c. 2007 Religion News Service

BEACHWOOD, Ohio _ For thousands of years, interpreting Jewish Scripture and tradition was almost exclusively the province of men. Men wrote commentaries on the Five Books of Moses, men preached on the texts and men studied them.

So it was “a dream, an absolute dream” when a female cantor proposed a women’s commentary on the Torah at a Jewish women’s meeting in 1992. A year later, when that cantor, Sarah Sager, was invited to give the same talk to a national convention, the enthusiastic response caused her to hope “maybe, maybe this could take off.”

This December, the Women of Reform Judaism will publish the book Sager dreamed of, “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary.”

The groundbreaking book incorporates the work of more than 80 female biblical scholars, rabbis, archaeologists, historians, poets, cantors and philosophers.

For Jewish women, the commentary will allow them to see themselves in biblical stories where the female presence has often been ignored or interpreted through a male view.

For Sager, smiling in her office at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple here, where a silver Miriam’s Cup used at Seder meals sits prominently on a bookshelf, it is “the opportunity to have a dream come true, which is awe-inspiring to me.”

The book is designed to coincide with the reading of the Torah throughout the year. Each chapter includes an overview of the portion of the Torah for a particular week, followed by the Hebrew text and an English translation and a central commentary. Another scholar will offer a separate commentary with a different perspective.

In addition, a third contributor will give a post-biblical interpretation to be followed by a contemporary reflection on the weekly portion of the text.

The commentary is designed to be used in homes, schools and synagogues for personal and group studies and as a resource at religious services. The Temple Sisterhood of Anshe Chesed is buying 101 copies: one copy for each of the 100 years the sisterhood has been in existence and one copy for the future.

The editors hope the book will give men and women new perspectives on traditional texts.

“When women look at their stories, it becomes literally a different story,” Sager said.

That perspective goes back to the beginning of the Torah, and the two Creation stories in Genesis. The biblical story in the second chapter tells of God creating man first, and then forming a woman from a rib taken out of his flesh.

But the emphasis in the commentary is on the first Creation story, which says, “God created human beings. … He created them male and female.”

And that idea _ that woman was created by God as part of one unique humanity _ changes history, Sager said.

“What is the most redemptive is to reclaim the first chapter, when men and women are created equally and simultaneously,” she said. “No longer is woman inferior. No longer is she an afterthought.”

Among the other biblical stories featuring women, the new commentary emphasizes passages in Genesis 25 that indicate the marriage of Rebekah to Abraham’s son, Isaac, required her consent and was not solely arranged by men from the two families.

The commentary also takes advantage of women’s scholarship to ask new questions. For example, why are Noah’s wife and Lot’s wife unnamed? And was it Miriam, and not her younger brother, Moses, who wrote the song of celebration sung by the Israelites in Exodus after they crossed the Red Sea out of bondage in Egypt?

“Even the question allows us to imagine our matriarchs … more fully and more influentially,” Sager said.

What made the commentary possible is advances in female scholarship over the last three decades as more women entered the rabbinate and theological institutions.

One of the new generation of women is Sager’s daughter, Jennifer Gertman, 25, who is studying to become a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in New York City. The majority of her class is female, she said, and the new commentary affirms the idea that women have just as much a place as men in Torah study.

“It’s another way for them to approach the text,” Gertman said. “I connect to Sarah more than I connect to Abraham … because I’m a woman.”

There is something else that is exciting about the new commentary.

“It’s because of my mom,” Gertman said. “I’m so proud of her.”

(David Briggs writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

KRE END BRIGGS750 words

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