming the literal borders of texts as a space for making female authority. The second paper turns to time as a means to re-narrate orthodox authority in Israel. In this paper, Tanya Zion-Waldoks exposes how Haredi feminist activists legitimize leadership via temporal labor. They subvert multiple temporal logics to claim space and author their own story. The third paper looks at the combined use of space and time to support new models of jewish leadership. Here Michal Raucher focuses on how Yeshivat Maharat has used its graduation ceremonies as a means to tell its history and highlight the inevitability of Orthodox women’s ordination.

Sub Unit

• Gender & Sexuality Studies

Chair

• Laura Levitt, Temple University

Individual Presentations

• From Margins to Make Believe: Emily Solis-Cohen, Jr. and the gendered challenges of authority - Jodi Eichler-Levine, Lehigh University

• Back for the Future? Haredi feminist activists' narrative "temporal labor" as a means of legitimizing leadership and claiming authority - Tanya Zion-Waldoks, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Yeshivat Maharat’s Usable Past - Michal Raucher, Rutgers University

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 03