Midrash for the Masses: The Uses (and Abuses) of the Term ‘Midrash’ in Contemporary Feminist Discourse

In her 1994 book, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions, the Jewish feminist poet Alicia Ostriker wrote: ‘Throughout the history of the Diaspora, Jewish imagination has flowered through midrash – stories based on Biblical stories, composed not for a narrow audience of scholars, but for an entire community … In midrash, ancient tales yield new meanings to new generations.’ ¹ Ostriker’s is a curious sort of definition of midrash; it represents the term in the broadest way possible in which it might be understood. Undoubtedly this expansive way of understanding midrash suits Ostriker’s purpose as she wishes to claim for her own work that it falls within the bounds of midrash. For Ostriker and many other contemporary feminists reclaiming the ancient rabbinic genre of midrash is a means of asserting authenticity for their own re-workings of biblical texts, a way of embedding themselves within Jewish tradition. Yet, I would argue that Ostriker’s definition of the term midrash is both vague and at best only partially accurate.

To begin, midrash is often nothing at all story-like; in fact, only certain sub-genres of midrash, such as the לשמ (often translated as ‘parable’), have any real narrative structure and even then these parables normally comprise a small section of a larger textual unit. ² Though the לשמ might be mistaken for a story, such a banal description would be a great miscomprehension of this midrashic device. ³ Also, the subject of the intended audience in midrash is widely contested in the academic literature – were the classical collections of midrash intended for a populist audience? Was it other scholars? Does the midrash originate in the homiletics of the classical rabbis? Were some midrashim originally sermons or are they collections of scholarly debates that took place within the academy? If midrash does have its origins in a more populist setting, are the collections that have been handed down to us the equivalent of a book of published sermons or have these collections been edited in ways that leave them little resembling their original forms? ⁴ Given the depth of knowledge needed to study them and the terseness with which many of them are written, saying that midrashim were ‘composed not for a narrow audience of scholars, but for an entire community’ is, at best, naïve if not positively disingenuous.

Moreover, remains the question of whether or not the authors/editors of the classical midrashim ever saw their task as yielding ‘new meaning to new generations’. For example, David Weiss Halivni, states that:

What was learned through exegesis was considered, at that time, as though it were written “in the Book of Moses”. Exegetically derived information was considered at integral aspect of the text. ⁵

When one studies these works today the fact that they create new meaning may seem obvious to the modern reader, but suggesting that generating new meaning was the explicit purpose of the ancient author and editor of these texts ignores the nuance and subtlety of the midrashic exercise in antiquity and should not simply be accepted uncritically.

So if midrash is not simply stories based on biblical stories, composed for a populist readership in order to inject new meaning for a new generation of readers, then what is midrash and, crucially, why is it so important in contemporary Jewish, feminist discourse? Can the genre of midrash ever be successfully co-opted for feminist ends or is it a historical term with no relevance to contemporary debates? If midrash can be co-opted, what would be the benefits of doing so? These questions are the ones to which I will address this paper alongside practical suggestions of how to move this discussion forward.

Scholars posit a wide variety of definitions for midrash and the term can be both specifically and widely applied. Where midrash is specifically applied, it generally refers to collections such as Mekillta de Rabbi Yishmael, (the various components of) Midrash Rabbah, Sifra, Tanhuma, Pesiqta de Rav Kahana, etc. from the classical rabbinic period as well as later compilations such as Yalqut Shim’oni, Midrash ha-Gadol, Bereshit Rabbati and Leqah Tob.

Where midrash is more widely applied, little consensus about meaning exists. For example, according to James Kugel, ‘At bottom midrash is not a genre of interpretation but an interpretative stance, a way of reading the sacred text …’ and then two pages later in the same essay Kugel,writes, ‘… midrash is an exegesis of biblical verses …’ ⁶ Of course, at least superficially these two statements need not be in conflict. Midrash can at once be ‘an exegesis of biblical verses’ and simultaneously be ‘an interpretative stance.’ The difficulty is not so much in harmonizing these two definitions as in recognizing that in one definition Kugel is writing about a broad, almost whimsical way of thinking about midrash, whereas in the other he defines midrash in a clear, specific sense.

