Deconstructing Judaism?

For awhile now, I’ve been asking questions about why the Renewal movement, the Reconstructionist movement, and even the Humanist movement have all chosen to keep a tight grip on the mitzvot and halakah as the ubiquitous, quintessence of what has defined us as Jews through the millennia, so best we keep it that way. Renew it, yes, or embrace it as a story from of old which has defined us as a people, yes, but keep it nonetheless. Now of course they all differ as to how we do that, in their interpretations and applications. Even Reform has made major transitions in bringing back traditions it had jettisoned decades ago.

I’m happy that there has been a very careful consideration of those things which have defined us as Jews for so long, and not a simple act of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. However, there are questions here just begging for us to ask. Before I begin asking them, I will note that I have been informed by my most recent readings, and they have all reminded me about how women have been shut out and excluded from Torah, from Talmud study, from developing halakah, even in strict orthodox circles from being able to utter the same prayers as the men! This is not news. We know this.

And before you remind me that women have made strides and many women are now rabbis in all movements except the orthodox: Yes, this is true. However, there is something amiss. Yes, we have female rabbis. Yes, their voices are being added to the conversation. But, how are those female rabbis being trained? How are male rabbis being trained? In the very same ways they have been using: from the same texts which have always excluded women. Not just excluded women, but actively shut them down and pushed them away. This goes a step beyond simple exclusion!

Yes, yes, you will remind me that there are some female professors in the progressive, egalitarian rabbinical seminaries, and all rabbinical students now study some of the contemporary writings by Jewish women who have been calling forth their voices. And I am not debating this.

My point, here, is the methodology itself, the very process of customary seminary training. The same linear thinking pervades. What is happening is that women’s voices are being heard, yes, BUT, in a reverse order…. women’s voices are being brought TO the old male-written, male-controlled, male-dominated, linear-thinking-pervasive texts. What has not happened is that women, who are the progenitors and birthers of new life on the human realm, have never been allowed to bring forth new life!  Mind you, not new life out of the old or overlaid on top of the old, but as a beginning point!

We know that there were at least two voices at creation. How do we know this? We know this for several reasons, one of which is the use of the word Elohim for G!d. Elohim is a plural form. And it is this Elohim, this Plural Unity, which, as Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, in her book, The Receiving, reminds us, “brings forth creation out of a deep abyss of waters called in Hebrew, tehom, usually translated ‘the Deep,’” From the root which gives us tehom, we also derive tiamat. Tiamat is the Babylonian ancient Mother of the Universe who had generated creation as part of herself.

Elohim, the Plural One, in the beginning of the beginning began creating male and female. Female and male began to be created in the very image of this Plural One. Both male and female were there in the beginning, and yet, women were immediately shut down and pushed away in the beginning of the beginning of the Torah. This Torah was written by men exclusively from a male viewpoint, and, I might add, was written to and for men, with only the occasional side note to women, who were usually included with the children and the slaves.

So rather than bringing women’s voices TO the text , should we not first deconstruct the text? Rather than Reconstructionism, must we not first de-construct? Reconstructionism only built a new understanding on top of the old one; it did not first deconstruct and begin from a new starting point.

Women’s voices are still being excluded except as they come from within the male dominated linear approach. It is only when the linear approach is tempered by the relational, circular approach will we ever reach shalem, a wholeness that currently is missing in Judaism, even by those who embrace egalitarianism. We might have restored an equality, but it has merely been overlaid on top of the old.

The point is, we are still keeping the male dominated linear perspective as the beginning point, and bringing women’s voices TO it, rather than allowing women to have their own beginning point! It was the men who were commanded to keep most of the mitzvot. The few relegated to women were afterthoughts, really.

So I must ask, if the men were commanded to keep the mitzvot, perhaps it was the women who were drawn into taking care of the relationship, and then forced to do so underground, quietly? The relational aspect of G!d perhaps is similar to a relationship with one’s child, a child who grows and changes over the years. We all know that rules which apply to the two year old will no longer apply to the sixteen year old, which will, in turn, no longer apply when the child is twenty.

How, then, can we dare keep confining G!d as if G!d were still the parent of us as a perpetual two year old? Or even a sixteen year old? When will we be willing to stand fully as an adult, in an adult to adult relationship, with The Holy? Is this not what Torah has been pointing us to and aiming us towards the entire time?? When will be start from the relational point rather than the linear point? Why will we only allow women to bring their voices TO Torah, the Torah written by men, rather than allow women to bring forth, to birth, their own Torah, and together, bring quite new understandings to our Judaism?

Women have not just been excluded and written out. Even now, to become a rabbi, women must learn to think in the same manner as the men have, to overlay their voice on top of the male dominated texts, rather than to speak new texts into being. Doubtless, women’s Torah would begin with and revolve around relationship, birthing and creating together. Hints of that are in the male Torah, which they quickly squash and sublimate in the Garden stories. ...


I have more thoughts on this, and they will need to be fleshed out in successive posts.