ABSTRACT
This seventh chapter is prefaced by a discussion of Helène Aylon’s ‘post-Orthodox’ Jewish feminist art which, over several decades, has used a feminist theological hermeneutic to rescue God and women from their patriarchal projections. The chapter goes on to examine how second wave Jewish feminist theology used biblical and rabbinic narratives, concepts, and tropes to propose a theology in which women could embark on an exodus from patriarchy and self-realize as women created in God’s image, not ‘man’s’. The chapter situates second wave Jewish feminist theology as alate intervention in modern Jewish religious thought, while noting that its feminist anthropology was not driven by Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas’ valorization of the feminine but drew on a combination of biblical, rabbinic, and secular feminist sources. The chapter concludes with a consideration of Judith Plaskow’s counter-idolatrous theology as procedurally deconstructive, even, perhaps, to the point of its de-Judaization.