Yet where Kugel spells out the clear, specific sense of midrash, Ithamar Gruenwald writes:

Midrash is chiefly concerned with the creation of meaning – not with exegesis … when people engage in the quest of meaning in general, they go beyond exegesis. Very commonly, meaning is discovered in the text, but attributed to it. In other words, Midrash not only creates exegetical information … but also the spheres of meaning in which new halakhic and theological norms are established and realized. ⁷

So, in contrast to Kugel’s statement that midrash is, in fact, ‘an exegesis of biblical verses,’ Gruenwald states quite emphatically that it is not. Moreover, Gruenwald goes so far as to posit that precisely because midrash tries to create meaning, perhaps because of the type of ‘interpretative stance’ it represents, midrash goes beyond the process of mere exegesis. Midrash creates the very categories from which new theology can be constructed or, as Michael Fishbane states so much more eloquently ‘… midrashic mythopoesis has been a mainspring of the concrete Jewish theological imagination’. ⁸

One of the difficulties of defining midrash is that scholars often define either the form or the function of midrash, but rarely both at once. For example, Fishbane states,

Rabbinic Midrash is constituted by two generic forms. The first and most fundamental of them is the citation from scripture (a word or phrase) that introduces an exegetical comment or discourse, and that serves as its lexical basis or stimulus. Thus the primary process of Midrashic hermeneutics is conditioned by the letters and sounds of a given lemma (or citation), in a given context, and it is only from this inscription that new meanings are developed and correlations established with other words in other scriptural contexts. The citation is therefore the core of any Midrashic commentary, and the primary thread of the intertextual weft that results. ⁹

Here Fishbane is primarily concerned with the form that midrash takes, i.e. a citation that serves as a basis for exegetical discourse. In the following paragraph Fishbane goes on to describe the larger form of midrash that is structured as multiple commentaries typified by the device of the רחא רבד, (another matter). ¹⁰ But this definition of midrash tells us little about the character of midrash, its purpose, its theology or its meaning. Fishbane does goes on to explain that

The interconnection of verses is the way midrash teaches, and the way it demonstrates, again and again, that all necessary meaning is contained in the biblical canon,

which certainly gives the reader some limited idea of the purpose of midrash. ¹¹ Nevertheless, Fishbane’s primary emphasis when defining midrash here is to examine the form and structure of midrash, not its underlying function. That the rabbis believed that ‘all necessary meaning’ could be found in the Bible is merely a hint at the possibilities inherent in writing midrash.

By contrast, Henry Slonimsky is almost unconcerned by the form of midrash, defining midrash almost exclusively according to its purpose and theology.

The Midrash is a vast post-Biblical Bible written on the margin of the Bible to account for the sufferings of God and man [sic] in their efforts to reclaim and uplift an unfinished and emerging world. ¹²

What Agada or Midrash is the Midrash itself states. In a conspicuous utterance concerning its use and function it characterizes itself as Benedictions and Consolations, תומחנו תוכרב. Primarily then, and in its inner core and essence, it is consolation, that is, a feeding of the life-impulse when harassed and threatened by tragic circumstance … That is what the Agada aims to be alongside of the Halakah, the “faith” alongside the “works,” … which here are the twin sources of Jewish being and the twin pillars on which it equally rests. ¹³

These definitions seem a world away from Fishbane’s definition. Gone are the careful qualifications of form and structure and instead we find grandiose sentiment as to the purpose of midrash. Slonimsky speaks compellingly of the great themes of Jewish life. Midrash becomes a repository for all that might be possible for Jewish thought when it is not tied down too firmly to legalities, as he continues, ‘one can say that the Midrash is a repository of a Jewish Theology and of a Jewish Philosophy of History.’ ¹⁴

Patently this problem of pinning down a definition of midrash is a core difficulty for contemporary Jewish writers, commentators and interpreters of the biblical text. Is midrash primarily a particular type of exegesis (Kugel or Gruenwald) or is it primarily a particular structure (Fishbane), or is it primarily a particular mindset in relation to the Bible (Slonimsky)? While there is no clear resolution of this debate, I believe there are a number of key elements of midrash that can be taken from these discussions.

