by Rebecca Honig Friedman

Exciting things going on for women and the Bible, in the world at large and on Jewess!

The URJ Press has announced it will publish the first ever women’s commentary of the Torah, aptly titled, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, in December 2007. A project of the Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ), the commentary incorporates “new critical approaches. . .not found in traditional commentaries,” and focuses “on passages that reflect biblical constructs of female experience, gender issues, or individual women,” according to the WRJ website.
The project, reports the Chicago Tribune, “took more than a decade to produce and includes essays, commentaries and interpretations from more than 80 of the world’s leading Jewish female Bible scholars, rabbis, historians, philosophers and archeologists.”
Despite the focus on women, though, “the hope is that Jewish men also will learn from it and find relevance to the women in their own lives,” and indeed, “some Jewish men who reviewed advance copies have already offered praise.”

This news comes at a particularly fitting time for Jewess, because this week we launch a new feature — Parsha Posts! Each Friday a different scholarly woman will offer some insight into the week’s Torah portion [parsha]. This Friday, look for a post on Bamidbar by the J-blogosphere’s own Velveteen Rabbi, Rachel Barenblat!
[If anyone out there wants to participate in this project and write their own parsha post, please send an email to jewess@canonist.com].

Additionally, in preparation for the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, this week’s Weekly 7 interview features Biblical novelist Eva Etzioni-Halevy, who dishes about her latest book, The Garden of Ruth. Check back tomorrow for the interview.

Posted on May 15th, 2007 Filed under: Uncategorized |