A feminist critique of Judaism as a patriarchal tradition and an exploration of the increasing involvement of women in naming and shaping Jewish tradition.

Professor Jay Ladin made headlines around the world when, after years of teaching literature at Yeshiva University, he returned to the Orthodox Jewish campus as a woman—Joy Ladin. In Through the Door of Life, Joy Ladin takes readers inside her transition as she changed genders and, in the process, created a new self. With unsparing honesty and surprising humor, Ladin wrestles with both the practical problems of gender transition and the larger moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions that arise. Ladin recounts her struggle to reconcile the pain of her experience living as the “wrong” gender with the pain of her children in losing the father they love. We eavesdrop on her lifelong conversations with the God whom she sees both as the source of her agony and as her hope for transcending it. We look over her shoulder as she learns to walk and talk as a woman after forty-plus years of walking and talking as a man. We stare with her into the mirror as she asks herself how the new self she is creating will ever become real. Ladin’s poignant memoir takes us from the death of living as the man she knew she wasn’t, to the shattering of family and career that accompanied her transition, to the new self, relationships, and love she finds when she opens the door of life. 2012 Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for Biography, Autobiography, or Memoir “Wrenching—and liberating. . . .[it] opens up new ways of looking at gender and the place of LGBT Jews in community.”—Greater Phoenix Jewish News “Given her high-profile academic position, Ladin’s transition was a major news story in Israel and even internationally. But behind the public story was a private struggle and learning experience, and Ladin pulls no punches in telling that story. She offers a peek into how daunting it was to learn, with little support from others, how to dress as a middle-aged woman, to mu on make-up, to walk and talk like a female. She provides a front-row seat for observing how one person confronted a seemingly impossible situation and how she triumphed, however shakingly, over the many adversities, both societal and psychological, that stood in the way.”—The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide

This first collection of Judith Plaskow's essays and short writings traces her scholarly and personal journey from her early days as a graduate student through her pioneering contributions to both feminist theology and Jewish feminism to her recent work in sexual ethics. Accessibly organized into four sections, the collection begins with several of Plaskow's foundational essays on feminist theology, including one previously unavailable in English. Section II addresses her nuanced understanding of oppression and includes her important work on anti-Judaism in Christian feminism. Section III contains a variety of short and highly readable pieces that make clear Plaskow's central role in the creation of Jewish feminism, including the essential "Beyond Egalitarianism." Finally, section IV presents her writings on the significance of sexual ethics to the larger project of transforming Judaism. Intelligently edited with the help of Rabbi Donna Berman, and including pieces never before published, The Coming of Lilith is indispensable for religious studies students, fans of Plaskow's work, and those pursuing a Jewish education.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for 1998. How can women's full participation transform Jewish law, prayer, sexuality, and marriage? What does it mean to "engender" Jewish tradition? Pioneering theologian Rachel Adler gives this timely and powerful question its first thorough study in a book that bristles with humor, passion, intelligence, and deep knowledge of traditional biblical and rabbinic texts.

The rise of Jewish feminism, a branch of both second-wave feminism and the American counterculture, in the late 1960s had an extraordinary impact on the leadership, practice, and beliefs of American Jews. Women Remaking American Judaism is the first book to fully examine the changes in American Judaism as women fought to practice their religion fully and to ensure that its rituals, texts, and liturgies reflected their lives. In addition to identifying the changes that took place, this volume aims to understand the process of change in ritual, theology, and clergy across the denominations. The essays in Women Remaking American Judaism offer a paradoxical understanding of Jewish feminism as both radical, in the transformational sense, and accomodationist, in the sense that it was thoroughly compatible with liberal Judaism. Essays in the first section, Reenvisioning Judaism, investigate the feminist challenges to traditional understanding of Jewish law, texts, and theology. In Redefining Judaism, the second section, contributors recognize that the changes in American Judaism were ultimately put into place by each denomination, their law committees, seminaries, rabbinic courts, rabbis, and synagogues, and examine the distinct evolution of women’s issues in the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements. Finally, in the third section, Re-Framing Judaism, essays address feminist innovations that, in some cases, took place outside of the synagogue. An introduction by Riv-Ellen Prell situates the essays in both American and modern Jewish history and offers an analysis of why Jewish feminism was revolutionary. Women Remaking American Judaism raises provocative questions about the changes to Judaism following the feminist movement, at every turn asking what change means in Judaism and other American religions and how the fight for equality between men and women parallels and differs from other changes in Judaism. Women Remaking American Judaism will be of interest to both scholars of Jewish history and women’s studies.

Homosexuality is not a problem: heterosexism is, and heterosexism is often supported by religious statements and practices against sexual minorities. Heterosexism in Contemporary World Religion seeks to draw out strands in each major religion that are antidotal to such practices and attitudes. Book jacket.

Key writings in feminist spirituality drawing on the great diversity of women's experience.

Jewish philosophy responds to the challenges of today's world. By studying the ideas of great contemporary thinkers, readers will achieve a rich understanding of our contemporary spiritual needs.

This collection of revised and new essays explores Jewish women's history. Topics include portrayals of women in the Hebrew Bible, the image and status of women in the diaspora world of late antiquity, and Jewish women in the Middle Ages.