Esther Fuchs – författare

This book is for anyone interested in religious studies and women''s studies, as well as for biblical scholars. It offers a feminist oppositional reading of the biblical text. The main argument is that the Bible constructs a fictional universe in which women are shown to be intent on promoting male interests, and, for the most part, appear as secondary characters whose voice and point of view are often suppressed. In their limited roles as mothers, wives, daughters and sisters, women are constructed as male-dependent pawns intent on securing the status of their male counterparts. The Biblical narrative highlights the contribution of women as reproductive agents and protectors of sons. In this challenging collection of essays, Fuchs focuses on type-scenes as a way of demonstrating the mechanisms by which the texts validates male power and superiority. She also deconstructs the Biblical sexual politics by asking whose interest is being served by the ''good'' women of the Bible.Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement series, Volume 310.

Israeli women do not enjoy the equality, status, and power often attributed to them by the media and popular culture. Despite significant achievements and progress, as a whole they continue to earn less than their male counterparts, are less visible and influential in the political arena, do not share equal responsibilities or privileges in the military, have unequal rights and freedoms in family life and law, and are less influential in shaping the nation's self image and cultural orientation.Bringing together classic essays by leading scholars of Israeli culture, this reader exposes the hidden causes of ongoing discrimination and links the restrictions that Israeli women experience to deeply entrenched structures, including colonial legacies, religious traditions, capitalism, nationalism, and ongoing political conflict. In contrast, the essays also explore how women act creatively to affect social change and shape public discourse in less ostensible ways.Providing balanced perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities, this comprehensive reader reflects both an emerging consensus and exciting diversity in the field. It is the definitive text for courses in Israeli women's studies.

These essay in honour of Professor Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza draw on international feminist scholarship indebted to her ground-breaking achievements in the areas of biblical studies, feminist thought and social justice. The contributors represent a wide variety of backgrounds, commitments, methodologies, talents and interests. They are united here by their appreciation for her as a scholar, teacher, mentor, colleague and friend. The spectrum is full of vitality, with important convergences and intersections. It exemplifies what Schussler Fiorenza has called "critical collaboration": women thinking together and creating together. This Festschrift is unique in that it celebrates the work of all women in the field.

This book is for anyone interested in religious studies and women's studies, as well as for biblical scholars. It offers a feminist oppositional reading of the biblical text. The main argument is that the Bible constructs a fictional universe in which women are shown to be intent on promoting male interests, and, for the most part, appear as secondary characters whose voice and point of view are often suppressed. In their limited roles as mothers, wives, daughters and sisters, women are constructed as male-dependent pawns intent on securing the status of their male counterparts. The Biblical narrative highlights the contribution of women as reproductive agents and protectors of sons. In this challenging collection of essays, Fuchs focuses on type-scenes as a way of demonstrating the mechanisms by which the texts validates male power and superiority. She also deconstructs the Biblical sexual politics by asking whose interest is being served by the 'good' women of the Bible.Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement series, Volume 310.

The last two decades have given rise to a proliferation of scholarship by Israeli feminists working in diverse fields, ranging from sociology to literature, anthropology, and history. As the Israeli feminist movement continually decentralizes and diversifies, it has become less Eurocentric and heterocentric, making way for pluralistic concerns. Collecting fifteen previously published essays that give voice to this diversity, Israeli Feminist Scholarship showcases articles on Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Palestinian, and lesbian identities as well as on Israeli women’s roles as mothers, citizens and activists, and soldiers.Citing evidence that these scholars have redefined their object of inquiry as an open site of contested and constructed identity, luminary Esther Fuchs traces the history of Israeli feminism. Among the essays are Jewish historian Margalit Shilo’s study of the New Hebrew Woman, sociologist Ronit Lentin’s analysis of gendered representations of the Holocaust in Israeli culture, peace activist Erella Shadmi on lesbianism as a nonissue in Israel, and cultural critic Nitza Berkovitch’s examination of womanhood as constructed in Israeli legal discourse.Creating a space for a critical examination of the relationship between disparate yet analogous discourses within feminism and Zionism, this anthology reclaims the mobilizing, inclusive role of these multifaceted discourses beyond the postmodern paradigm.

Feminist Theory and the Bible: Interrogating the Sources conceptualizes, contextualizes and maps a new kind of burgeoning scholarship that has grown up in recent decades. This scholarship emerged in the margins of Feminist Studies and Biblical Studies and has yet to find a foothold in either one of these more established contexts. In this book, Esther Fuchs argues that in order to find an enduring, stable place in the academe, this scholarship requires a theoretical perspective. Biblical Studies as a whole has not yet been sufficiently theorized as an academic field, and currently consists of multiple disciplines relying for the most part on traditional scholarly discourses. In this regard, Feminist Biblical Studies is both a departure from and an important supplement to both Feminist Studies and Biblical Studies.

In the last three decades, hundreds of books and essays have been published on women, gender, and Jewish Studies. This burgeoning scholarship has not been adequately theorized, contextualized, or historicized. This book argues that Jewish feminist studies is currently constrained by multiple frames of reference that require re-examination, a self-critical awareness, and a serious reflective inquiry into the models, paradigms, and assumptions that inform, shape, and define this area of academic interest. This book is the first critical analysis of Jewish feminist scholarship, tracing it from its tentative beginnings in the late 1970s to contemporary academic articulations of its disciplinary projects. It focuses on the assumptions, evasions, omissions, inconsistencies, and gaps in this scholarship, and notably the absence of debate, contestation, and interrogation of authoritative articulations of its presumed goals, investments, and priorities. The book teases out implicit thinking about mapping, direction, and orientation from introductions to leading anthologies and engages critically with the few explicitly theoretical works on Jewish feminist studies, contesting ideas that have become hegemonic in some areas, and interrogating the limitations these theories impose on future trajectories in Jewish feminist studies. Each chapter outlines the theoretical assumptions that inform salient publications in the field, providing a close reading of scholarly texts that justify certain practices. The book is divided into four chapters, each of which focuses on a different frame of reference. It outlines the way in which the various frames that have so far been imposed on Jewish feminism, the ethnocentric, liberal, personal, masculinist, and essentialist, have arrested its theoretical elaboration and articulation. The book includes both interdisciplinary anthologies on gender and Jewish identity and disciplinary publications in history, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and Holocaust studies.

Women and the Holocaust brings together essays by leading scholars in the field of Shoah Studies that derive from disciplines such as literary criticism, religious studies, history, sociology, and film studies while focusing on the unique experiences of women in the Holocaust. These scholars analyze how these experiences are represented in cultural media, how these experiences are remembered, and how they differ from men's experiences. This collection seeks to redress the marginalization of women in the recounting of the devastation of European Jewry. It addresses the situation of women suffering for their Jewishness, and the memorialization of this suffering in which they found expression. The contributors search for the unique aspects of this expression by analyzing women's portrayals and texts, and by evaluating the unique voice of women as witnesses to the Holocaust.