First, midrash does have a particular form. This form is almost always related to the citation of a biblical verse, or more precisely to a partial citation of a verse, and serves as an exegesis on that verse or some small portion of that verse (and occasionally even as little as a single letter). Moreover, the ways in which this exegesis is structured is related to a set of hermeneutical principles, or תודימ as they are known in Hebrew. For example, the לשמ is one of the תודימ employed to create midrash and will help dictate the form of the particular midrash in which this device is used. The list of hermeneutical principles employed in midrashim is best articulated in the long list of 32 תודימ attributed to Rabbi Eliezer ben Jose Ha-Gelili. It is worth noting, however, that even this list is widely understood to be incomplete since numerous and often basic hermeneutics were never listed formally.

In addition to these technical structures, midrash is also the chief vehicle for the theological imagination in the classical rabbinic world. Midrash is not systematic; the various collections of midrash are not organized as orderly ruminations on specialist subject areas with an overarching theme. Instead, midrashic collections reflect the particular issues raised by individual verses of the Bible. The theology of the midrash flows from biblical exegesis. Moreover, multiple interpretations of a verse may be present in a midrash, even if these interpretations appear to be and sometimes are contradictory.

In this respect midrash shares some similarities with certain forms of modern literary criticism. Although separated by some two millennia, reader-response criticism and midrash both share some key similarities as well as profound differences in their approach to the construction of meaning in texts. By way of example, examining the way in which Stanley Fish understands textual indeterminacy will help shed light on the construction of meaning in midrashic texts.

In Fish’s seminal essay, ‘Is There a Text in This Class?’, he spells out the related problems of meaning and intelligibility in language. ¹⁵ Is there a normative reading of any given text or utterance or is there only an endless plurality of meanings? Fish argues that neither position is wholly correct – the so-called normative reading ignores the very many different contexts in which a text can be read or an utterance heard, while endless plurality ignores ‘ “the possibilities and norms” … encoded in language’. ¹⁶ For Fish while language is elastic, it is also always comprehended within a structure of norms, which are socially determined. ¹⁷ Though this argument leads to a fear of relativism through the possibility of a plurality of norms, Fish argues that relativism ‘is not a position one can occupy. No one can be a relativist …’ ¹⁸ For Fish utterances do hold a range of meanings, but those meanings are not limitless to the point of meaninglessness. Instead meaning is responsive, determined by confident individuals who operate in communal and conventional contexts. ¹⁹ But the boundaries of meaning are determined by the listener or reader, not the speaker or author.

Midrashic polysemy in many ways differs from Fish’s form of reader-response criticism and yet, as David Stern has remarked vis-à-vis indeterminacy, it ‘may still remain a significant category for understanding our reading of midrashic discourse.’ ²⁰ Midrashic polysemy demands that biblical verses have multiple meanings, this notion being derived from the key Talmudic passage in B. Sandhedrin 34a:

Abaye answered: For Bible says, God has spoken once, twice have I heard this, that strength belongs to God [Ps. 62:12]. One biblical verse may convey several teachings, but a single teaching cannot be deduced from different biblical verses. In R. Ishmael’s School it was taught: And like in hammer that breaks the rock in pieces [Jer. 23:29]: i.e., just as [the rock] is split into many splinters, so also may one biblical verse convey many teachings.

Employing Ps. 62:12 as a prooftext, Abaye answers the debate between the rabbis over whether a single teaching can be derived from multiple verses (it cannot) or whether multiple teachings may derive from a single verse (they may). R. Ishmael’s school goes on to support this notion by quoting from Jer. 23:29:

Behold, my word is like fire – declares the Eternal One – and like a hammer that shatters rock!

God’s word, Torah, is likened to the situation of a hammer that, as it crashes against a rock, shatters the rock into many pieces. Just as the rock becomes many shards, so the words of Torah have multiple meanings. ²¹ How were these meanings derived? Were there exegetical constraints on the interpretation of text or was meaning infinitely derivable from the Bible?

