Chat with Judith Plaskow

Jewish Feminist Theologian and Philosopher

About Judith Plaskow

In 1970, at a conference on theology and feminism, Judith Plaskow stood up and declared that 'God is not male', not as metaphor but as theological necessity. That moment crystallized her lifelong project: dismantling the androcentric grammar of Jewish tradition by rewriting liturgy, reimagining covenant, and insisting that women’s experiences constitute legitimate religious authority. Her 1991 book *Standing Again at Sinai* didn’t just critique patriarchy in Judaism, it offered a constructive feminist theology grounded in embodied, relational, and pluralistic understandings of revelation. Unlike many theologians who sought inclusion within existing frameworks, Plaskow insisted on transforming the very categories, Torah, God, Israel, so they could hold women’s voices without erasure or assimilation. She pioneered the concept of 'theological imagination' as a disciplined, communal practice, not private reflection, and co-founded the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion to institutionalize that work. Her writing refuses abstraction: it wrestles with Hebrew texts, rabbinic silences, Holocaust memory, and the daily realities of prayer, ritual, and moral choice in a world still shaped by inherited hierarchies.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Judith Plaskow:

  • “How did your reading of the Akedah (Binding of Isaac) reshape feminist Jewish ethics?”
  • “What would a feminist Passover seder look like if Miriam, not Moses, were central?”
  • “Why do you argue that 'God language' must be plural and nonhierarchical?”
  • “How does your concept of 'relational autonomy' challenge both liberal individualism and traditional obedience?”

Frequently Asked Questions

What was Judith Plaskow's role in founding the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion?
Plaskow co-founded the journal in 1985 with Carol P. Christ as the first academic publication dedicated to feminist scholarship across religious traditions. She served as its first editor-in-chief, establishing rigorous peer review standards while insisting on interdisciplinary methods, integrating theology, history, anthropology, and literary analysis. The journal provided crucial infrastructure for feminist scholars excluded from mainstream religious studies venues, and its inaugural issue featured Plaskow’s foundational essay 'The Right Question Is Theological.'
Did Judith Plaskow identify as Reconstructionist, Reform, or another Jewish movement?
Plaskow identifies as a Reconstructionist Jew and taught for decades at Manhattan’s Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, but her theology deliberately transcends denominational boundaries. She critiques all movements, including Reconstructionism, for insufficiently centering women’s experience in their normative claims. Her work engages Orthodox, Conservative, and secular Jewish thinkers not to align with them, but to expose how gender operates across ideological lines in shaping halakhic reasoning and communal memory.
How does Plaskow reinterpret the concept of covenant in feminist Jewish theology?
Plaskow reconceives covenant not as a unilateral divine contract with patriarchal Israel, but as an ongoing, multivocal relationship among women, men, and God, grounded in mutual responsibility and historical accountability. In *Standing Again at Sinai*, she argues that the original Sinai moment excluded women’s presence and voice, so feminist covenant requires rewriting liturgy, recovering erased figures like Serach bat Asher, and affirming that revelation continues through women’s embodied interpretation of Torah in real time.
What is Plaskow's stance on using masculine pronouns for God in prayer?
Plaskow rejects masculine God-language not merely as outdated metaphor but as theologically violent, reinforcing hierarchical power structures that justify male dominance in religious life. She advocates for pluriform, non-anthropomorphic language (e.g. 'Source,' 'Breath,' 'Presence') and co-authored experimental liturgies that alternate pronouns or eliminate them entirely. For her, linguistic reform is inseparable from ethical transformation: changing how we speak of God changes how we relate to one another.
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Topics

theologyreligionfeminism

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