Every year on Shavuot, Jews ritualize the receiving of Torah at Sinai through many hours of study: Torah, we are taught on this and many occasions, is meant to be wrestled with, challenged, lived, and celebrated, through digging in to the contradictions of the text and asking hard questions. For those of us marginalized in Torah and by much of the rabbinic text tradition, this practice of wrestling with Torah is what makes it possible to to read it. How do we wrestle skillfully, in ways that enhance our Jewish lives and proliferate Torah that is relevant to our times?
For decades, Professor Judith Plaskow has been one of the leading scholars and creators of feminist Jewish theology and culture. Her wrestling with Jewish tradition and text, in 1991’s Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective, and The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972-2003, and more, has shaped generations of Torah students and scholars. Today, while women, queer and trans Jews have done incredible work fundamentally reshaping the misogyny, patriarchy and homophobia in our tradition, there is still plenty of work to do. Everyday we face renewed challenges reading Torah, including texts that condone and celebrate violence, militarism, conquest, and supremacy, while Israel continues its oppressive Jewish-supremacist regime and violent occupation.
As we prepare for Shavuot, Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg is honored to welcome Professor Judith Plaskow for a virtual conversation at Tzedek Chicago about Torah and how we read it. We will discuss ways of reading and interpreting texts and engaging with tradition in politically aligned ways. How can those of us wrestling with Torah today learn from the generations of leftist text wrestlers who come before us and are still here?