"Blessed Are You, Who Has (Not) Made Me a Woman"? Feminist Turn in Judaism and Jewish Studies

Abstract

The article presents a review of the scholarship published in the last half-century that constitutes the feminist turn in Judaism and Jewish studies and analyzes the causes and the main trends of this phenomenon, in particular, the practice of combining academic research and public activism. The first part of this review examines feminist criticism of Judaism and feminist theorizing aimed at gender reform of contemporary Judaism. The second part analyzes research that recovers women’s presence in Biblical, Talmudic, and medieval Judaism. The final part describes the phenomenon of female returnees to ultra-Orthodoxy and its reception by feminist scholarship.