Submitted by Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen
Prophetic Judaism has long been articulated as a core pillar upon which progressive Judaism stands. Instead of a focus on halachah (Jewish law), our teachers who embedded Liberal and Reform Judaism in the UK, taught of the prophets and their unassailable search for moral behaviour and justice: ‘For [Leo] Baeck, Judaism was prophetic Judaism’ (Mayer 1999: 109).
Yet, just as with the vague term tikkun olam (repair of the world), I am not convinced that we understand what ‘prophetic’ means, the theology underlining it, and, critically, why it may need re-constructing and re-defining.
A quick scan of the Latter Prophets may leave us feeling clammy, uncomfortable and unsure. For as many verses which inspire us to greater ideals – ‘the wolf shall dwell with the lamb’ (Isaiah 11:6) and ‘let justice well up like water’ (Amos 5:24) – there are as many verses which showcase the worst of humanity as Hosea exclaims, ‘Give them, O Eternal One—give them what? Give them a womb that miscarries, And shriveled breasts!’ (9:14). The Latter Prophets’ cries for justice are shored up through harmful ideologies of misogyny and racism, theologies of revenge and othering. The violence of prophetic theology cannot be divorced from their call for justice for it depends upon them and thus must be reckoned with. As Judith Plaskow writes, ‘[a]t the same time they [the prophets] call for a connection between religion and justice, they enforce a narrow and monolithic understanding of religion, condemning all who disagree with them as idolaters and whores’ (1990: 216). What does it mean for us to call ourselves prophetic Jews when so much of their teaching run counter to their core cry for justice? At a time when the fractures and brokenness of our world is so apparent can we risk taking on such oppressive and dangerous language?
We have a choice . We can either cede the use of the term prophetic and find new language or we can re-claim the term, name the harm and re-imagine prophecy through a redemptive lens. I choose the latter. To abandon the term prophetic, I believe, would surrender some of our authority and power to others who may revel in the certain binary thinking that the prophets offer and find refuge in the chance to name others as enemies and evil. Just as I choose to step into the chain of tradition of being a rabbi, only 50 years after the first female rabbi was ordained in the UK, I refuse to relinquish religious authority to one constrictive and exclusive understanding. As Plaskow writes: ‘Feminists can affirm our debt to and continuity with prophetic insistence on connecting faith and justice, even while we extend the prophets’ social and religious critique beyond anything they themselves envisioned’ (1990: 217). I know that my task as a Jewish reader is to read critically and thoroughly and to ask the question as posed by the scholar Carleen Mandolfo, ‘where does the biblical text fall short of its own ideals of justice?’ (2007: 9). For if I am not challenging and demanding more of the biblical texts then I leave one rigid, harmful interpretation of the texts to do its damage in the world today.
Through my PhD research, inspired by the teaching of Rabbi Sheila Shulman (z”l) I have been exploring how a feminist understanding of prophecy may be liberative for us today, particularly for female Jewish clergy. Rabbi Sheila understood the power and urgency of the core of prophetic teachings: ‘It [the prophetic voice] makes trouble. It does not respect authority, in fact it resists authority. It certainly does not go about ‘crying peace, peace, when there is no peace’. It addressed, and addresses itself to power and privilege and politics’ (2005: 88). From this vantage point Shulman begins to articulate something of a vision of a feminist understanding of biblical prophecy, rooted through the ‘relentlessly critical [prophetic] voice in Judaism’ but emerging from a ‘dialogic community’ of women who are able to act and be as full persons (2005: 82 and 83). It is this call towards a ‘contemporary feminist understanding of women’s prophecy’ which speaks to me and moves me to action (Shulman 2005: 85).
What would this feminist understanding of prophecy look like? What theo/alogy[1] may it assert? The primary, uncompromising principle would be that it was collective. No more of the individual, suffering slave to God: ‘accursed be the day/ That I was born. Let not the day be blessed/ When my mother bore me’ (Jeremiah 20:14). In re-imagining prophecy, no one should have to suffer alone for the cause – it is cruel and ineffective and envisions a god who demands too much and is not deserving of worship. Forming prophetic bands counters the culture in which we live – one that asserts again and again that we are alone and must survive by producing, owning and consuming. The importance of community, dialogue, relationality, is at the crux of the thealogy of Jewish feminist prophecy. The kyriarchial[2] worldview understands individuals as separate and entitled to power and wealth, dependent upon whether they are deserving, or not. Those decisions are made through an ideology that values profit and the ultimate agency of a white, western, heterosexual male. Forming such a collective understanding of prophecy which does not demand the suffering of the prophet nor one which is predicated upon the othering of another is, in and of itself, a prophetic task: ‘[t]he task of prophetic ministry is to evoke an alternative community’ (Brueggemann 2018: 116). Or as Audre Lorde writes:
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women (2018: 17).
Through my research I am searching for those biblical female, marginal characters who have been overlooked as prophets but whom are acting prophetically – in search of justice, standing up to the oppressive authoritarian leadership of the day and bringing life to death, justice to a numb and deadened world. I am bringing these women together, with female leaders today to confidently, uncompromisingly, joyfully and powerfully state hineynu (here we are).[3]
Reference List
Beth Bugg, L. 2001. Explanation of Terms (Glossary). In: Schüssler Fiorenza, E. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. New York: Orbis Books, pp.207-216.
Brueggemann, W. 2018. The Prophetic Imagination: 40th Anniversary Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Christ, C. 2006. Feminist Theology as Post-Traditional Thealogy. In: Parsons, S. F. The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.79-96.
Lorde, A. 2018. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. London: Penguin Books.
Mandolfo, C. R. 2007. Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
Mayer, M. 1999. The Thought of Leo Baeck: A Religious Philosophy for a Time of Adversity. Modern Judaism. 19(2), pp.107-117.
Plaskow, J. 1990. Standing Again At Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. New York: Harper Collins Publishing.
Shulman, S. 2005. Worldly Jewish Women: A Possible Model: ‘The Regina Jonas Memorial Lecture’. European Judaism. 38(1), pp.80–94.
[1] As the scholar Carol Christ explains, ‘The word thealogy comes from the Greek words thea or Goddess and logos or meaning. It describes the activity of reflection on the meaning of Goddess, in contrast to theology, from theos and logos, which is reflection on the meaning of God’ (2006: 79).
[2] A term coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: ‘Kyriarchy is a socio-political system of domination in which elite educated propertied men hold power over wo/men and other men. Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression’ (Beth Bugg 2001: 211).
[3] Instead of the prophetic refrain, hineni (here I am) (Isaiah 6:8; Exodus 3:4), I imagine this collective, supportive, vital call as we step up to take our place.
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Voices for Prophetic Judaism 
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