Durch Erforschung des Einzelnen 
zur Erkenntnis des Allgemeinen; 
durch Kenntnis der Vergangenheit, 
zum Verständnis der Gegenwart ; 
durch Wissen zum Glauben.

"Through the study of detail 
to insight into the general; 
from cognizance of the past 
to understanding of the present; 
through knowledge to faith." 

This is the motto of Abraham Geiger, leading figure in the scientific study of Judaism and one of the most influential founders of Liberal Judaism. He was also an advocate of woman's equality, rabbi of the Oranienburger synagogue and lecturer at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. 

Geiger was born to a traditional Jewish family in Frankfurt in 1810. He was educated Jewishly by his brother Salomon but was deprived by his parents of a secular education of which they disapproved. Yet the young Geiger could not be withheld from secretly reading secular books which were to influence him deeply. Having been introduced by this literature to the political use of myths in Greek and Rome, he began to suspect that the Bible too contained myths. From that moment onward he was preoccupied by questions concerning the historicity of the Bible and subsequently the history of Judaism. Despite the fact that he was not in possession of the necessary diplomas, Geiger was admitted to the study of Classical and Oriental Languages at the University of Heidelberg. Switching from the study of philology to the study of philosophy and history, Geiger decided to continue his studies in Bonn. It was there that he won a prize for his essay "Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?" for which he was also awarded his doctorate in Marburg in 1834 - the Ph.D. title being considerably cheaper to obtain there than in Bonn. In that essay he demonstrated that while Islam was not a direct heir of Judaism, it had appropriated much from the same cultural milieu in which Judaism had manifest itself in a much earlier period. This work received much praise from Christian theologians. This was almost never the case for Geiger's later research in the field of the origins of Christianity, as expressed in his classic Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel (1856) and popularized later in two lecture series: Das Judentum und seine Geschichte (1864-1865) and Allgemeine Einleitung in die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1872-1874).

Our author commences his account of Jewish history with the period of the sects beginning shortly after the return from the Babylonian exile in 533 BCE. The temple was rebuilt and offers and priesthood restored. The Davidic line however, became less important due to the fact that the foreign powers successively ruling over Palestine hardly tolerated local political leadership. One family of priests rushed to fill in the lacuna and declared itself the natural leaders of the people. These sons of Zadok belonged to an aristocracy which identified itself with the sanctuary and laid claims to it. Other priestly families were pushed aside.

The Zadokites were quick to embrace the Syrian-Greek culture which was making inroads in Palestine in the 3rd century BCE and with their approval a statue of Zeus was placed in the temple and contributions collected for the construction of a temple dedicated to Hercules. The people at large rejected this state of decline and revolted against those who confiscated not their land and material goods but their spiritual heritage. Under the leadership of the Hasmoneans the temple was regained but the members of this supplanted priestly family soon allied themselves with the old aristocracy. In the end it was the Pharisees who were to join issue with them.

The Pharisees' resistance consisted of their propagating the sanctification of the entire people. Everyone was a priest and as such had to adhere to the special purity laws and eat their meals in purity, as did the priests when eating the offers. The Pharisees were not hairsplitters; to the contrary, they formed in reality the core of the Jewish people. They fought for equality of all classes. Their struggle was the perpetual struggle against the priest, against hierarchy, against favoring one's own class and against the attribution of greater value to superficial matters. According to Geiger the Pharisees valued internal religious experience. Because they were afraid to voice the need for change candidly, they couched their new regulations in traditional terms. They appealed to Scripture but endowed it with new, albeit strained interpretation.

At this point in his history of the Second Temple period Geiger devoted much time to a study of Jesus, a pressing matter in his day. The critical study of the classical sources in the 189^th century included not only the Hebrew Bible but the New Testament as well. Christian theologians were engrossed by the search for the historical Jesus. Those who confirmed Jesus' Jewish background were pressed to explain how Jesus differed from his contemporaries. If the Pharisees "strained at a goat and swallowed a camel" how could Jesus be like them? That Jesus was a Pharisee who had never broken with the Jewish tradition and moreover had nothing new to say was exactly whit Geiger claimed. Christianity's main principles, like Islam's, were derived from Judaism. However, Christianity - like Islam - deviated from pure monotheism and misinterpreted the Bible.

