suggests a strategy of paying "constant attention to the ruptures, discontinuities and cracks in the systems of power," such that, "multiple strategies for resisting their dangerous implications" can be developed without either collaborating in domination or totally rejecting the past. Since I do not wish to collaborate in domination and certainly do not wish to reject Judaism, the latter type of research can be a powerfully redemptive tool. Precisely and paradoxically: where the culture did not work then, that is where we can make it work for us now. That is the strategy of the current project.
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There are two lines of inquiry to be pursued. The first delves for evidence of women's power, autonomy, and creativity that the dominant discourse wishes to suppress but cannot entirely expunge. This line of research has been very fruitful for study of ancient Greece, the biblical period, and the Hellenistic period.
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The second line of inquiry, however, promises to be more fruitful for the Talmud, namely the search for male opposition,
within the Talmud itself,
however rudimentary, to the dominant, androcentric discourse.
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Perhaps the critic who has had the greatest effect on forming the explicitly feminist aspects of my critical practice is Mieke Bal, most obviously, though not exclusively, owing to her work on the Hebrew Bible (Bal 1987, 1988a, and 1988b). The theoretical factor in her work that has made it most productive for me is the explicit way it engages the assumed monolithic character of patriarchy and shows that the very assumption of that monolith serves the interests of those who wish to retain gender hierarchy today, and even more important that it is an artifact of particular masculist
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readings of biblical texts. In a recent essay, Bal has articulated the intended cultural function of her work concisely and persuasively:
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 | | 1. This has been realized generally by many feminist critics and historians who have begun searching in the Bible and in other ancient literature and cultural remains for whatever evidence might be found or reread for women's creativity and cultural power. Some feminist scholars have been pursuing this line of research with regard to late-antique Judaism, notably Bernadette Brooten, Ross Kraemer, and Amy-Jill Levine. This kind of work can be and has to be pursued for the Talmud as well, although, to be sure, with regard to the talmudic literature and period the evidence will be sparse indeed.
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| | 2. This term is in some ways problematic and in other ways very useful. It is problematic in that it parallels
feminist,
but feminism is not a project of female domination over males, while masculism has historically been a project of male domination over females. On the other hand, it is a useful term in that it clearly marks out the "universal" and the realm of "common knowledge" as inscribed by male interests.
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