2015 Summer Collaboratory: Feminist Hermeneutics and the Babylonian Talmud

During the month of July, several European and North American scholars, each of whom is committed to producing a commentary on one tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, were in residence as summer fellows at the Katz Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Together they discussed the challenges and contributions of feminist readings of the Talmud to the field of talmudic literature. The volumes produced will be part of the Feminist Commentary to the Babylonian Talmud series published by Mohr Siebeck. The month-long collaboratory aimed to explore strategies and best practices of writing talmudic commentary and of feminist writing. The Taube/Katz collaboratory permitted space and time for the scholars to work on their individual commentaries and collectively discuss the challenges of translating this feminist scholarly contribution into commentary—the defining Jewish literary practice for centuries.

Participants:

Coconvener: Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Stanford University

Coconvener: Marjorie Lehman, Jewish Theological Seminary

      Mara Benjamin, St. Olaf College

      Aryeh Cohen, American Jewish University

      Naftali Cohn, Concordia University

      Judith Hauptman, Jewish Theological Seminary

      Tal Ilan, Freie Universität Berlin

      Jane Kanarek, Hebrew College

      Gail Labovitz, American Jewish University

      Sarra Lev, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

      Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, University of Virginia

      Hannah Tzuberi, Freie Universität Berlin

      Dvora Weisberg, Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion (LA)

 

On July 23, 2015, a day-long symposium was held at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, designed for the summer fellows to present the fruit of their collective labor. The objective was to stimulate conversation with other scholars working in the field of Jewish and feminist studies about the ways in which writing a feminist commentary contributes to the study of Talmud and rabbinic literature.

9:30     Welcome: Steve Weitzman

            Introduction: Charlotte Fonrobert

 9:45     Feminist Strategies of Interpretation

            Judith Hauptman, Gail Labovitz

 11:00   To Comment or Not to Comment: The Process of Selecting Texts

            Naftali Cohn, Dvora Weisberg

 12:30   Lunch

 1:30     From Traditional Talmud Commentary to Feminist Talmud Commentary:

            A New Interpretive Agenda

            Aryeh Cohen, Jane Kanarek, Sarra Lev

 2:45     The Tractate as a Frame for Feminist Commentary

            Charlotte Fonrobert, Marjorie Lehman

 4:15     The Future of the Project

            Tal Ilan