|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
||||
Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
If Patriarchy Still Rules,
Feminism Still Has a Job to Do
Where have all the feminists gone? On a recent BBC Television quiz programme, Germaine Greer described herself as a “feminist writer”. The “Question-Master” asked her to explain herself: Hasn’t the time come when she could simply describe herself as a “writer”? Germaine Greer didn’t agree; neither do I. In the past few years, there has been much talk in northern and western parts of the world about the fact that Patriarchy is dead and we now live in “post-feminist” times. And yet, in southern and eastern parts of the world – excluding Australia and New Zealand - women continue, along with children, to be the poorest of the poor and the most powerless of the powerless: economically exploited, sexually colonised, and excluded by men from all decision-making structures – political, legal and religious.
Germaine Greer’s ground-breaking feminist work, “The Female Eunuch”, was first published in 1970. During the 1970s, the Women’s Liberation Movement reached its zenith. Identifying Patriarchy as the fundamental system of domination throughout the world, radical feminists challenged male power in all its manifestations. But then, in the early 1980s there were two major developments in the developed world – one internal; the other, external - which made the simple assault on Patriarchy much more complex: Within the “universal sisterhood”, women who were not part of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) feminist majority began to assert their particular identities – for example, as Jews, as Women of Colour - and organise separately around them (see Sarah, Elizabeth. 1985. “Re-thinking Feminism: Some thoughts on the limitations of ‘basics’ training.” Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 8, No. 1); outside, in the wider society, educational, professional and business opportunities for women – particularly for middle class women – began to expand largely in response to the impact of Feminism.
The shattering of “universal sisterhood”, the success of a prominent few, and the continuous expansion in women’s employment throughout the developed world began to generate a good deal of media-managed muddled thinking: If “sisters” are no longer marching in unison, the majority of women now work outside the home, and, increasingly, wives share with their husbands, the burden of supporting the (much smaller) family unit, aided and abetted by numberless modern technological devices, like automatic washing machines, surely Feminism has achieved its goal?
Space doesn’t permit a proper response to this question – so, just a few remarks from a Jewish perspective to make the case for the continuing reality of Patriarchy in the developed world and therefore, the continuing necessity for Feminism.
At first sight, Jewish women have largely succeeded in liberating themselves from confinement in the home, and establishing themselves in the public arena of communal life - once the domain of men. Following the lone rabbinate of Fräulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas, ordained in 1935 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, in 1972, Sally Priesand became the first of a continuous stream of women rabbis within Progressive Judaism in the United States, where almost three hundred women have now been ordained in thirty years. In Europe the numbers are smaller, but following Jackie Tabick’s ordination in 1975, over thirty women rabbis are now at work, mostly in the progressive movements in Britain. And alongside women rabbis, the number of female Jewish scholars throughout the Jewish world has expanded from a handful to hundreds in just a quarter of a century.
And it’s not just a numbers game or an issue of gaining equality: Women rabbis and scholars have been recreating Judaism with the introduction of inclusive language liturgies, new rituals centred on women’s lives, feminist interpretations of classical texts, and original analyses of every aspect of Jewish life – philosophical, theological, sociological, historical, economic and political.
And yet, not only are these changes largely confined to progressive Jewish life in the United States, Britain and Europe, but even in this arena, the impact of women rabbis and scholars remains restricted to the margins: Just a handful of women rabbis hold large pulpits, even fewer occupy senior positions in the different progressive organisations – the various colleges and movement bodies. And, of course, for women rabbis who are also mothers, the problems they face mirror those of mothers everywhere, as they attempt to work in male-defined contexts, which make it virtually impossible to be both a rabbi and a mother. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time. But there is something else that gets to the heart of the matter: While women rabbis, scholars and Jewish professionals have been empowering themselves and the women with whom they work, male rabbis, scholars and professionals continue, not only to dominate Jewish life, but to perpetuate the marginalisation of their female colleagues, by including women on their terms, and refusing to give up their power. It stands to reason that if Patriarchy still rules, Feminism still has a job to do.
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah – rabbinic tutor at Leo Baeck College, chair of the Rabbinic In-Service TrainingTeam and a part-time minister of the Brighton and Hove progressive Synagogue