Although the rabbis appear unconcerned by the possible contradictions between different interpretations of the text, some constraint is placed upon the process of exegesis. In antiquity certain schools of exegesis seem to have existed, but more importantly lists of hermeneutical tools existed to constrain the ways in which meaning could be derived from the biblical text. According to Stern these lists were neither exhaustive nor a manual for writing midrash, but more likely were compiled by schools of midrashists towards the end of the midrashic period to justify their particular exegetical approach. ²² But in the same way that Fish suggests that meaning is not infinitely flexible, that boundaries do exist for the interpretation of texts, so, too, within the midrashic process existed certain rules, a fusion of ancient Jewish and Hellenistic logic, which furnished some boundaries for the creation of meaning. Moreover, like Fish’s argument, midrashic argumentation is not relativist; midrash is authoritative, but the constraint that makes midrash authoritative is not merely communal – it is theological. The authority of midrash is derived from the authority of the Bible – that the Bible is the word of the living God. All midrashic polysemy derives from the belief that multiple, sometimes contradictory, readings all have their basis in God.

Ultimately, writes Stern,

the near identification of Torah and God provides the Rabbis with the basic axioms of midrashic hermeneutics: first, the belief in the omnisignificance of Scripture, in the meaningfulness of its every word, letter, even … scribal flourish; second, the claim of the essential unity of Scripture as the expression of the single divine will. ²³

And here, of course, is where midrashic polysemy departs so clearly from literary indeterminacy and reader-response criticism. Midrash creates a hermeneutic where the biblical text is pregnant with divine meaning, not merely elastic and certainly not to the point of being emptied of meaning, but alive with possibility. The source of meaning may appear to be the reader, the exegete, but in the rabbinic imagination the source of meaning was God.

Halivni explains the matter another way – early on the text of the Bible was recognized to be maculate, but such a position is highly religiously challenging. In order to deal with this problem of a maculate text, exegetical information was raised to the status of divinely revealed. ‘Gradually,’ explains Halivni, ‘… the text came to appear complete and self-sufficient if only one knew the hermeneutic principles and how to apply them.’ ²⁴ The act of exegesis, properly done, employing the correct principles, became an act of the transmission of the divine will.

Now we can begin to see why midrash has become so appealing to contemporary Jewish feminists. Midrash as a form of exegesis offers a great deal of potential to contemporary feminists. Had there been women rabbis in antiquity, midrashim would have been composed by women, too. But there were no women rabbis in antiquity and to the best of our knowledge there were no women who composed midrash; hence, the contemporary desire to reclaim this ancient genre of exegesis thereby claiming authenticity for a current generation of women interpreting Torah.

The problem, however, goes back to Ostriker and others like her, whose definition of midrash is so open that might include almost any form of interpretation imaginable. And this very open approach to the definition of midrash is not restricted to Ostriker. Numerous other examples of women attempting to reclaim the midrashic tradition abound. For example, no less a scholar than Judith Plaskow makes similar comments about midrash, reflecting a determined vagueness about the purpose of midrash. ²⁵ She never defines what she means by the term and conflates midrash with ‘creating poetry, exploring and telling stories’. ²⁶ She uses the term midrash in its fuzziest sense to denote a kind of creative, spiritual quest that can take the form of writing, song, or dance.

Other works that seek to claim a place within the midrashic tradition include Which Lilith? Feminist Writers Re-Create the World’s First Woman; Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women; She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism and Biblical Women Unbound: Counter-Tales. Jewish feminists such as Norma Rosen and Lynn Gottlieb specifically invoke midrash in the introductions to their works. In Biblical Women Unbound Rosen writes, ‘Midrash, in the end, is theology, as well as questions, answers, details, reasons, fictions, truth – stories’. ²⁷ More succinctly, in She Who Dwells Within Gottleib writes, ‘The theology offered … works with a midrashic or storyteller’s reinterpretation of metaphors …’ ²⁸ Gottleib is almost glib in her very brief definitions of midrash, reducing it to storytelling. Though Rosen is somewhat more expansive in her view, she also basically categorizes midrash as ‘stories’.

Why bother to invoke midrash at all given that these writers are making no effort to grapple with what midrash is or in what way it might speak to or inform the projects with which they are engaged? Rosen actually considerably limits what she wants midrash to achieve. She states in her introduction in a section entitled ‘What I Want Midrash to Do’: ‘I want midrash to give a voice to women in the Bible who have had nearly none’. ²⁹ Such an exercise is laudable and is certainly possible through the employment of midrashic techniques, but it is very limited. Harnessing the midrash to do nothing more than give biblical characters a voice is lamentable when the midrashic imagination might be so much more expansive than that.

