| Title | : | Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women's Liberation Movement |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0814707637 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780814707630 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 464 |
| Publication | : | First published May 4, 2018 |
Jewish women were undeniably instrumental in shaping the women's liberation movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Yet historians and participants themselves have overlooked their contributions as Jews. This has left many vital questions unasked and unanswered—until now. Delving into archival sources and conducting extensive interviews with these fierce pioneers, Joyce Antler has at last shattered the silence at the crossroads of being Jewish and feminist.
Antler's exhilarating new book features dozens of compelling biographical narratives that reveal the struggles and achievements of Jewish radical feminists in Chicago, New York and Boston, as well as those who participated in the later, self-consciously identified Jewish feminist movement that fought gender inequities in Jewish religious and secular life. Disproportionately represented in the movement, Jewish women's liberationists helped to provide theories and models for radical action that were used throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led to new initiatives in academia, politics, and grassroots organizing. Other Jewish-identified feminists brought the women's movement to the Jewish mainstream and Jewish feminism to the Left. For many of these women, feminism in fact served as a "portal" into Judaism.
Recovering this deeply hidden history, Jewish Radical Feminism places Jewish women's activism at the center of feminist and Jewish narratives. The stories of over forty women's liberationists and identified Jewish feminists—from Shulamith Firestone and Susan Brownmiller to Rabbis Laura Geller and Rebecca Alpert—illustrate how women's liberation and Jewish feminism unfolded over the course of the lives of an extraordinary cohort of women, profoundly influencing the social, political, and religious revolutions of our era.
Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women's Liberation Movement Reviews
-
We often hear about Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem; as inspirational as they are, it's nice to read about other Jewish feminists that maybe aren't quite as "household name."
-
The endpapers of “Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices From the Women’s Liberation Movement” by Joyce Antler (New York University Press) will grab readers’ attention when they open the book. The papers contain photographs and names of 40 women on whose lives Antler focuses in her main text. I couldn’t resist seeing which ones I recognized: only 16 names were familiar before reading Antler’s discussion of how Jewish women helped shape the feminist movement. What stood out is the way the majority of these women never articulated their contributions to the movement as part of their Jewish heritage. The author also looks at women who were involved in the Jewish feminist movement – those who fought for equality in both their religious and secular lives.
See the rest of my review at
http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic... -
Fantastic work by Antler on compiling such great information on some otherwise forgotten facts, moments, groups, and individuals. I had used this as a jumping off point for my own research. It gave me some great background info, though it wasn't exactly what I needed as it left out the aspects of Jewish Radical Feminists that I was studying. Even so, fantastic book!
-
Super underwhelming. The book would more aptly be called Jewish Radical *Feminists* as it's more or less a series of mini-bios of women across the second-wave feminist movement, most Jewish or with ties to Judaism. As interesting as that may be, it lacks enlightenment in a field ripe for enlightenment.
The first half of the book centers around women's liberation activists whose Judaism was secondary to their lives as activists. Antler wants to acknowledge the fact that though Judaism was secondary, there were disproportionate numbers of Jewish women leading these collectives - a fact that is interesting but Antler spends 200 pages on these women's biographies and rehashing the themes that connected them without diving deeper. What she actually accomplished in expressing in that first half could have been expressed in 40 pages max. Why are we skirting around the edge of Jewish socialism, Bundism, and the values of justice in both secular and religious Judaism? They (or some of them) are named but not unpacked.
The second half of the book centers around feminists who center their Jewish identity and/or are women's liberation activists within their own Jewish communities and movements. This section of the book was slightly stronger as it really started to weave feminist and Jewish values together in a cohesive way, including in some of the new ways women in these spaces were inventing. Unfortunately, due to the serial biographical structure of the book, we never develop one thought long enough to make it provocative or worthwhile.
It's unclear what Antler's position is on Israel & Palestine, but it almost doesn't matter because her book takes a pretty staunch, if unnamed, Zionist perspective. The section on the global stage of Jewish feminism isn't actually global. It's about Israeli feminists and American Jewish feminists' ties to Israel. From the way Antler writes, you would think there were no Jewish anti-Zionist feminists in second-wave, or that they constituted a weak and self-loathing minority. This erasure flies in the face of reality, both during second-wave and current feminist movements (touched upon in the epilogue). It allows for much less complicated and difficult writing, but Judaism and Jewish culture is complicated! I expect more of someone who has dedicated their life to studying them. -
Reviewed for Library Journal.
-
305.42089 A6339 2018
