When Boaz sees Ruth gleaning in the field, and learns who she is, he offers her protection from his own workers’ predatory behavior, giving us a glimpse at what poor women, gleaning in the field, had to contend with.
Prof.
Jonathan Rabinowitz
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“Now Joseph was well-built and handsome”—Genesis 39:7
Prof.
Rachel Adelman
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Eve was created as Adam’s עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדֹּו ʿezer ke-negdo (Genesis 2:18). What is the meaning of this enigmatic phrase?
Prof.
Gary Rendsburg
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Israelite women are conspicuously absent from the Decalogue’s Shabbat law. Three stories in the Prophets featuring female characters—Rahab the prostitute, the great woman of Shunem, and Queen Athaliah—each tie to Shabbat in some unconventional way.
Prof.
Hagith Sivan
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Moses extends the covenant to all of Israel, “from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water” (Deuteronomy 29). The midrash connects this group with the Gibeonites of Joshua 9, creating an anachronism which later rabbinic commentators try to resolve.
Dr.
Wendy Love Anderson
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A wife who intervenes in a fight to save her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles is punished by having her hand cut off (Deut 25:11–12). What is the nature of her offense? Why isn’t her intent to save her husband a mitigating factor? What is the relationship between the punishment and the crime?
Dr.
Hilary Lipka
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If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite polity and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permitting this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a compromise to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ claim that the Torah allows divorce as a compromise to humanity’s “hard heart.”
Prof. Rabbi
Shaye J. D. Cohen
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Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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The Mishnah adds further humiliation to the biblical sotah ritual for a suspected adulteress. Other rabbinic texts from the same period critique this expansion, as well as the gender inequality inherent in the ritual itself.
Prof.
Ishay Rosen-Zvi
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After giving birth to a male, the mother is impure for 7 days, followed by 33 days of purification. However, with a female, the mother is impure for 14 days, followed by 66 days of purification.
Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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A child’s mother remains impure for forty days after the birth of a boy and eighty days after a girl. A comparison of this procedure with similar ones in Hittite birth rituals suggests that this gender-based differentiation serves as a kind of ritual announcement of the child’s gender.
Dr.
Kristine Henriksen Garroway
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What is the gender of the God of creation? Of YHWH in general?
Prof.
Marc Zvi Brettler
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Finding gender equality in the Song of Songs without compromising God and meaning.
Prof. Rabbi
Wendy Zierler
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Hittite texts show us that in the ancient Near East, women, including the queen, served as priestesses. The biblical authors, in their fervor for YHWH, monotheism, and centralization of worship through one Temple and one priesthood, strongly objected.
Prof.
Ada Taggar-Cohen
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Abimelech, Michal, Sisera’s mother, and Jezebel all look through a window, but their experience is not the same.
Prof.
Aaron Demsky
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The Canaanite general Sisera is killed by Yael in her tent but in an older version of the story, he died in battle at the hands of the Israelite general, Barak. The story was revised as part of a broader theme in Judges, to weaken the image of male military heroes through women and give the power to God.
Prof.
Jacob L. Wright
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Deuteronomy 22:5 prohibits men and women from wearing each other’s clothes. What is the motivation behind this law, and why is this behavior “abhorrent to YHWH”?
Dr.
Hilary Lipka
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The biblical portrait of Miriam can leave the feminist reader with a lingering bitterness but a literary rereading helps highlight her prophetic leadership role.
Prof. Rabbi
Wendy Zierler
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Virtually all biblical scholars—even feminist biblical scholars—consider the Bible and ancient Israelite society patriarchal.[1] But is that a valid designation?
Prof.
Carol Meyers
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A methodologically rigorous reading of the account of the Woman's creation reveals a fundamentally egalitarian view of the sexes that is both nuanced and psychologically sensitive.
Prof.
Raanan Eichler
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