Geiger's project, as Susannah Heschel writes in her recent book, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, was to write a counter history. Geiger was no assimilationist, as many of the opponents of his religious reform have claimed. Instead of molding Judaism according to the model of the dominant religion - Christianity - he presented a radical revision of Christianity. "Counter history", says Heschel, "is the genre that characterized Christian histories of the Jews in as much as they take Jewish sources and revise them as anticipations of the coming of Jesus and as explanations for the rise of Christianity (i.e. the degenerate state of postexilic Judaism). As counter history these Christian revisions of Judaism deprive the adversary of his positive identity of his self image and substitute it with a pejorative counter image." Geiger wished to defend Judaism by writing a counter history of Christian counter history. This he did by identifying the Pharisees as he driving force of Judaism. Thereby claiming that religious reform in his own time was in harmony with the pharisean goal. Pharisaism is not simply the name of a movement in early Judaism but represents the principle which brings about evolution in world history. The struggle in Germany in Geiger's own time for a progressive society in opposition to a narrow-minded aristocracy reiterates the Pharisees' struggle. For Geiger the Pharisees served as a universal symbol of progress and thus he rewrote Jewish history in order to accommodate his newly created image of rabbinic Judaism (i.e. legalism and pilpul were of later date and due to medieval Christianity). Geiger considered his approach to history unprejudiced, unlike the Christian theologians who would rather deny Jesus his historical context than admit any Jewish influence on his ideas. He also felt that his approach was unlike the traditional, monolithic view of tradition. Should it ever happen, as a result perhaps of the monolithic view, that the Jew look backward at Judaism, regarding it as something which belongs to the past, blindly preserving it with the romantic love for time-worn ruins, then Judaism is dead, a walking skeleton on its way to its end. But this could never happen - Geiger claimed - for Judaism was a living tradition in which inner creative forces were always able to transform Judaism. This vision of Judaism is the key to Geiger's writing of history. His history was not only a counter history but in the words of Arnold Eisen, "the constructing of a usable past", a past that would justify religious reform in Geiger's own time, including change in women's status.

The need to construct a usable past or reappropiate Jewish tradition is a relatively new phenomenon, which unquestionably arose in response to the crisis occasioned by the confrontation between modernity and tradition. In fact - as Charles Liebman has proposed - the notion of tradition is itself peculiarly modern. "We have a conception of tradition", he says, "because we have a conception of ourselves as distinct from tradition. Traditional society takes it rhythms of life, including changes, for granted. It is guided both emotionally and intellectually, in judgment and activity, by unexamined prejudices. Man and society may in the past have lived their lives in total harmony with tradition. But if they did so, then they were unaware of tradition." It is historical self-consciousness which gave rise to the idea of tradition in the 18th and 19th centuries. For Liebman "it seems fair to conclude, therefore, that no matter how faithful any modern society may claim to be toward tradition, it is by definition nontraditional".

One will recall that Abraham Geiger was led to rethink his views on Judaism, firstly because he questioned the historicity of the Bible. If both the written and oral torahs were not given to Israel at Sinai, what was the status of the Bible? In what way could it be considered God's revelation? What was the authority of the mishnah and the talmud if they were to be regarded as purely the products of men and what were the consequences for halachah? If Judaism was shown to have developed, what was then unchanging and eternal about it? For Geiger is was certainly not halachah which he considered eternal. Instead, adopting the ideas of Herder, he spoke of a religious genius, a religious spirit which dwelled in the Israelite collective (Volksgenius) because it was the people of revelation. What was then the role of the mitzvoth, the commandments? Geiger distinguished among mitzvoth which belonged to the core of Judaism and those which belonged to the outer shell. Certain laws and customs he considered oriental and out of date. In doing so he placed himself on shaky grounds, allowing contemporary conscience and sensibility to play a role including his sensibility to Christian society's opinions about Judaism. Thus it was not only critical historical study but individual intellectual and moral concerns which determined Geiger's reconstruction of history and reappropriation of tradition. And it is precisely these factors so characteristic of modernity which have continued to prompt all ensuing attempts at reappropriating tradition the attempts of feminist Jews not in the last place.

The importance of critical, historical study for feminist Jews reflects beyond doubt its significance for feminists and for women's studies in general. For Jewish women - and for women of other religious faiths as well - the problem has been twofold. Not only have they - we ! - been relegated very limited space in the traditional (canonical) literature, they have also been more or less "written out" of historical studies on Jewish history and culture. But today one need only peruse the shelves of the local bookstore or (university) library to discover that many contemporary scholars, both male and female, have taken feminist criticism to heart and incorporated women's history in their works, even if only summarily or in an effort to be politically correct. The first step has been to determine the role of women as presented in the sources. Critical study of the Mishnah, for example, has made it clear that women are dealt with in their relationship to men and especially in those situations where the control men have over women is at stake. Feminist hermeneutics of suspicion have taught us to deconstruct texts in order to discover evidence of female activity and power other than what is expected on the basis of proscribed behavior. Additionally, evidence culled from written documents not belonging to the canon such as wedding contracts and gravestones unearthed in archeological digs, increasingly serve to portray a new picture of what society as a whole was like in, for example, the rabbinic period. Surely all this increased, redirected activity is the result of contemporary conscience and sensibility.

