On March 5, 2024, Judith Plaskow, often regarded as the first Jewish feminist theologian, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She is the first inductee whose work is focused on Judaism, and even the first to have a degree in religious studies. 

When Plaskow began her work in academia in 1975, the second-wave feminist movement was at its peak, with many Jewish women prominent among its leaders, and women’s studies was growing exponentially both as an area of activism and academic work. However, very little attention was given to the unique experiences of women in Plaskow’s chosen field of religious studies, and even less to Jewish women. Based on her personal experiences of being excluded or ignored in traditional religious spaces, such as not being counted towards a minyan when her much less observant husband was, she began to wonder why the two elements she considered most central to Judaism, prayer and study, were available only to men, even after a time of such sexual progress. 

Plaskow’s groundbreaking 1991 book Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective addresses exactly these issues, positing that the treatment of women as second-class citizens negatively impacts Jewish religion for all and urging Jewish feminists to embrace religion and add their perspectives on it, rather than rejecting it entirely. This focus on Judaism as a religion as both a potential target of and an aid to feminism was unusual, as most of the many notable Jewish women in the feminist movement considered themselves to be quite secular. 

Plaskow’s writings are considered some of the most important Jewish theological research of the twentieth century. She is also known for founding the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion in 1985, for creating the still-active Jewish feminist spiritual collective B’not Esh in 1981, and for her time as president of the American Academy of Religion in the 1990s. After 32 years of teaching at Manhattan College, where she was the first female Jewish professor, Plaskow retired in 2012 and is now a professor emerita. 

Sources:

Athanasidy, Patrice. “Pioneering Jewish Feminist Theologian Judith Plaskow Inducted into National Women’s Hall of Fame.” Manhattan College, November 22, 2023. https://manhattan.edu/news/archive/2023/11/judith-plaskow.php.

Berman, Donna. “Interview with Judith Plaskow.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 171–87. 

Cohen, Debra Nussbaum. “Judith Plaskow Is Still Standing, Twenty Years On.” The Forward, January 18, 2011. 

Shapiro, Susan. “Standing (Again) with Judith Plaskow: A Selective Reading of Her Essays.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 23, no. 1 (2007): 25–29.