Joyce Antler - Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement

THE GOLDSTEIN-GOREN SERIES IN AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY

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Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Womens Liberation Movement

Joyce Antler

Joyce Antler

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www.nyupress.org

2018 by New York University

All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Antler, Joyce, author.

Title: Jewish radical feminism : voices from the womens liberation movement /

Joyce Antler.

Description: New York : New York University Press, [2018] |

Series: The Goldstein-Goren series in American Jewish history |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017045030 | ISBN 9780814707630 (cl : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Women in Judaism. | Jewish womenUnited States. |

FeminismReligious aspectsJudaism. | Gender identityReligious

aspectsJudaism. | FeminismUnited StatesHistory20th century. |

FeminismUnited StatesHistory21st century. | Queer theory.

Classification: LCC BM729.W6 A58 2018 | DDC 305.42089/924073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045030

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To Tillie and Max

The womens liberation movement that began in the United States in the late 1960s may have been the most important social movement of the last century, challenging gender inequality in myriad forms and participating in what soon became a global movement to transform womens lives. Although the movement began with the formation of several small collectives in rapid succession, historians often cite Chicagos West Side Group as the first womens liberation group in the country. Formed in late 1967, that group shared the ecstasy and exhilaration of creating a movement that was ready to turn the world upside down, in the words of Naomi Weisstein, one of its key members. Every subject was a topic of intense discussion, Weisstein recalled. We talked incessantly... about our pain,... our righteous anger,... our orgasms. Then we felt guilty for talking about our orgasms. Shouldnt we be doing actions? And act they surely did, to stunning effect. The power and joy of their deep involvement in the womens movement is reflected in the image of Weisstein that adorns the cover of this book.

The one issue that the group never talked about was the Jewish backgrounds of the majority of its dozen members. We never talked about it, Weisstein admitted to me and to several West Side friends when, some forty-five years after the groups founding, I brought them together to probe the issue. It was so embarrassing to have so many Jews around, Weisstein acknowledged. There was even a silent agreement that we didnt bring it up because it was counter to the universalist vision of that time.... It was sort of a whiff of anti-Semitism.

Even in the decades after the demise of the Chicago Womens Liberation Union, the citywide group the West Side women had helped to create, they did not discuss their Jewish identities. The same was true for most Jewish women who joined womens liberation groups in other cities in the 1960s and 1970s. While a few individual Jewish women have been acknowledged for their work as womens liberationists, for the most part, Jewish womens impact on the movement as Jews seemed to be unimportant, a matter ignored by participants in the movement and historians alike. This neglect also characterized the post-1970s phase of womens liberation, sometimes referred to as feminist identity politics, which drew together specific groups of women on the basis of shared racial, ethnic, sexual, or other backgrounds. Radical feminists who identified Jewishly found themselves to be outsiders in the increasingly multicultural landscape fashioned by the politics of identity.

Yet the place of Jewish women in womens liberation is highly significant. Jewish women were leaders, helping to start several of the first radical feminist groups in the country, among them the Chicago Womens Liberation Union, New Yorks Redstockings and New York Radical Women, and Bostons Bread and Roses. Eight out of the dozen founders of the Boston Womens Health Book Collective, one of the most long-lasting womens liberation projects in the country, were Jewish.

Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish womens liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick.

Despite historians acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention. Well-known histories of second-wave feminism, including those by Sara Evans, Alice Echols, Ruth Rosen, and Susan Brownmiller, do not identify the contributions of Jewish women to the womens liberation movement. Benita Roths study of black, Chicana, and white pathways toward feminism does not accord a distinct place to Jewish women but subsumes them under whiteness. Winifred Breiness study of black and white women in second-wave feminism refers to many radical feminists who are Jewish but treats them simply as white and does not explore differences within that category.