Perhaps I should have preceded my presentation of feminist Jewish historical reconstruction by a review of contemporary sensibilities which have led in the long run to this reconstruction. Women's fight for equal rights in the first and second feminist waves had great repercussions for Jewish women in the first place and for the Jewish community as a whole in the second place. Modern society's emphasis on individuality meant that while individuals were granted rights as individuals, these rights were not extended to groups as groups. It is therefore not surprising that Clermont-Tonnerre, at the time of the convening of the Grand Sanhedrin following the French Revolution, declared: "For the Jews as individual, everything. For the Jews as a group nothing!" This individualization went so far that the French refused enfranchisement to women with the argument that it was impossible to recognize women as a group and thus grant them the vote as a group. (I refer those interested to the work of Mona Ozouf). The notion that one has the right to be different, as an individual or as member of a group, is a thoroughly new concept of the 20^th century. Thus when Jewish women, but especially men among whom Geiger, gave voice to their realization that women were excluded from public functions in Judaism, they were, at least in intention, granted equal rights. The rabbinical conference in Frankfurt in 1845 declared women to have the same obligations as men to participate in instruction of Judaism and in public services as well as count in the minyan. The Breslau conference of 1846 proclaimed the complete religious equality of the female sex. This did not mean, of course, that women were allowed to become rabbis or serve as the president of a congregation. After all, equality has its limits. Moreover Riv-Ellen Prell has described the equality granted as the right to be "honorary men", i.e. women became even more invisible than they already were, having now relinquished the mitzvoth specifically meant for women without having anything in their stead. This criticism is perhaps historically incorrect in the sense that sensibility to women's difference was not common felt in the 19th century. Yet the effect of creating honorary men has been long lasting in Reform Judaism. In fact most ordained women rabbis in the 1970s and 80s were eager to become "honorary men" and felt uneasy at being identified as a women rabbis.

The growing acceptance of difference meant that women's experiences slowly lost their stigma of being "other" in the sense of deviant from the norm. And within feminist circles it was acknowledged that what had thus far been presented as "women's" experiences was mainly pertinent to the lives of white, middle class females. Enter here the possibility of belonging to several minority groups at once, such as female, oriental/ mizrachi and lesbian Jews. Reflections on these variegated lives found their way into the liturgy, just as subjective criteria had entered into prayerbooks in the early 19th century in Germany. One of the first reform prayerbooks was published in Hamburg by laymen and in it and subsequent prayerbooks such matters as the return to Zion, the rebuilding of the temple and reinstitution of sacrifices were removed. They were felt to be inconsonant with the messianic ideal in which the Jews served as a "light to the nations" in the diaspora, with the desire to be a full citizen in the country in which one dwelled, and the advanced degree of in our time civilization in the 19th century respectively. So too prayers such as "who has not made me a woman" have disappeared from practically all non-orthodox siddurim. Personal prayers have been formulated in both the feminine and masculine and gender neutral services written. Far more controversial has been the use of feminine adjectives and imagery to describe God. Whereas so-called traditional terms such as Shechina have been more readily accepted, the full realization that God is not sexless came with the shock many felt when hearing God addressed as "She". The least inroad has been made by attempts to incorporate women's lifecycle events with in prayerbooks, despite the fact that Liberal and Conservative versions have become more encompassing. They are now intended for use during weekdays and at home as opposed to earlier publications meant solely for shabbath and haggim (sabbath and festivals).

The emphasis on increased observance is the final issue upon which I wish to focus in this paper. Michael Meyer, historian of Reform Judaism, writes that in the past "scholars and/or reformers sought to reconceive tradition in such a way that it became invulnerable to modernity: by humanizing it to varying degrees, by building change and variety into it or by altering its substance from law to a set of religious ideas. Yet the rupture they tried to avoid came even nearer as criticism and subjectivism produced diminished faith and neglect of ritual acts." There was no longer a collective tradition; one could pick and choose whatever customs or ceremonies were appealing at the moment. But the tide seems to be turning both collectively and individually. The American Reform movement in its 1976 Centenary Perspective states the following with regard to religious practice: "Judaism emphasizes action rather than creed as the primary expression of religious life… The past century has taught us that the claims made upon us, may begin with our ethical obligations, but they extend to many other aspects of Jewish living, including: creating a Jewish home centered on family devotion; life long study; private prayer, public worship; daily religious observance, keeping the Sabbath and holy days … Within each area of Jewish observance Reform Jews are called upon to confront the claims of Jewish tradition, however differently perceived and to exercise their individual autonomy."