Rosen’s and Gottleib’s respective works along with many other similar works suffer from a number of limitations. To begin, many, if not all, of these works restrict themselves to writing only about female Bible characters and mostly major characters at that. As these choices become hackneyed some focus on more minor characters (such as Shifra and Puah, Huldah, Zipporah, etc). None of these works attempt to engage the feminist imagination in texts that do not seem overtly to have a connection to women. In addition, no overarching methodological approach as such is present in these works or, indeed, any rigour attached to their interpretations. These works are, in general, creative re-imaginings that are rarely based in anything that would be familiar as a midrashic hermeneutic. Many of these works address lacunae in the biblical text and occasionally these works employ a particular linguistic detail as a jumping off point, but classical midrashic hermeneutics go far further than these two, rather basic, starting points.

Perhaps most importantly, however, is the lack of serious, intellectual engagement in what the midrashic process might be. Inevitably in these types of books midrash is always defined in some facile way, with no reference to any academic scholarship about midrash. The introduction to Which Lilith? states: ‘We define Midrash as a dynamic, elastic concept which may encompass many specific literary genres: the essay, the tale, the short story, the meditation, the poem.’ ³⁰ Here the editors of this collection simply ignore the possibility that midrash might be a genre all of its own and assert their right to define the term in a fashion that suits their own needs rather than one that reflects anything at all substantive about the term. In doing so, the editors of Which Lilith? along with many other authors and editors of similar works reveal that their interest in employing the term ‘midrash’ is to lend themselves some veil of authenticity within a Jewish, traditional framework. Why not simply acknowledge that these forms – ‘the essay, the tale, the short story, the meditation, the poem’ – are all valid ways of contemporary Jewish women commenting on the biblical text? It appears as though without the ability to call these genres ‘midrash’, the authors fear that their work will not be taken seriously.

And yet, if women are to make an impact on the Jewish interpretive tradition, we must begin by understanding clearly what that tradition is and subvert it from within its own boundaries. If we do not, if we simply label everything we write as ‘midrash’ without ever really engaging in what that term means, then much of this type of writing will simply be dismissed as ‘flaky’ or ‘populist’ or, worse, as only of interest to a particular subset of other like-minded feminists. ³¹

So if Jewish feminists were to take seriously what midrash might be able to offer us – a particular form and structure, which employs clear hermeneutics and contains the possibility for polysemous theological readings rooted in the text of the Bible – what would such a project look like? How might it be different from the examples I have discussed above?

In my own work I have been experimenting with a proposal for creating contemporary feminist midrash, which combines both feminist hermeneutics and the classical rabbinic hermeneutics, especially as typified by the תודימ. In particular, I have proposed incorporating a number of feminist hermeneutics into my own, newly composed midrashim. I am basing these feminist elements not on the work of one particular school or writer, but rather on a variety of feminist sources that seem pertinent to me in this endeavour.

Rachel Adler’s Engendering Judaism provides one of the key methodological bases for my approach to the text. Textual exegesis in Judaism is a form of theological expression, and as midrash is the classical vehicle for that textual exegesis so, too, it is a form of theological expression. Adler creates her own, modern, feminist form of theological expression in engaging not only with the content of classical texts of Judaism, but also with their form, structure and mode of argumentation. Adler is most persuasive, most compelling, however, when she writes not merely about Jewish texts, but when she creates new Jewish texts drawn from a deep knowledge of and engagement with traditional texts.

In particular, Adler grapples with the liturgical text of the Jewish wedding service. Here Adler transforms an ancient, patriarchal ceremony with specific rituals based in Jewish law into a modern, egalitarian ceremony based in Jewish law with many of those same ceremonies only lightly altered to create new resonances and meanings. Adler effectively critiques the basis in Jewish law that enables couples to marry and, employing another section of הכלה – partnership law, which expounds the rules governing individuals going into business together – develops an entirely new basis on which to found an egalitarian ceremony. Adler does not rip up the liturgy; she transforms it. She does not dismiss Jewish law; she embraces its possibilities. Adler’s transformation of the Jewish wedding service from bride as transfer of property between father and groom to a contract between partners (bride and groom) displays an awareness of the need to be in conversation with tradition, with the classical rabbis, even while subverting that tradition and its authors. Adler’s theology stems from a deep engagement, an unlocking of the potential in Jewish texts and the ability to transform them as a contemporary feminist. ³²

In addition Adler’s transformation of this aspect of Jewish law and ritual echoes the normative service it replaces. The difference between attending a traditional wedding service and the one proposed by Adler would be apparent, but nonetheless subtle. Adler understands the importance of creating something that is recognizable. For Adler’s new ceremony to be attractive to couples, looking and feeling like a traditional ceremony lends weight to its sense of authenticity and the ceremony’s clear basis in Jewish law ensures that people are genuinely entering into a legal relationship with each other.

