Recognizing Women
Discussion Questions
1 What are your hopes for women in your tradition?
2 Where are women in our traditions’ central narratives?
3 What roles have our traditions assigned to women in the past?
4 What is the status of women in our traditions today?
Note: The texts for this topic come from ExodusConversations.org
Jewish Texts
1. . . . [Y]ou are to proclaim this Instruction [Torah] in front of all Israel, in their ears. Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the little ones, and your sojourner that is in your gates, in order that they may hearken, in order that they may learn and have-awe-for YHWH your God.
— Deuteronomy 31:11-12 (Everett Fox translation)
2. Ben Azzai says, “One is required to teach his daughter Torah” . . . Rabbi Eliezer says, “Anyone who teaches his daughter Torah, it is though he is teaching her folly.”
— Mishnah, Sotah 3:4, 3rd century
3. Blessed be God, who has not made me a woman. Why? Because women are not obligated by [time-bound] religious commandments.
— Tosefta, Berakhot 6:18, 3rd century
Note: “Blessed be God, who has not made me a woman” is a passage in the morning service. According to Orthodox tradition, men are obligated to attend this service, but women are not, because it is a time-bound religious commandment. Non-Orthodox movements have changed the passage so that men and women both recite, “Blessed be God, who has created me in the divine image.”
4. God endowed the woman with more understanding than the man.
— Babylonian Talmud, Nidah 45b, 6th century
5. Rabbi Akiva said, “Israel was redeemed from Egypt because of the righteous women of that generation.”
— Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 11b, 6th century
Christian Texts
1. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ. Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
— Romans 16: 1-7
2. We deplore, and hold ourselves morally bound, to protest and resist, in church and society, all actions, customs, laws and structures that treat women or men as less than fully human. We pledge ourselves to carry forth the heritage of biblical justice which mandates that all persons share in right relationship with each other, with the cosmos, and with the Creator.
We hold ourselves responsible to look for the holy in unexpected places and persons, and pledge ourselves to continued energetic dialogue about issues of freedom and responsibility for women. We invite others of all traditions to join us in imagining the great shalom of God.
— “Madeleva Manifesto,” 2000, by the Madeleva Lecturers in Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College
3. What distinguishes Jesus as normative is not his maleness but the quality of his humanness as one who loves others and opts for those most vulnerable and oppressed, namely women. One imitates Christ by living in a like manner, not by possessing male genitalia.
— Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women and Redemption: A Theological History (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 277-278.
Muslim Texts
1. [There,] anyone who has done a bad deed will be requited with no more than the like thereof, whereas anyone, be it man or woman, who has done righteous deeds and is a believer withal — all such will enter paradise, wherein they shall be blest with good beyond all reckoning!
— Qur’an 40:40
2. hereas anyone — be it man or woman — who does [whatever he/she can] of good deeds and is a believer withal, shall enter paradise, and shall not be wronged by as much as [would fill] the groove of a date-stone.
— Qur’an 4:124
3. VERILY, for all men and women who have sur¬rendered themselves unto God, and all believing men and believing women, and all truly devout men and truly devout women, and all men and women who are true to their word, and all men and women who are patient in adversity, and all men and women who humble themselves [before God], and all men and women who give in charity, and all self-denying men and self-denying women, and all men and women who are mindful of their chastity, and all men and women who remember God unceasingly: for [all of] them has God readied forgiveness of sins and a mighty reward.
— Qur’an 33:35