The "return to tradition" is, as I have already mentioned, also noticeable among individual Jews. For many this return mirrors the need for a generational link with the past. For a smaller number this return is genuinely motivated by the desire to engage in a fuller and richer life of religious practice, guided by torah in general or by halachah more specifically. For some, the desire to remain within halachah has lead to a search for the true nature and function of halachah. Eliezer Berkovits has tried to demonstrate that it is not the halachah but its present day interpreters who make alleviation of the injustice caused to women impossible, as the unresolved problems of the divorce laws and the agunah attest. Yet change is for Berkovits and other liberal halachists a possibility.

Judith Hauptman, in her Rereading the Rabbis and Daniel Boyarin with his brilliant interpretation of talmudic texts in his Carnal Israel have made the most recent attempts to salvage rabbinic Judaism for feminism, neither very successfully to my mind. Boyarin has in fact made a better case for the acceptability of what he calls "feminized" or "sissy" men in rabbinic tradition than he has for the empowered woman. The repercussion of this deviant male role for Jewish woman need not, as Boyarin is quite aware, necessarily be positive.

The two writers whose new theologies deserve the most attention to my mind are Judith Plaskow and Rachel Adler. Plaskow, in Standing Again at Sinai, divides her theology into the triad of Torah, Israel and God, making use of traditional categories yet transforming them at the same time. She regards torah firstly as a history containing memories of the past, but an incomplete past. Feminist historiography, she writes, "can open new questions to be brought to the past and offer a broader picture of Jewish religious experience. It must, however, first be combined with feminist midrash and liturgy before it can shape the Jewish relationship to God and the world, become part of the community's collective memory and thus contribute to the transformation of torah." Plaskow wants to restore the viability of God-talk in Judaism by making use of new language. Is halachah then part of that language? The author is very careful to consistently speak about torah and not halachah. For her, law is but one aspect of torah and certainly not its essence. In fact our author refrains from identifying an essence in a Judaism so shaped by a patriarchal society that the will of men has come be identified with God's will. Although she is less radical in her rejection of halachah than in earlier essays and does not insist that law is antithetical to women's understanding of life, Plaskow stresses the concept of rule-making as a shared communal process in feminist Judaism which, she says, it is not in traditional rabbinic Judaism. But in the end she warns that even if feminists can imagine an attitude toward halachah that is compatible with radical halachic change, they must also be suspicious of the claim that without halachah there is no Judaism. Thus torah, while definitely embracing midrash - the method by which women can create a past if they are unable to discover one - need not necessarily include halachah. It may in fact, as Buber felt, interfere with the possibility of directly communicating with God.

Rachel Adler, in Engendering Judaism. An Inclusive Theology and Ethics, employs a slightly different strategy. Instead of transforming torah, she transforms the meaning of halachah. Halachah is not limited to "classical halachah" but is a path making; it translates the stories and values of Judaism into ongoing action. Halachah is in that sense an integral part not only of Orthodoxy but of any kind of Judaism - here Adler reappropriates halachah for all Jews. Halachah is authentic Jewish language for articulating the system of obligations that constitute the content of covenant. It is a communal praxis grounded in Jewish stories. Like Plaskow, Adler insists that if praxis is indeed to be the embodiment in action at a particular time of the values and commitments inherent to a particular story, then women's stories, their values and commitments must be included. Recognizing that societies are human constructions which can be understood only in context (i.e. through critical historical study), Adler rejects the notion of divinely revealed halachah. Instead of repairing an irreparable halachah, she calls for a feminist jurisgenesis which would regenerate a world of legal meaning in which the stories, dreams and revelations of Jewish women and men are fully and complexly integrated. She borrows Robert Cover's concept of law as a bridge strung between "reality" - our present world of norms and behavioral responses to norms - and "alternity" - the other normative worlds we may choose to imagine. Law is then neither reality nor alternity but what bridges the gap: the committed social behavior, which constitutes the way a group of people will attempt to get from here to there. For Adler, halachah is maintained or remade not by orthodoxies or visions ("It is not in heaven") but by commitments of communities either to obey the law as it stands, or resists and reject it in order to live out some alternative legal vision. For Plaskow as well, the problem of authority resolves itself into the question of whether the primary community to which she is accountable finds her images of God, or Torah or Israel compelling.

I would like to close my lecture with a story of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism as a parable for the current predicament of the Jews and for the contemporary religious situation more generally: The Baal Shem Tov would go into the forest whenever faced with a difficult task. He would light a fire, say a prayer, and what he had set out to perform was done. In the next generation his disciple, the Maggid of Meseritz, could no longer light the fire, but he did know the place to go and the prayer to utter. The third generation could neither light the fire nor say the prayer, but it could still find the sacred place in the forest. All generations since cannot even do that. What can they, what can we do? Are we reduced to the mere telling of this story and hope that it will have "the same effect as the actions of the other three’’?

Not if it’s up to women. We have our own fire, our own prayers and our own places which we must find, in order to have the effect other fires and other prayers of other Jews had in the past.

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