Methods In Feminist Torah

Course Details

What does it mean to learn Torah as feminists? Loving Torah – or wanting to love Torah – when our holy texts are so saturated with men’s experiences and perspectives to the exclusion of all others is painful, but can also be generative. In this Intensive, we'll explore 8 different ways of learning Torah with a feminist lens. We'll practice reading with a skeptical lens toward the feminist potential of Torah, we'll read closely in conversation with our own life experiences, and we'll seek out the experiences of the women behind the text. Over the course of our learning, we'll learn how to identify different feminist methods of Torah learning. By the end of the quarter you'll be able to stand in your own approach to feminist Torah learning. This ninety-minute class will open with a brief introduction, and will then consist of havruta time followed by shiur/class. All sources will be available in translation, and the core texts for this class will primarily consist of Talmud and queer and feminist theory. We will lean into the nature of these texts as twisty, terse, and sometimes hard to parse; this is an opportunity to grow in relationship with Torah and with our own insights and reading abilities.