Feminist TorahRefers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, also called the Five Books of Moses, Pentateuch or the Hebrew equivalent, Humash. This is also called the Written Torah. The term may also refer to teachings that expound on Jewish tradition. is an approach to Torah that seeks out the richness of stories, texts, and interpretations that center the experiences of non-men. Feminist Torah is about content – whose work we cite and whose stories we tell – but it is also about form. Feminist Torah is as much an approach to how to relate to Torah as it is a set of commitments about which Torah to draw from in our teaching and learning.
One of the major moments in the creation of feminist Torah was spurred by Danielle Kranjec and her Torah. “The Kranjec Test posits that a source-sheet with more than two sources must include at least one non-male-identified voice.” You can read more about the origins of the test here.
The Kranjec Test takes its name from the Bechdel Test, a way of evaluating movies coined by the lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel: does the movie have at least two women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man?
The Kranjec Test can help us see where our personal and communal Torah is incomplete, and push us to make it fuller and broader. Danielle Kranjec has inspired so much of today’s work in Torah that elevates non-male voices, and we – and the Torah itself, our ancestors, and our descendants – are better off for it.
Our relationship to Torah, to God, and to each other can only be enriched when we integrate a wider and deeper range of perspectives, so we can see more facets of the Torah.
When we do feminist Torah, we should look both within and beyond ourselves; we must notice what resonates, what challenges us, and what expands our views. We should seek new kinds of wisdom from familiar, male-dominated texts, and transcendent kinds of wisdom from newer, less traditional, feminist sources. It is through these intersections that feminist Torah is created.
Biblical and Rabbinic sources:
Especially when it comes to TanakhAn acronym for the name of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim. and Rabbinic sources, “doing feminist Torah” is a project of excavation and identification, within these deeply male-dominated texts. We can seek out and elevate the voices of people who are not men in our most ancient texts, but it requires us to be intentional. Women and queer people have been speaking Torah for as long as there has been Torah. Our work is to listen.
Questions to ask when we approach a Biblical or Rabbinic source:
- Is a non-man speaking in this source?
- What are they saying? What are they not saying?
- If a non-man is present and not speaking, what might they be experiencing?
- How do we invite ourselves to imagine their voices?
- How does this character’s experience feel familiar to me? How does it feel unknowable?
When we approach Rabbinic sources, in particular, we can seek out moments of Torah taught by women figures in those texts, whether explicitly or implicitly. Figures like Beruriah cite Tanakh to men, and women teach other insights. Even women’s experiences as expressed in male rabbinic conversations about them – for example, the “daughters of Israel” who were strict with themselves in niddah practice mentioned on Niddah 66a — can be a source of Torah that challenges patriarchal dominance from within the texts themselves.
Medieval and Early Modern Sources:
We start to encounter concrete, identifiable women’s writings in the medieval and early modern periods.
Some of them, like Rachel Leah Horowitz (18th c.), and the Meineket Rivkah (late 16th-early 17th c.), are writing in a “Torah” register, while others, like Glikl of Hameln (17th c.), are speaking more about their day-to-day lives – also a powerful source of wisdom, and she draws on Jewish texts and traditions!
Another major source of Jewish women’s wisdom from the early modern period are thkines: Yiddish prayers primarily for moments that did not have much extant liturgy, for example, mikvah immersion and lighting Shabbat candles. Some were written by women, and some were written by men writing as women, given the popularity of the genre.
Many authors of thkines are known, but many others are anonymous! You can peruse a collection of tkhines, many in translation, from the Open Siddur Project, as well as other Resources from Der Tkhines Proyekt.
Other windows into women’s lives and Torah in this period are men’s writings about women. While there are obvious limitations to relying on men’s narratives of women, we can nevertheless be attuned to our women ancestors pushing back, creating their own Torah and practices.
My personal favorite is a responsum from the Maharil (14th-early 15th c.), a leading medieval German rabbi, who condemns a woman named Rabbanit Bruna in his city who insists on wearing a tallit katan, and who he believes will not listen to him if he tells her to stop. (Sefer Maharil Laws of Tzitzit and Tefillin 4) An example of an imaginative response to this glimpse of an ancestor can be found at the end of this piece by Dr. Vered Noam.
This work is part of developing intimacy with Torah. We can either treat our sacred texts as a bag we rummage around in until we find something we like, or as a relationship we are in, one where we react to and grow with the texts.
