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Contributing Philosophies
Many of the theologians, authors, and ethicists who represent Feminist Jewish Ethics were inspired and influenced by previous thinkers and philosophies.

Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan is an American Jewish feminist and ethicist whose work has significantly influenced the Feminist Jewish Ethics movement. In her psychological studies, Gilligan is concerned with male and female differences in moral development. In her book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Gilligan challenges preconceived notions, particularly in the field of psychology, that suggest that women lack the abilities to understand and make moral judgments. She argues that men and women take different approaches to defining morality, which she concludes after interviewing women about their respective definitions and approaches to morality. Her findings showed that women are more apologetic and generally feel they have an obligation to help and care for others and act morally, whereas males tend to see morality as a matter of justice and respecting the rights of others.

Other Jewish ethicists have been influenced by Gilligan and have mentioned her in their respective works. In her book Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism, author Tamar Ross argues for a continued conversation allowing for a gradual process through which Orthodoxy can come to expand itself to include feminist thought and practices. Ross references Gilligan in order to define “feminism” simply for her readers and define “uniquely feminine ways of thinking”, particularly when it comes to morality. Laurie Zoloth engages with Carol Gilligan’s anthropological research and assertion that women experience the world differently than men.

Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas was a French Jewish philosopher and Talmud Scholar who argues for the importance of a Jewish ethic. In his philosophical works he distinguishes between totality and infinity, the latter referring to the spiritual world. Levinas argues that infinity extends beyond totality. He associates totality with ontology, and infinity with ethics, prioritizing ethics over ontology.

Levinas introduces the concept of the "Other”, arguing that the needs of “the Other” should come before oneself, or “the I”.

Deidre Butler—an author, professor, and feminist— examines Levinas from a feminist viewpoint. Butler is critical of Levinas in that he perpetuates binary oppositions, which place “feminine” and “masculine”, and “self” and “other”, on opposite ends of a spectrum. Butler asserts that “it is very difficult to disentangle a philosophical category that relies on stereotypes that both signal and enact the oppression and marginalization of women.”

Laurie Zoloth, a medical ethics and religion professor at Northwestern University and author of Health Care and the Ethics of Encounter, also draws upon the works of Levinas. In her book, Zoloth analyzes and criticizes the healthcare crisis in America, maintaining that we should turn to the Jewish tradition in order to guide us in creating an appropriate ethic. Zoloth draws on Levinas’ ethical theory and concept of the ‘other,’ in order to contextualize that the healthcare crisis is a problem within a community. For Levinas, community is an organized group in which every individual sees himself or herself in relation to the ‘other’. According to Zoloth, ethics cannot exist without a sense of community and the other; she stresses that ethical decisions are made with the ‘other’ in our consciousness. This thought is influenced by Levinas, who constantly stresses the importance of how one treats his or her neighbor, or the other. The concept of community and the ‘other’ also surrounds Jewish ethics because every individual is responsible for the ‘other’ and the community serves as a group of listeners; the voice of God also contains a sense of the ‘other’. Zoloth explains that “the halakhic system uses the encounter with the Torah text and the encounter with the other's encounter with the text to create a continuous discursive community."

Feminist theory often describes women as being “otherized” – in a male-dominated culture, women are often viewed as “other” in relation to men.

Martin Buber
Martin Buber is a 20th century philosopher who is known for his book I and Thou, in which he outlines two different kinds of relationships. An “I-it” relationship consists of an individual’s attitude toward an object and is something that said individual experiences. In contrast, an “I-Thou” relationship involves two people who are participating, rather than experiencing. While the “I-Thou” relationship is considered stronger, both types of relationship are significant and bring the individuals involved closer to God. 5 An I-Thou relationship must involve both parties, but not necessarily to an equal extent.

Many feminists see the “I-Thou” relationship as essential to feminist thought, as it requires being “attentive to the Thou and precludes treating the Other as one’s object.”3 Feminism, by definition, suggests an equal status and power relations among men and women. Therefore, in order to apply this theology to feminist thought, one must ensure that the relationship is equal, as Buber suggests that the relationship can be unbalanced in some situations. Thus, Buber’s philosophy from a Jewish feminist lens must be appropriated to “preclude unethical power relations.”