From Adler’s approach, I take a number of key points:

A sound knowledge of the text(s) is essential and must underpin all of my exegesis.

Traditional Jewish modes of interpretation are a tool; they are not necessarily inherently patriarchal, but instead I must mold them to my own feminist ends.

For a revision to work, it must reflect in some key fashion the text that it seeks to reform and reinterpret.

In order to be fully situated within Jewish tradition and accepted by practicing Jews, a sense of authenticity is crucial.

Adler sought to rewrite a piece of liturgy based on הכלה. On this basis I seek to write midrash based on the biblical text. In Adler’s mode, I write my midrashim with the same interpretative tools as the rabbis, i.e. their hermeneutics, and create midrashim that have a sense of authenticity about them through both looking and feeling like classical midrash.

Of the many contemporary, feminist midrashim that I have examined, only one seems to have attempted something similar. In Unlocking the Garden: A Feminist Jewish Look at the Bible, Midrash and God, Naomi Graetz includes a chapter on Miriam, examining her barrenness in the light of the הרטפה for אצת יכ השרפ, which is one of the תורטפה of reconciliation following Tisha B’Av. Graetz provides an extended explanation of her understanding of the link between Miriam and the הרטפה, culminating finally in her own midrash on the השרפ. ³³ Graetz’s midrash takes the form of a homiletic midrash, with the classical element of a החיתפ beginning the midrash. Graetz also consciously employs rabbinic phraseology wherever possible. ³⁴ In distinction from classical midrashim, Graetz ‘openly refer[s] to, quote[s] from, utilize[s] and build[s] on prooftexts from previous midrash.’ ³⁵

As an attempt at creating a midrash that has the look and feel of a classical midrash, Graetz’s midrash is successful. She creates a midrash that accurately reflects a classical homiletical midrash. Graetz does not reflect on why she composes a midrash in this fashion. Although at other points in this book, she considers the centrality of midrash to Jewish thought, she does not write about why she chooses to write a midrash herself or what it might add to the way in which her interpretation of these texts might be received. ³⁶ Moreover, Graetz does not overtly state that what she will engage with are the rabbinic hermeneutics or the תודימ. Primarily, Graetz draws on the extensive Jewish tradition of employing prooftexts to elicit homiletical points.

Although Graetz herself does not explain to her readers why she wrote a midrash that so consciously looks and feels like a classical midrash, the experience of reading her midrash as an educated Jew is completely different from merely reading an essay on her exegesis of these verses. Graetz’s midrash ties her exegesis of these verses to a dialogue with classical texts. Her choice of midrash to express her exegesis connects her to the Jewish past in a way that an essay would not.

From Graetz, therefore, I look to consider how best to formulate midrashim that consciously adopt the form and style of classical midrash. Her usage of prooftexts is a key element of this style and one that I emulate in my own midrashim. Unlike Graetz I also employ other classical hermeneutical options. In particular, in order to write midrashim that have the feel and style of classical midrashim, I employ תודימ from the list of Eliezer ben Jose Ha-Gelili, along with other typical examples, including the extensive use of prooftexts and the device known as the רחא רבד, ‘another matter’. These תודימ are the basic building blocks of classical Jewish biblical exegesis – they form the broad boundaries of how it is possible to interpret the Bible within Jewish tradition in antiquity. In this fashion they ground my own exegetical attempts and link them with the chain of tradition of Jewish biblical interpretation.