Contemporary Torah from non-men
In the past fifty-plus years, we have been blessed with a tremendous flowering of written Torah by a much more diverse range of people than the canon has previously included.
Some of my favorite places to start when I am looking to, say write a dvar Torah include compendia of women’s Torah like The Women’s Torah Commentary, Beginning Anew (High Holidays), and the Jewish Women’s Archive – especially their “Religion” category is brimming with biographies and assemblies of sources, classical and modern, about women in Torah.
I also turn to the breadth of organizations that put out regular divrei Torah (some all by women, some by people of many genders) – a few of my go-tos include, Maharat , JTS, ReformJudaism, T’ruah, and Hadar. Exploring Judaism, of course, also is a fantastic resource for divrei Torah and Judaism explainers written by non-men! There has also been a flowering of Israeli women’s creative Torah work, including Dirshuni, creative midrashimThis word is used in two ways, as both a concept and a literature. As a concept, midrash is the expansive interpretation of biblical texts. The term is used to describe the practice of rabbinic interpretation. As a text, it refers to specific collections of interpretations, particularly from the third to ninth centuries in the Land of Israel and Babylonia. Plural: Midrashim
, in the classical rabbinic style, by women.
Many individual teachers and writers are producing independent work online – a few of my favorites are Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s Life Is A Sacred Text, Dr. Rachel Rosenthal’s Rachel Teaches Torah, and Rabbanit Leah Sarna on Instagram.
And you can also follow me at my own newsletter, where I completed a parsha series and am now writing monthly Rosh Chodesh divrei Torah!
All of these resources model building closeness with Torah, reckoning with the text in its fullness and ourselves in our fullness, rather than consuming it as a resource
Intersectional or Bust:
Feminist Torah is not only about seeking out Torah from people who are not men – we all carry many intersecting identities, which can all provide gorgeous creative lenses into Torah. When we look to “center the margins,” to crib a phrase from the Black feminist thinker bell hooks, we must turn to the wide range of experiences and forms of self that shape our experiences. There is no one experience common to all people, nor to all non-men; this is a blessing!
Two of the genres I often seek out for myself – and these are only examples!! – are queer Torah and disability Torah. For queer Torah, I recommend Torah Queeries – the CLASSIC book; SVARA’s Hot off the Shtender; the Trans Halakha Project; Joy Ladin’s poetry and theology; and Keshet’s Torah resources. For disability Torah, I recommend the work of Rabbanit Dr. Liz Shayne, Rabbi Dr. Julia Watts Belser, and Rabbi Lauren Tuchman as a starting place!
Academia
There is a wide, wide world of exciting exploration of Jewish texts happening in academia!
Even a generation ago, many women went into academia because the world of traditional Torah was inhospitable. These women and trans people are integrating feminist and queer theory into the study of TalmudReferring to one of two collections, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, edited in the 6th century, that contains hundreds of years of commentary, discussion, and exploration of the ideas in the Mishnah. One could describe it as Mishnah + Gemara = Talmud, Jewish thought, and more.
Reading academic literature can be hard – go slowly, try to get the main ideas, and look at the footnotes – that can be a great way to dive further into an interesting topic! Some academic resources are paywalled, but many are not.
“Not Torah”
Your task, as someone committed to feminist Torah, is to read broadly and deeply.
Books, articles, podcasts, etc. Your favorite poem is a Torah resource – it can bring deep spiritual wisdom to a drasha or a source sheet, on its own or in conversation with more “traditional” texts. Nonfiction essays are a Torah resource. Anything that makes your soul resonate is a Torah resource. For example, I regularly draw on the work of the writer and artist Jenny Odell. Notice what lights you up with interest and engage with it.
The Torah of Your Life
Torah is relational. The text is only part of the story; Torah is created when you and the text have a relationship. Your own insights, feelings, and reactions to texts are not incidental – they are CENTRAL.
Pay attention to what experiences texts remind you of, what feelings come up when you learn. Treat these as Torah, just like you would with a text. Write them down, teach them.
This is what feminist Torah is all about – seeing Torah not as a set of resources but a relationship that we are engaged in deeply. The Torah pushes us and we grow; we push the Torah and the Torah grows. We must move away from commodification of the Torah and towards intimacy.
