Abstract

To engender the Jewish past is to continue to question how and what we think we already know about Jewish history and Jewish memory. In order to imagine other stories, we must risk engaging in other ways of doing Jewish study. Only by repeatedly engaging in these other practices can we begin to undo the assumptions about gender we have come to assume as normal or natural. This paper explores first, what it means to engender the Jewish past and then what a contemporary Jewish Studies informed by feminism looks like.