Finally, for a clear feminist methodological underpinning I turn to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. In an all too brief essay in the edited collection, New Jewish Feminism, Ruttenberg gently critiques the almost hackneyed ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’. Ruttenberg suggests replacing it with a ‘hermeneutic of curiosity’. ³⁷ For Ruttenberg, the hermeneutic of suspicion begins from the presumption that all texts are misogynistic until proven otherwise. A hermeneutic of curiosity enables the exegete to examine the text with an open mind and determine whether anything of benefit can be gained from it.

Ruttenberg gives several examples of particular problematic legal issues pertaining to women and their social interaction with men. She acknowledges the difficulty of these laws, but then tries with her hermeneutic of curiosity to determine whether something of use may be extracted from these laws while simultaneously dismissing the problematic parts. For example, she discusses the practice of העיגנ תרימש, where people over the age of majority do not touch members of the opposite sex unless they are immediate family members. She critiques the heterosexual bias of such a practice and the ways in which it objectifies human beings. But Ruttenberg also suggests that in looking again at the practice, underlying it might be something about the power of touch and the ways in which touch can be used and abused between people. ³⁸ Through her curiosity about this practice, she attempts to transform what she acknowledges to be a problematic practice into something that could have value for contemporary women and men.

Like Adler, Ruttenberg mines what are clearly patriarchal laws and customs in an attempt to transform them into something egalitarian, yet still meaningful and connected to Jewish practice. Ruttenberg’s hermeneutic of curiosity enables her to delight in the possibilities inherent in Jewish texts and practice while remaining critical. At the core of my own exegesis lies this hermeneutic of curiosity. I consider myself a curious reader, embodying all the nuanced possibilities within the term ‘curious’ – inquisitive, careful, surprising, strange and fascinating. I do not presume the texts I examine to be misogynistic until proven otherwise, but rather presume that the texts I work with have an inherent value to me both as a Jew and a feminist. I approach them with curiosity, to see what lies beneath the surface of the texts, shaping my exegesis into midrashim that transform, in an attempt to offer restitution to a still broken Jewish world.

In addition to these hermeneutics, I make one other point about the process of writing midrashim. As is self-evident from reading midrash, but rarely commented on by scholars, the process of writing midrash is, to a certain extent, a collective one. Although when and who redacted the collections of midrashim that are currently extant is a subject of scholarly debate, in substance what remains clear is that many collections of midrashim are the product of multiple interpretations by numerous different rabbis over substantial periods of time. In creating new midrashim reflecting the experience of women, I consciously incorporate not only my own insights into the biblical text, but also the voices of other women, wherever appropriate and possible. Some of these voices are quoted from contemporary women, some of them the imagined voices of ancient women. In doing so, I believe I follow not only in the footsteps of Jewish tradition, but also the feminist project of reclamation.

So what does one of these midrashim look like? My midrashim, like most midrash, are relatively short, terse and difficult to simply read aloud and comprehend. They require knowledge of the biblical text (preferably in Hebrew), close reading and unpicking. I have, therefore, chosen a single midrash, to append to this paper. I have chosen this particular midrash on the assumption that it is based on a biblical text with which most readers will be largely familiar and that it sufficiently showcases my methodological approach to the composition of contemporary feminist midrash.

.א השענ םיהלא רמאיו. (Gen. 1:26) To whom was God speaking? But Scripture does not say here ‘in our images, according to our likenesses’! ³⁹ Accordingly, one must not say that God conferred with the angels ⁴⁰ or with the rest of creation. ⁴¹ R. Samuel b. Meir said: ‘ונתומדכ: “according to our wisdom” ⁴² for when a man misbehaves he is in fact, “compared to the likeness of animals”’. ⁴³ R. Deborah said: Human beings are the reflection of the Divine when, as it is written (רמאנש) we have imagined (ּוניִמִד) ⁴⁴ your loving kindness. ⁴⁵ With whom, then, did God confer? With God’s own creative self. ⁴⁶ It is like the parable of (…ל לשמ) ⁴⁷ an artist who says to her own hands as she picks up her brush to begin to paint, ‘Let us make a painting.’ ⁴⁸ So God said as God collected God’s (ןוימיד) imagination, ⁴⁹ Let us make the human being in our image according to our imagination … ⁵⁰ It is like the parable (…ל לשמ) of a married couple, who after long deliberations imagine creating a child. So God’s male and female aspects ⁵¹ engaged in an internal dialogue saying, Let us make a human being in our image, according to our imagination.