Robert Cover
Robert Cover, a Yale law professor and scholar, has influenced many Jewish feminist ethicists, such as Rachel Adler. Cover suggests that there are two different types of law, imperialistic and jurisgenerative. Imperialistic law focuses on authority and the enforcement of rules, whereas jurisgenerative law constitutes communal ideas. Cover favors jurisgenerative style law in that it represents paidea, the highest ideal of the community. 6 Cover distinguishes what is and what ought to be: what exists, and what the ideal is.

Rachel Adler, a Jew who was raised orthodox and initially married orthodox, divorced and became reform and was ordained incorporates Cover’s theologies. She claims that halakhah, or Jewish law, serves as the connection between past and present Jewish worlds. Adapting Cover’s terms, Adler see imperialistic law as the way that halakhah currently functions and has functioned throughout time, according to Adler. Like Cover, however, Adler favors jurisgenerative law, as these are the ideals found in Adler’s Master Narrative, or ethical ideal for the community. Unlike many other Jewish feminists, Adler does not reject halakhah, despite her acknowledgement that women’s voices were excluded from the narrative.

Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen was a philosopher who lived from 1842-1918 who held many of the same philosophical beliefs as Immanuel Kant, but applied to Judaism. Cohen also sees ethics as what “ought to be” in the social world, as opposed to seeing what “is” as a current state of affairs that is unchangeable. According to Cohen, only God falls into both categories of what “is” and what “ought to be”. According to Cohen, ethics are equivalent to what ought to be. Jewish feminist ethicists have use Cohen’s Kantian ideas by expressing their ideals for equality for women in Judaism as what ought to be.

Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian psychologist and psychoanalyst who lived from 1856 to 1939. Freud’s psychology still serves as the basis for psychological studies today. Tova Hartman, a professor, ethicist, and psychologist, studies Freud and incorporates some of his research into her book Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism: Resistance and Accommodation. Hartman introduces three models of understanding Freudian concepts. She suggests that these models—the reaffirmation, reinterpretation/revisionist, and the rejection model—should be utilized to understand the Canon from a more feminist lens. The reaffirmation model suggests that any idea, so long as someone ‘authoritative’ posits it, should be accepted as true. This is problematic in a Jewish context in that it denotes that the canonical text and its authors are the sole authorities. The reinterpretation/revisionist model entails reappropriating and lending new meaning to concepts in the text without losing the value of the original context. When applying these models to the Jewish canon, Hartman favors the reinterpretation/revisionist approach for Jewish education, as it is the one that most “challenges its adherents to be in a constant state of engaging and reengaging with the traditional texts”. The rejection model is also not ideal in that it would completely reject the entire Canon.

Womanist and Mujerista Theologies
Womanism and Mujerista theologies have influenced scholars such as Rabbi Donna Berman, whose dissertation, Nashiut Ethics: Articulating a Jewish Feminist Ethics of Safekeeping, is informed by these theologies. Nashiut Ethics is a form of Jewish Feminist Ethics that Berman develops that focuses not on Torah or halakhah, which she claims have “otherized” the woman’s narrative, but on stories and experiences of women who have been neglected within the Jewish tradition. Like Nashiut ethics, womanist and mujerista theologies provide voices to justice-seeking women who have been neglected within their respective racial, ethnic, and religious groups.

Womanism is the movement that seeks to eliminate gender oppression specifically for black women. The movement incorporates literature, ethics, history, and everyday experiences, all of which focus on the black woman’s narrative. Katie Cannon, in particular, is associated with the origins of the womanist movement. Cannon asserts that Black Women’s voices have historically been ignored; she is one of many women in the womanist movement who was not ashamed to be perceived as radical or take risks. Nashiut ethics is inspired by this model for this reason. Berman asserts that, “Nashiut ethics, like womanist ethics, involves a transvaluation of values, a reclaiming of that which has been repressed and punished in the name of preserving a male constructed femininity which fosters the perpetuation of male power.”

Along the same lines, mujerista theology provides insight into the perspectives, history, literature, and experiences of American Latina women. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, the theologian who founded the movement, is known for her use of ethnographic interviews of Latina women in her mujerista works. Influenced by Diaz, Berman makes use of ethnography in her dissertation to shed light on the neglected women’s voices in Rabbinic Judaism.

Donna Berman specifies, that, like womanist and mujerista theologies, the purpose of Nashiut ethics is to create a place for women who have been neglected and “otherized” in history. Nashiut ethics incorporates the narratives of the feminist African American and Hispanic communities, as she is committed to creating equality and a voice for “every faith and racial/ethnic group.”